Prospects for Trilateral Tech Cooperation Among South Korea, the UAE and Israel

Concerned about the vacuum created by the US policy of potentially reducing its role in the Middle East and worried about the hardliner’s policy in Iran, Arab countries and Israel are increasing their cooperation. In particular, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is working to expand economic, political and security cooperation after normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel. The spillover effects emanating from this Arab–Israeli cooperation are issues that South Korea must take note of to ensure that its companies continue to benefit from business in the Middle East. This chapter aims to identify practical areas of cooperation that can benefit these three middle powers. It highlights South Korea’s free trade agreement (FTA) with Israel to promote economic cooperation, and how the UAE, as a ‘Special Strategic Partner’ of South Korea, could facilitate improving political, economic and security relations with Israel. The chapter argues that South Korea must take advantage of good ties with both countries and extend its bilateral cooperation into a trilateral cooperation mechanism, particularly in the technological arena. The rationale for this innovation lies in two factors: one, combining the advantages of three tech middle powers, instead of competing with each other or among them; and two, ‘workarounding’ US-China competition in a milieu where the US is South Korea’s main security guarantor and China is one of its most important economic partners. The chapter explores ways of combining South Korea and Israel’s advanced technological expertise with the UAE’s abundant financial resources and desire to be a technological hub for the Middle East and Africa and ensure that it is a win–win-win arrangement that could also positively assist the developing countries.