The strange world of the Euro-Gulf 

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Waiting for the tube, I see a poster for an upmarket gym chain. Locations? “City of London. High Street Kensington. Dubai.” What a shame to choose a setting so marred by bad taste and clueless outsiders. Still, the City and Dubai branches must be top-notch.

Soon, I am in Doha, and again the Euro-Gulf connection is inevitable. Qatar’s emir has returned from a state visit to Britain, where the hosts were eager for a trade deal. Swiss-headquartered FIFA has just awarded Saudi Arabia the right to host the World Cup. Even in skyscraper-free Muscat, where lanes that could be rationalized elsewhere on the bay twist freely behind the Corniche, my hotel’s three restaurants are outposts of the Mayfair brand.

What a shame the word “Eurabia” is. And by such cranks. (This is a far-right term for a supposed plot to Islamize Europe.) Because we need a word for this relationship. The Arabian Peninsula has what Europe lacks: space, natural resources and budget surpluses to invest in the resulting goods. For its part, Europe has “soft” resources that the Gulf states must acquire, host or emulate to create a post-oil role in the world. It is not the deepest external connection in the bay. 38 percent of the UAE and a quarter of Qatar are non-Indian. But it can be the most symbiotic, if I understand this term correctly.

True, the United States has a defense presence in all six Gulf Cooperation Council states. This includes the Saudi footprint that Osama bin Laden didn’t have much stock in. But daily communication? America is a 15-hour flight away. Its soft assets are either harder to buy or less attractive. Its citizens have little financial incentive to live in tax havens, as Uncle Sam charges them at least some of the difference.

Europe’s exposure to the Gulf will not take as long to age as badly as its previous breach with Russia

In the 1970s, as OPEC profits flowed through London, Anthony Burgess wrote of a dystopia in which grand hotels became “al-Claryges” and “al-Dorchesters”. What a mental jolt it was for even the most European of the world to see – we shouldn’t pussyfoot around it – non-white people with more money than them. However, they may be degraded due to lack of habitat in the Gulf region. Half a century later, their grandchildren would call that Kapim. In fact, their grandchildren may literally live there for the economic opportunity. (Al-Dorado?) As a banker friend explained, the time zone allows you to sleep late, trade the European markets, then eat late, so young people do gulf work, not burnout people my age.

For how long, though? It’s the sheer improbability of this endeavor, between a universal rights culture and monarchical absolutism, on a largely secular continent and a peninsula home to an ancient faith, that sets it apart from anything I can think of. A relationship can be both necessary and unnecessary. It wouldn’t take much — some intra-GCC violence, say, that seemed imminent in 2017 — for Europe’s exposure to the Gulf to be as bad as its previous exposure to Russia. If Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City is found to have committed financial fraud, a piece of Premier League history will be tarnished. Since it’s “just” the game, I feel people are less prepared for the reaction.

And it is assumed that the relationship can only be broken at one end. It’s the Gulf side that has to make awkward cultural adjustments. Because Europeans associate 1979 with Iran and perhaps with Margaret Thatcher, they sometimes pass over the seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque by extremists who thought the House of Saud had softened toward Western practices. Governments in the region certainly don’t forget.

How far a place can liberalize without tripping a cultural wire is taken up by each state or emirate (and answered differently). Everyone is having a great time with “Mr. Janan” at his Doha hotel. But the metal scanners that one must pass at each re-entry into the building stand as a reminder of the stakes here. I wonder if Europe and the Gulf throw so much into their contact that it can last.

Email Janan janan.ganesh@ft.com

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