To provide for the future national security of its citizens, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) must develop a new grand strategy based on the dual concepts of military jointness and broad intra-governmental and inter-state cooperation among all national, regional, and international components involved in national and regional Gulf security. Developing a new strategy incorporating these concepts is necessary both horizontally within and among the UAE's civilian and military services, and vertically through interoperability and cooperation regionally and internationally. The UAE, as well as all of the other Arab Gulf States, has historically lacked the human resources to repel a determined conventional military attack from a larger, neighboring enemy. First the United Kingdom and then the United States undertook the role of protecting the Arab Gulf states from external attack. However, in recent years the political costs of foreign security assistance to both the Gulf States and its international allies has increased dramatically. It is time for a new approach wherein the UAE leverages national, regional, and international capabilities to deal with the two predominant security threats in the Gulf: a conventional warfare (CW) threat and an asymmetrical warfare (AW) threat. At the national level, UAE conventional armed services are small, but they are reasonably well- trained and armed. The UAE has a small special operations command to combat asymmetric threats, but it still needs to be integrated with other national assets to make it more effective. At the regional level, the GCC created a regional defense force, Peninsula Shield, in 1984. However, it has no operational capability and needs to be strengthened to make it viable. At the international level, the UAE must enhance cooperation with its allies, particularly the United States, to support national and regional collective security capabilities.


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