There is a particular kind of institutional exit that is not really about the institution at all. The resignation letter is the last formality in a departure decided months, maybe years, earlier in a room nobody was watching, after a conversation that never made the official record. The UAE walking out of OPEC on Tuesday was that kind of exit. The announcement was sudden. The decision was not.
The pattern runs through almost every consequential decision Abu Dhabi has made over the past decade. From foreign policy to military strategy to energy planning, the UAE has built its entire national identity around a single operating principle: strategic autonomy. “Strategic autonomy remains the UAE’s enduring choice,” Dr Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to President Sheikh Mohamed, has said, in a line that reads less like a statement of preference and more like a declaration of doctrine.
OPEC was the last major institutional framework that constrained that doctrine. As of May 1, it no longer does.
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