Dr. David Wearing lectures in international relations at the University of Sussex and specialises in British foreign policy. His work examines Britain’s role in the Middle East, the enduring influence of empire and the economic interests underpinning its relationships with Gulf monarchies. He is the author of AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain, which explores how Gulf wealth, arms exports, energy interests and investment shape these relationships. His analysis connects foreign policy decisions to the wider political and economic structures that sustain British power, with particular attention to military intervention and Western support for regional partners. In this interview with GULAN Weekly Magazine, Wearing discusses continuity in Britain’s Gulf policy, the gap between its stated principles and its actions, the lessons of Yemen and Iraq, and the caution he believes should guide relations with London in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.

GULAN: Much of your work, including AngloArabia, has examined how Britain’s relationship with the Gulf is driven not only by security considerations but also by deeper economic ties involving arms exports, investment and Gulf capital in the British economy. Under the current Labour government, do you see any meaningful change in this relationship, or does the basic structure of British policy toward Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the wider Gulf remain largely intact?

Dr. David Wearing: There can always be some shifts in policy between a Labour government and a Conservative government, between one prime minister and another of the same party, and even within the term of a single prime minister. These will reflect shifts in the political, economic and strategic conditions in which governments operate. But the underlying structures of the UK-Gulf relationship are the product of long material and historical processes dating back to the days of empire, and these tend to endure.

British energy firms enjoy access to the Gulf energy industry, British exporters enjoy access to Gulf markets, Gulf petrodollars are invested in the UK financial industry and increasingly in more visible ways in the UK, and those petrodollars continue to play a major role in sustaining the British military-industrial complex, by virtue of being a reliable customer for major British arms exports. In fact, and for this reason, arms exports to the Gulf are only likely to increase in the new era of Western re-militarisation.

GULAN: You have argued that Britain’s close partnerships with Gulf monarchies expose a contradiction between its stated commitment to democracy, human rights and a rules-based international order and the governments it supports in practice. At a time when Britain increasingly presents international law as central to its foreign policy, how damaging is this inconsistency to the UK’s credibility in the Middle East?

Dr. David Wearing: I can’t speak for people in the Middle East, but one can observe that the hypocrisy of imperial, colonial and neo-imperial powers has always been well understood by large numbers of people outside the West. If that view were reflected by properly representative governments in the Middle East, it would have a real constraining effect on Western power there. Hence the frequent support for monarchs and dictators.

But what is new is the extent to which the legitimating narratives of Western power are now losing their effect even among Western publics. After a quarter of a century of, first, the “war on terror”, then the collusion with repressive regimes during the crushing of the “Arab Spring”, then the collusion in the Saudi war on Yemen, and now the collusion in the Gaza genocide, there is a large and growing constituency in the West (albeit maybe not yet a clear majority) who are well educated about the true nature of Western power in the world.

If the Western political class were even a little more representative of that strand of thinking, then, again, the world would look different.

GULAN: Yemen has been one of the clearest examples in your work of the consequences of British arms sales and military cooperation in the region. Looking back at the Saudi-led intervention and Britain’s role in supporting it, what lessons should the UK draw about supplying weapons and military assistance to regional partners, particularly when there is a serious risk of civilian harm?

Dr. David Wearing: One of the clearest lessons of this case is that Westerners need to start seeing the crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen (and the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians, for that matter) as our crimes as much as theirs.

In practical terms, the leading Western states were indispensable accomplices to the Saudi bombing campaign. These were jets supplied by the US and UK, dropping bombs supplied by the US and UK, and sustained by spare parts and maintenance supplied by the US and UK. Those Western states could have pulled the plug on the Saudi-led campaign of collective punishment any time they liked. So the real lesson we need to learn here in the West is about the nature of our own states and their power in the world.

GULAN: Britain played a major role in the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, and you were an early critic of the failure of British policy there. More than two decades later, what do you believe the Iraq experience should have taught Britain about military intervention, state-building and attempts by outside powers to reshape political orders in the Middle East?

Dr. David Wearing: That regime change carried out by self-interested outsiders with their own agenda, and with varying degrees of racist contempt for the people whose countries they are occupying, ruling and changing, will always have significant negative effects on those people.

But who is that a lesson for? For us as observers, analysts, citizens, yes. But for British policymakers? I’m not so sure.

My own view is that the problems of British foreign policy go well beyond the views and choices of individual politicians, and are rooted in deeply embedded political-economic structures and accompanying ideologies. Again, you can trace all this back as far as the formative centuries of empire. To get a better British foreign policy, you need to start challenging and dismantling all of that. A big task.

GULAN: You wrote during the 2014 ISIS crisis about the threat to Erbil and the role of Kurdish Peshmerga forces in confronting ISIS. Today, the Kurdistan Region remains an important partner of the United Kingdom while facing continuing disputes with Baghdad over federalism, revenues, salaries and constitutional authority. From the perspective of British foreign policy, what role should the UK play in supporting a stable relationship between Erbil and Baghdad while respecting the constitutional and political rights of the Kurdistan Region?

Dr. David Wearing: I paid close attention to events in Iraq on a daily basis for around 15 years, but it’s been maybe a decade since my focus shifted to other issues. So I hesitate to comment (as I always do to some degree about other people's countries).

My expertise ultimately is on the nature of British power in the world. I might advise people in Iraq and Kurdistan to keep their relationship with my government transactional and to always be wary of betrayal or worse by those who don’t have your best interests at heart. But those people hardly need to hear that from me or anyone else! They know that better than anyone.