Symbiotic Imperialism

14 Sep, 2026

Disclaimer: This article is about metanarratives between nations, not the politics of the general population of those nations, who often get little to no say in their role in geopolitics.

Like many things, this starts with football. I was watching a "fan debate" where someone mentioned reports that the UAE had pressured the UK to drop allegations of financial doping involving the Sheik Mansour owned club Manchester City. The response was the classic "we don't know" spiel often given by fans who really don't want to think about the last two decades of their clubs success being built on corruption.¹

The thing is, we do know. we have leaked emails from Der Spiegel that make it really clear. But more than anything there was a point that could never really be brought up on a fan debate.

David Lammy Let The UAE Kill 60,000 Sudanese People

The idea that City would be punished is implicitly the idea that the UK government is more likely to jeopardise its relationship with the UAE over bookkeeping in sports than over acts of genocide. The question remains: Why are we so terrified of a country so dependent on us?

Britain maintained its connections to the UAE after its withdrawal from the then Trucial States. Since then, it has become a necessary arms export, the UAE received a combined £128 million in Q4 of 2024 alone. They are also an important military ally, the former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis affectionately described the UAE armed forces as "little sparta" because of their active military role in comparison to their relative size.

All this means that the UAE need arms from the UK/US and the UK/US need to give it to them. The relationship is symbiotic. neither party can ever leave, because to leave is to cripple yourself of an arms buyer and ally, or to cut yourself off from the only powers propping up your regime with more weapons. The UK may have created this situation, but it has made itself so dependent on the affair, that it can never abandon it.

Geopolitics is forcing dependency, Russia tried its hardest to centralise natural gas production, and it meant that there was a massive economic hit after the sanctions. Israel has been investing in tech security and now contains a quarter of global cyber security investment, whilst the war in Iran has highlighted the importance of control over The Strait of Hormuz and its links to oil.

This builds a cycle, where the global powers (Russia,China,US etc) who empowered the likes of Iran, Israel and the UAE must watch as they fund terrorism and genocide. The "Western Powers" do not have the same options of suppression, and more democratic means of control, so nice dinners are had, lucrative second jobs are offered and lobbying firms are established by supporters to get politicians on side. They control the symbiote as much as the symbiote controls them.

You'll notice that the lives of actual human beings are never discussed in these conversations. Indeed they are not discussed by politicians either. A security official advising you to not rock the boat because Israel has spent on your Cyber Security systems cannot think of the starving child in Gaza. To do so is to acknowledge their own inhumanity. The staggering self interest, and disgusting apathy that could even put you in a situation where the slaughter of 60,000 Sudanese people is an acceptable cost.

This cycle is why Biden's administration did very little in the face of the Gaza genocide outside of stern words behind closed doors. Israel spends a lot of its (substantially US funded defence budget) with weapons companies, who fund AIPAC and then lobby politicians. There is an impact to this, as the leaks we have received have shown, and it's probably why said genocide didn't hit "full speed" until the Trump administration moved in, but I think its pretty clear that the wheels were in motion, and without being able to commit to sanctions or even true public condemnation, the most you could ever apply was a light brake. (This is still preferable to Trump stomping on the accelerator).

This is what happens when political allyship is more important than human lives.