Abraham Accords: A Triumph For Trade And Diplomatic Ties
Author – Jordan Kiss
Jordan Kiss is a Policy Fellow of The Pinsker Centre, a campus-based think tank which facilitates discussion on global affairs and free speech. The views in this article are the author’s own
The Abraham Accords have weathered their first anniversary, but after a shake-up in western leadership, with a Biden White House taking a different tract in foreign policy, how influential have the Abraham Accords since been in increasing trade and economic growth in the Middle East? US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, remarks that “a year after the Accords and normalization agreements were signed, the benefits continue to grow”.
Beginning with their inception, the Abraham Accords were a flagship policy of the Trump administration which sought to normalise trade and diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and also Bahrain. At the time, the agreements were perceived to be an agreement ending Israel’s annexation of the West Bank in exchange for normalisation of ties with the UAE and wider states in the Middle East in the future. Israel also capitalised on the potential for the Accords to also be a force for bringing together middle eastern nations to act as bulwark against the destabilising force of Iran and its nuclear ambitions.
The Trump administration sought to use the Accords as a method of bolstering regional security with minimal involvement and intervention from the United States (US), allowing for a shift in the axis of US foreign policy towards Asia. Looking at this question of how the Abraham Accords were initially conceived therefore lies at the core of whether they have been effective in bolstering trade and spurring economic growth.
Since the agreements were signed, only two subsequent states, Morocco and Sudan, have signed normalisation agreements with Israel. Critics of the Accords use this as a hallmark of their quality, suggesting that the lack of subsequent normalisation agreements means that the Accords have been a failure. However, this oversimplifies the nature of the Accords. The main point of the agreements was not to purely bolster Israel’s international standing, they were to develop, and deepen ties with and between Arab states, like the UAE. As such, the UAE has recently announced an aspiration of increasing trade with Israel to $1 trillion by 2031. In the space of a year, the UAE went from not formally recognising Israel as a legitimate state, to becoming only the third Arab state after Egypt and Jordan to do so, and subsequently pledging the expansion of open trade between the two nations.
The wider policy implications from trade expansion are particularly significant. The desire to expand trade accelerated the process of bringing about full diplomatic relations with the UAE, unlocking myriad prospects of peace, security, and prosperity in the relations between the two countries. Therefore, regardless of the progression of additional normalisation treaties, such a transformation in relations between states who have signed agreements, must be perceived as a foreign policy success for the US, Israel, and the UAE.
Furthermore, it could be argued that the tenuous foreign policy decisions of Biden’s administration such as the farcical withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and no longer seeking to prioritise development after the Accords, has brought the signatories closer, further bolstering bilateral trade. With promise of a US leadership change with the 2020 presidential election the UAE and Israel –states which possess broader regional ambitions– became increasingly concerned about a ‘pendulum swing’ in US Middle East policy away from Trump’s focus on regional stability and hawkishness towards Iran . Those concerns were well founded, with Biden becoming ever more vocal about pursuing a revival of the Iran nuclear agreement.
Whilst the Iran nuclear deal was predominantly a security concern for Israel, the UAE had national security concerns around the revival of the nuclear deal and Biden’s review of arms sales, particularly the UAE’s $23 billion F-35 fighter deal that was packaged by the Trump team. Such inconsistent policy from the US has meant that the UAE and Israel have had to become closer in both trade and diplomatic relations. This was marked with Israel’s PM Naftali Bennet’s visit to the UAE, signifying a broader diplomatic strengthening. Ties that were instigated through the signing of the Abraham Accords.
In short even with the Biden administration neglecting the Accords to focus on the renewal of great power conflict between the US and China, it’s clear the Abraham Accords have brought two Middle Eastern states closer together, which is increasing trade, improving economic prosperity, and working towards greater security and stability in the Middle East. The Accords are therefore a triumph of diplomacy and trade.