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Begin New Search Topic International Trade and Finance Political Geography Dubai

1. The Battle of Dubai: The United Arab Emirates and the U.S.-Iran Cold War

Author:
Karim Sadjadpour
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
As the United States seeks to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions through economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has come to play a critical yet often ambiguous role. The UAE, namely the emirate of Dubai, is a top source of Iranian imports and a key transshipment point for goods-legal and illegal-destined for the Islamic Republic. Dubai's bustling and loosely regulated ports have repeatedly frustrated international sanctions against Iran.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Dubai

2. The Blueprint: A History of Dubai's Spatial Development Through Oil Discovery

Author:
Stephen J. Ramos
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
To understand Dubai's modern history since its founding in 1833, one must go further back in time to explore the regional history that frames its foundation. European powers, beginning with the Venetians, and, then subsequently, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally the British, were interested in the Gulf region as a means to secure trade routes to and from the Indian Subcontinent and points eastward. This meant that from the fifteenth century through the late nineteenth century, if trade routes could move uninterrupted through the Gulf region, European powers were not involved in the societal affairs of settlements as a traditionally colonial ruling class, nor did European merchants bother to extensively explore trade within the region, believing that it required more effort than either the climate or the local economies were worth. The region's local tribes were divided among the maritime coastal groups and those that were nomadic and land-bound, and conflict among these groups occurred in parallel with the larger European conflicts also playing out in the region. The intersection of the two came with the increase in piracy, which, in very basic terms, represented a kind of cultural disagreement on trade customs. The Europeans felt that they were unjustly looted and local groups simply sought to protect themselves from foreign incursion while taking what they believed was their share. Historians still debate this issue today, but in relation to Dubai, the piracy of the times serves as an example of how looser understandings of the licit and illicit, particularly in terms of trade, could be capitalized upon as business venture. The smuggling of gold, weapons, and other goods throughout Dubai's history may have been seen as illicit from perspectives outside Dubai's ports, but the merchant-friendly environments of these ports and the adherence to local autonomy allowed them to trade freely.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Oil
Political Geography:
Europe, India, Arabia, and Dubai

3. Foreign Investment and National Security: Getting the Balance Right

Author:
David M. Marchick and Alan P. Larson
Publication Date:
07-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Despite the significant benefits that foreign investment brings to the U.S. economy, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 53 percent of Americans believe foreign ownership of U.S. companies is “bad for America,” a sentiment that reached a boiling point with the proposed acquisition of the U.S. port operations of P Steam Navigation Company by Dubai Ports World (DPW). The DPW case brought to the public's attention the little-known executive committee charged with reviewing the security risks of foreign investment—the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—and ignited a flurry of congressional activity to change its mandate and operations under the Exon-Florio Amendment to the Defense Production Act of 1950.
Topic:
Security, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Dubai

4. The World Economy after Dubai

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The outlook for the global economy has become clouded since the September annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Dubai. Going into the meetings, views were broadly optimistic, tied to the familiar, reassuring sense of a recovering U.S. economy, the prospect of rising exports, and a firm dollar. America, an oasis of firmer demand growth in a desert of global excess capacity, was back— again, for the second time since the bubble economy burst in March 2000. Only this time, it was for real, not like the false, post-9/11 recovery that fizzled out in the spring of 2002. Or, so it seemed.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Dubai