UAE is doing so well for (mainly) 2 reasons:
1) The Shakhbut coup in Abu Dhabi
2) Abu Dhabi and Dubai buried the hatchet to form UAE(there was a lot of bad blood between the 2 states, but because Rashid bin Saeed and Zayed bin Sultan were way above average as far as authoritarians go they managed to avoid stupid conflicts and focused on cashing in on the oil).
Fair enough. And as you describe, it's more a diarchy of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Nevertheless, structurally different from the absolute monarchies around them.
Furthermore, Saudi has started requiring companies that are operating in Saudi to operate a Saudi office, and won't give tenders to those who are managing the relationship remotely from Dubai now, so companies have started moving staff to Riyadh.
> Nevertheless, structurally different from the absolute monarchies around them
MbS is trying to remake KSA into an Abu Dhabi 2.0, as MbZ was his mentor
[0] - https://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/12/14/dubai.10.billion.bai...
who does "we" refer to? The Dutch? France?
Sorry, clarified as America. Not aware of any Dutch nation building after WWII. (I'd argue the British also did better than the French.)
The British strategy was far more pragmatic, they kept the local powers in place and played each of them against each other to maintain control over the colonies.
Of course, I'm generalizing but there's a clear difference of ideology that I do think explain the differences between the French and British when it came to managing their colonial empire.
I'm not sure if this is satire or not... Religious moderation should be the default, not something to 'experiment' with.
It's also governed differently from the others in being an oligarchy. That requirement for consensus-building and internal variation creates robustness; it gave Dubai the room to experiment, for example, with religious moderation.
It's not a view I hold too seriously. But I remember visiting the Emirates and Saudi Arabia--shortly after the Phillipines and India--and thinking to myself that the British were, in their time, far better at nation building than we've been in the post-War era.