Dubai: Friend or Foe?

The rationale behind blocking a firm owned by the Dubai government (i.e.: the Emir of Dubai) from taking over management of 22 of our ports seems to hinge on concerns that the country has connections to terrorism and that they are somehow our enemy in the “War on Terror”. This may or may not be true (I think the reality is much more complicated than such a black or white answer), but as this article from InterPress Service makes clear, UAE (which Dubai is part of) is the recipient of over $6 billion worth of military equipment sales from the US alone–mostly in the form of fighter jets.

The UAE is clearly an important market for the US’s arms sales, and if that country is really as dangerous as the public and most politicians are now arguing it is, shouldn’t we should stop arming them with billions of dollars of arms?

Update: It appears that the Coast Guard has some serious reservations about the Dubai company taking over control of the ports. This is significantly different than arguing that a UAE government owned firm shouldn’t be allowed to complete the deal because UAE is “bad” or “not our friend”; this points to a specific, serious potential security threat. If true, the deal should absolutely not be allowed to go forward.