Division multiplication: the UAE’s foreign meddling

0:02The Economist

0:10Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

0:24Japan is undergoing a rice crisis. Prices have shot up and officials have had to tap into the National Strategic Rice Reserve. One of the problems is simply about labor. It's a hard job with bad pay, and farmers are taking to the streets to shout about it. And a little exploration of I, and you, and we, and he, she, it, and they. Pronouns have taken on an outsized role in the culture wars. A new book and our correspondent take a more dispassionate linguistic look at them.

1:02But first...

1:09The United Arab Emirates has for years framed itself as a global power broker and all-around good guy, a calm intermediary in an increasingly tempestuous world. 115 Ukrainian prisoners swapped for an equal number of Russians. Behind the scenes, Ukrainian officials work with Russian authorities, along with negotiators from the UAE, to finalize the prisoner swap. The UAE plays host to tricky talks, most recently between representatives of Russia and Ukraine, trying to put a stop to that war. And just this week, it was all smiles between Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission boss, and the Emirates president, Mohammed bin Zayed, who have started work on a trade deal.

1:52Yet there's another side to how the UAE uses its regional power and influence, one that's decidedly less chummy. As it preaches unity at home, it pursues division abroad. The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, is at the center of the modern Arab world. Greg Karlstrom is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist. Both countries see themselves as independent middle powers, forging their way in an increasingly multipolar world. But they've taken very different approaches to the Middle East. While Saudi Arabia seeks stability in the region right now, the UAE increasingly looks like a force behind instability.

2:36Why did you say that? The UAE has backed an array of militia groups who either want to take over states by force or to divide states. I think the most recent and the most harrowing example of that is the UAE's support for a group known as the Rapid Support Forces, the RSF, in Sudan. They've been fighting a two-year war against the Sudanese army. It's been an incredibly destructive civil war for the entire country, but particularly in Western Sudan and places like Darfur, where the RSF has been accused of mass killings against the Masalit, the non-Arab African ethnic group in Western Sudan. And that is why the UAE found itself last week hauled in front of the International Court of Justice, accused by Sudan of complicity in genocide.

3:26The accusation from Sudan that the UAE has provided weapons, money and other support to the RSF to enable these mass killings in Western Sudan. The UAE insists that the whole case is baseless. They've called it a PR stunt. They reject the charges. But according to Sudan and according to much of the world, the UAE has done a lot to fuel this destructive civil war. And you hinted earlier that the UAE has a hand in lots of other destruction. It does. If you go across the region, in Libya, the UAE over the past seven or eight years has provided support to Khalifa Haftar, who was a warlord based in eastern Libya, who tried to overthrow the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

4:11In Yemen, the UAE, which has been one party to the civil war there over the past decade, has supported a group called the Southern Transitional Council. That's a secessionist group that dreams of breaking away from Yemen and restoring an independent South Yemen as a sovereign state. And then in Somalia as well, the UAE has forged close ties with leaders in Puntland and Somaliland, which are two breakaway republics in Somalia. So again, backing these groups that very often have secessionist names, want to break away from larger states. In doing so, it's often at odds with America, its longtime security guarantor in the region.

4:50But not just America. With the case of the RSF in Sudan, supporting the RSF has put the UAE on the opposite side of America, China, and lately Russia as well, and getting all three of them on the same side, no small feat in 2025. And you drew a distinction between Saudi Arabia's evident push for unity and stability. Why is the UAE's strategy one of division and discord? It really depends on who you ask. When you speak to Emirati officials about this, they often insist that that isn't their strategy at all, that they're not doing these things. So they have been insistent for the past couple of years that they are not providing military support to the RSF.

5:29that's an incredibly hollow claim. There are satellite images demonstrating that they have done so. There are UN investigators who have found weapons used by the RSF in Sudan that plausibly could only have come from the UAE. There's an overwhelming body of evidence that they have supported the RSF, but they insist it's not happening at all. So asking them directly tends to be not very productive. When you speak to diplomats in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, many of them speculate about economic motives. They wonder if perhaps the UAE wants preferential access to Sudan's gold reserves, and that's why they're supporting the RSF.

6:07Or perhaps they have their eye on arable land in Sudan, ports in Sudan, to further their food security initiative. Some of those explanations to me, I think, are unconvincing. On the question of gold, for example, most of Sudan's gold is already exported to the UAE, which is a major hub for the gold trade, legal and otherwise. So they're already benefiting from Sudan's gold experts, and they're also a half trillion dollar economy. So the idea that slightly better terms for gold from Sudan is going to have a material impact on their economy and is going to drive their foreign policy. Again, I find that a bit unconvincing.

6:46So if it's not land and treasure, what is it? I think it's ideology more than anything else. The ruling family in Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the UAE, and then the brothers who make up really the core of the government in Abu Dhabi, they are all deeply hostile to Islamism, to political Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. In Libya, Yemen, Sudan, they have aligned themselves with groups that are fighting against Islamists. There is a real Islamist trend in the Sudanese army, so the UAE took the opposite side there. They're also trying to curb the regional role of Qatar and Turkey, both of which are sympathetic to political Islam and have worked very hard to sponsor Islamist groups across the region in recent years.

7:32So that's one ideological piece. And then I think the other is there is growing competition between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Emiratis don't want to see themselves as the junior partner in that relationship. They don't want to see themselves as living in Saudi Arabia's shadow. And so they are looking to carve out their own sphere of influence in the region. And that, in some cases, has led them to back groups that are not only opposed to political Islam, but are also not aligned with the Saudis. So official strategy or no, is what the UAE doing working? The short answer is no. I think it's been unsuccessful for three reasons.

8:11First is obviously the human cost fueling this war in Sudan has had absolutely horrific consequences for people there. The second issue is that none of these groups backed by the UAE have been terribly successful. In Libya, Khalifa Haftar failed to take Tripoli. In Sudan, the RSF fled from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, last month. They haven't been militarily successful on the ground, in part because Turkey has been sending military drones to their opponents. So Turkey has actually deepened its influence in the region because of fighting the UAE, which is the opposite of what the UAE wants. And then the third issue is reputational.

8:49I was in Washington last month, and I was struck by, in separate meetings with three congressional advisors, they all unprompted brought up the idea of imposing sanctions on the UAE because of what it was doing in Sudan. I'm not sure that's going anywhere for now. It might just be talk at the moment, but it's still striking to hear in a capital where the UAE has always had a very good reputation. So if a policy of division isn't working, is it too simplistic to suggest that a policy aiming at unity would work better? You know, a couple of years ago, I was having coffee with a Singaporean diplomat in the Gulf, and he said, when we meet with officials in the UAE, they often say, we aspire to be the Singapore of the Middle East.

9:31And he said, in many ways, they are the Singapore of the Middle East. But there's one critical difference, which is that Singapore is not usually in the habit of sponsoring proxy wars in neighboring countries. I think the UAE has a lot to offer the region. It's the most diversified, the most successful Arab economy. It is a stable and prosperous home for millions of people from around the world. It has tremendous soft power in the Middle East. And this focus on trying to be a hard power hegemon, trying to sponsor for ideological reasons, these military groups, not only is it unsuccessful, but it gets away from what is really the UAE's core strength in the Middle East.

10:11Greg, thanks very much for your time. Thank you, Jason.

10:34Recently, a big farmer's protest in central Tokyo became big news in Japan. Moeka Iida writes about Japan for The Economist. Thousands of farmers from across the country marched down the streets. Some of them were driving tractors. And this really stood out in a district that's better known for stylish cafes and fancy shopping malls. And especially in Japan, these kinds of large-scale protests are very rare. and such a big farmers' demo is almost unheard of.

11:08Many of the protesters were rice farmers and they were holding signs with messages such as Farmers are a national treasure or No Rice, No Life. I spoke to Kanno Yoshihide, a rice farmer who organized the protest.

11:29He mentioned, if the current situation continues, farmers will disappear from Japan. The organizers dubbed the protest Reiwa no Hyakushou Ikki, or a modern-day peasant uprising. So why is this uprising happening? What is it the protesters want? So the farmers were protesting against very harsh working conditions. So many farmers are aging and they're also seriously underpaid. So basically, these farmers were asking for better compensation, for instance, direct cash handouts from the government. And the industry is facing far more challenges than that, including climate change and heat waves that have become increasingly common.

12:11So rice production has become increasingly unpredictable and harder to sustain. But this particular farmers' protest felt especially timely in Japan, given how it came amidst what people call a rice crisis here. This rice crisis has affected a lot of consumers. So I think this is almost like the equivalent of the egg crisis in America, where rising egg prices have become a symbol of the cost of living crisis. So in Japan, rice, which is the most important staple, has faced shortages and price hikes. The shortages were especially severe last year. So people hoping to buy rice at supermarkets instead found themselves facing empty shelves.

12:51And the original cause of the shortages was the heat waves in the summer of 2023, which damaged crops. So this is quite a while back now, but because rice is harvested once a year and then stocked and then distributed over a long period of time, the poor harvest of 2023 is still affecting the market now. So if the worst of it was last year, what are things like right now? So the situation has improved. So in terms of availability, rice is widely available now. If you walk into supermarkets, you wouldn't face a situation where you can't even find a bag of rice. But prices still remain very high.

13:30In March this year, the cost of rice in Tokyo was 90 % higher from a year earlier. And this is the steepest rise in half a century. and the price hikes are driven by a simple logic of growing demand and lack of supply and in terms of the growing demand there's various factors contributing to this so some economists point to the surge of tourists so we have restaurants stocking up bags of rice and then also last year there were concerns about a possible mega earthquake hitting the country and then consumers started to panic after news about rice being sold out. So many households began rushing to the shops and hoarding.

14:12And in order to alleviate the situation, the government recently started releasing 210 ,000 tons of its emergency rice reserves in an attempt to lower the prices. You might think if the cost of rice has gone up, like wouldn't the farmers be benefiting from it? But actually, the farmers are not benefiting from the current price hikes because many of them have sold their rice to agricultural cooperatives at predetermined prices a long time ago. The rice futures market. I mean, what you're describing is a lot of factors that are kind of outside both the farmers and the government's control, though.

14:49Heat waves and possible earthquakes and humans hoarding behavior and so on. How much influence does the government actually have on what's going on here? The government does have quite a lot of influence. So Japan's rice market is this kind of unique mix of free market forces and also top down state control. So the government has a lot of influence, especially when it comes to price stabilization. So since the 1970s, the Japanese government has quietly been restricting rice production under a policy that's known as Gintan Seisaku in Japanese. And this was introduced at a time when people's diets became increasingly westernized and rice consumption was starting to decline.

15:33The idea behind this policy was to prevent oversupply of rice in order to stabilize prices in the market. So basically, farmers were paid to plant less rice. And this policy was officially scrapped in 2018. But in practice, it still shapes the market. So there still are subsidies that are paid to farmers that steer them away from growing table rice and steers them towards things like soybeans and animal feed. And the result of this policy is basically a system in which the supply and demand is finely balanced and there's very limited buffer in the market or very limited flexibility. So if there is a small hiccup like the heat waves in 2023, that could cause serious disruption.

16:20So how much of this could be solved then by giving the protesters what they want, do you think? So I spoke to a lot of experts about this and people are split in terms of the solution. Some people support the idea of supporting smaller farmers through cash handouts. And on the other hand, some people point to the need for consolidating these small farms and having bigger companies take over to boost production. I think there needs to be a better discussion about agriculture and food security in Japan. and I think the ongoing rice crisis has been a good starting point. Moika, thank you very much for joining us.

16:56Thank you so much for having me, Jason.

17:08Kamala is for they, them. President Trump is for you. I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. This simple ad about pronouns was actually one of the most effective attack ads in the 2024 presidential campaign. Who him? Senior culture correspondent John Fasman and me used to host this show together. Less than two weeks after taking office in January, President Trump ordered federal employees to remove preferred pronouns from their signature. And videos of lawmakers addressing their colleagues with the wrong pronouns have sadly gone viral. I now recognize the representative from Delaware, Mr.

17:44McBride. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ranking member Keating, also wonderful. Mr. Chairman. Think of pronouns a bit like street signs used to direct traffic. They've developed over time to suit a particular purpose, and they're so ubiquitous and unremarkable that nobody really notices them except when they change abruptly. Nouns and verbs, of course, change as the world changes. Verbs that are commonplace now, like email and vape. You didn't need those when you needed a stamp to send a letter, or you could only inhale nicotine through cigarettes. But as the world changes, nouns and verbs change, pronouns take a much longer time to change.

18:28John McWhorter has written a new book about English language pronouns. McWhorter is a columnist with the New York Times, but more importantly, he's a linguist at Columbia University. He's also a bit of a culture warrior. So when I heard his book was called Pronoun Trouble, I expected some culture war bomb throwing. But actually, it's a very fun, quick, short, erudite tour through English language pronouns. It's broken up into five little chapters, one each for I, we, you, he, she, it, and they. And I know it sounds a bit dry and dull, but trust me, it's great fun. He's a terrific tour guide.

19:07English, as it turns out, is a pretty pronoun-starved language. Other languages have different words for, for instance, me and you, me and them, me and those three people. English just has we. English also has no formal second-person plural. There are words like y 'all and yous, and my personal favorite, the Western Pennsylvania version, yins. But these are all unwritten and informal. In formal written English, we just have you for first and second person. Now, you was once plural, and thou was singular, but thou has since fallen off, and we just have you to carry that very heavy load. One thing that makes McWhorter a lot of fun is that this book could be, in the hands of a different linguist, very, very fuddy-duddy.

19:50It could have a lot of finger-wagging and scolding. McWhorter is very self-consciously a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist. What that means is he is interested in how people use language, not how he thinks people should use language. In practice, that means he takes tremendous pleasure in slaying sacred cows. He calls the rule that you have to say you and I instead of you and me one of the fakest rules in the English language because pronouns don't split into subjects and objects quite that neatly. If you think about someone asking you, who left the door open? You would say it was me, not it was I, even though me is supposed to be a subject pronoun.

20:29Now, this isn't to say that pronouns never evolve. Obviously, they do. Nobody uses thou anymore. But there's a difference between evolution and imposition. English has no gender-neutral pronoun, so people have tried to invent one. They've invented z and hesh and c with an xe. but none of these have really stuck. Which isn't to say that introducing them is impossible. As a matter of fact, Swedish introduced a gender-neutral pronoun some decades ago and it has recently caught on. But this is really, really rare and difficult. There's one point at which McWhorter does turn prescriptivist. He believes, and he's right, that English has no gender-neutral pronoun and could use one.

21:09He comes out as a staunch advocate for the singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun and the rationale is pretty simple. People have been using the singular they for centuries. Chaucer used it, Bronte used it, Jane Austen used it. It's not that remarkable. And so it's a very easy jump to move from a casual singular they to make it a more formal part of the language. The context may be new, but the usage of a singular they is quite ancient.

21:36I thought the book was great fun. Even if it is not directly on topic in the culture war, it's sort of around the edges of it. The overall effect is like sitting next to a very charming, well-informed dinner party guest who leads you on a tour through the English language. You'll end up thinking about things in ways that you didn't think about them before.

22:11That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.