Cars, Boats, and Votes: Busy VPs around the world
The Veeply Roundup
Vice President J.D. Vance used one of the Veep’s very, very few formal authorities to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the administration’s budget bill. But that’s NOT the biggest VP story we’ve got. Heck, it isn’t even the biggest J.D. Vance story!
Welcome to the Veeply Round-up. I’d been combining the Veeply Round-up with Throwback Thursdays, but it was getting long. There’s just a lot of Veepology out there. So, I’m going to try to the Veeply Round-up out on Wednesdays, and also try to write separate essays for Monday, and maybe other days as well.
Our Veep stories of today are:
1. The New York Times has a lengthy article on the Vice President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who owns soccer juggernaut Man City and also finances some of the Emirati wet work.
2. Chinese operatives tried to cause the vice president of Taiwan’s car to crash when she visited Prague a year ago.
3. Finally, closer to home, J.D Vance is breaking ties, avoiding leaks, and becoming the case study for Profiles in Obsequiousness.
The VP of the UAE: Buying Athletes and Warlords
The United Arab Emirates has a VP, two in fact. One is also prime minister and emir of Dubai. The other, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, was appointed to the role in March 2023 and is the president’s brother (the president is emir of of Abu Dhabi.) The second VP was featured in The New York Times for his high public profile as owner of several soccer clubs, but also for some financial shenanigans and for being the UAE’s key liaison with militias in North and East Africa. (Read the whole article here—I’ll just do the bare bones summary necessary to do some Veepological analysis.)
In 2008 Mansour purchased the world-renowned Manchester City. In his time as owner, the team has spent billions on major player acquisition and when many championships. Mansour has gone on to purchase a dozen other soccer teams in NYC, Melbourne, Mumbai, Yokohama, and beyond. He is building a new soccer stadium in Queens, which, like the Man City Stadium, will be named for the Emirates’ national airline Etihad Airways. It isn’t clear that Mansour particularly likes soccer (he’s been to two games in a decade and a half as an owner.) Personally, he appears to prefer equestrian sports, both as an owner and as a participant.
Sports are only part of Sheikh Mansour’s efforts to build the UAE’s soft power. He is also investing in media, although the British government blocked him from buying the Daily Telegraph. All the oil-rich Gulf states have been investing in projects to burnish their global reputations. These investments can help diversify their economies which are heavily dependent on oil and gas. These projects also increase their influence on the global scene, while the reputational gains can help shield their less savory activities. UAE was burned in 2006 when the UAE sought to purchase a company that managed seaports in the U.S. and was thwarted in a politically charged decision driven by (unwarranted) fears of terrorism.
With his global wheeling and dealing has come a fair amount of scandal. Man City is being investigated for cooking its books to make the huge acquisitions in soccer talent. In the U.K., to maintain a level of fairness, soccer teams are permitted to spend the money they earn on player acquisitions. It looks like al-Nahyan was pumping money into the team from other sources to build a super-team and that just isn’t cricket! Sheikh Mansour was also named by U.S. prosecutors as a co-conspirator in the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB scandal (he has never been charged.)
At the same time, Sheikh Mansour has been the key Emirati liaison with General Hiftar who leads a militia in Libya and Lt. General Hamdan, head of the notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF), one of the main parties in Sudan’s brutal civil war. Sheikh Mansour has orchestrated huge amounts of military assistance to the former. He has also arranged extensive aid, some humanitarian, but also large quantities of weapons, to Hamdan. It is possible some of this aid has been funneled through the Sheikh’s humanitarian foundations. Russian Wagner Group mercenaries have been engaged in both conflicts and apparently been paid by the UAE. Just as the UAE has a rationale for its soft power investments, there is a rationale for these less savory activities. The Gulf states have begun to take a broad view towards regional security which includes Eastern Africa. Conflict in areas of Africa near the Persian Gulf can threaten the waterways critical for Gulf state commerce. The rapid proliferation of drones and missiles means that militias can now threaten nation-states that are not adjacent to their zone of conflict.
Sheikh Mansour al-Nahyan is an interesting figure, but how does his status as vice president fit with these other activities?
Veepology starts with an analysis of the formal roles of the vice president, which are outlined in section Four of the UAE Constitution. Abu Dhabi, which has most of the territory and oil is the most powerful of these emirates. Its ruling family, the al-Nahyans, are believed to be the second wealthiest family in the world (after the Waltons). Dubai, home to the eponymous city, is the second most powerful. The UAE is governed by a Supreme Council of the emirs, with the presidency going to the emir of Abu Dhabi while the emir of Dubai is prime minister. It takes the votes of five of the seven members of the Federation council to pass a motion, and the five must include Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The Constitution calls for the selection of a vice president to preside over the council in the president’s absence. They don’t succeed the president in the case of the president’s death, they preside over the meeting to select the new president. There can be a second vice president, who will share the duties of the vice president with the first VP, as decreed by the President.
The prime minister, who is also a vice president, oversees the Federal Council of Ministers, which oversees policy implementation. That’s the emir of Dubai, but here’s something fun. In addition to being the second vice president, Sheikh Mansour is also the deputy prime minister!
What’s interesting to me is that the vice president is orchestrating both the UAE’s soft power campaign and its relationships with these shifty and sanctioned militias. Commingling these two very different initiatives seems odd and risky. Sheikh Mansour also avoids publicity, which also doesn’t seem ideal for the prime mover in a soft power campaign. On the other hand, as the vice president of an important U.S. ally, he may offer some protection from scrutiny. If we weren’t involved, some of these organizations might end up sanctions. Further, this vast and complex network of organizations may better obscure questionable transactions.
Those would be the realist explanations, having the VP oversee this complex portfolio is the optimal way for the UAE to conduct its foreign policy. But there are other possible explanations.
In the UAE (and much of the Middle East, and elsewhere too) politics is a family affair. Key relatives have interlocking interests covering a range of issues. Sheikh Mansour’s diverse holdings may reflect family dynamics—ensuring each family member gets their due. His role as Deputy Prime Minister helps ensure that his brother, the Emir of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE has an ally who controls the levers of domestic policy.
In the UAE, and many other places (such as the Philippines), there are formal governance structures that map to those of other countries and facilitate international engagement. But under the hood are the older traditional power structures and processes.
Targeting the Veep—of Taiwan
Taiwan, OTOH, has what looks like a presidential system. Yes, there is a premier who oversees the government, but they are appointed by the president without requiring confirmation by the legislature. The vice president has no defined duties, besides replacing the president in the case of death or disability. They do have an office in the presidential complex, which as any student of Veepology will tell you is a good sign for exercising influence.
A capable VP can be a great asset to an administration as an advisor and surrogate. The current Taiwanese VP, Hsiao Bi-khim, appears very capable. Her father is from Taiwan and her mother is an American, so she was raised and educated in the United States. She began working in the DC office of one of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and rose quickly. She became the interpreter for the president and then ran for office. She served four terms in the legislature She turned to diplomacy and was Taiwan’s Representative to the United States from 2020-2023.
She is a capable politician, diplomat, and although she had to renounce her American citizenship her Americanness is undoubtedly an asset in Taiwan’s dealings with its most important ally.
That’s all well and good, but we’re interested in VP Hsiao because Czech intelligence reports that during her visit to Prague last year, the Chinese embassy was plotting to cause her car to crash. It doesn’t appear that the planning got very far, although a Chinese diplomat tailing her ran a red light in Prague.
We’ve analyzed assassination attempts on U.S. VPs. We found that attempts on the VP’s life are political acts carried out with planning and intention. Many of the attempts on the presidents have, by contrast, been carried out by clearly disturbed individuals.
It’s not clear that Chinese intelligence planned to kill VP Hsiao or just to intimidate and embarrass her. The fact that their plan was just a plan, means (by the definition I used) that it wouldn’t really be counted as an assassination attempt regardless.
I won’t rehash the entire China-Taiwan conflict, except to say that China has adopted “wolf warrior” diplomacy. This is an aggressive effort that includes strong language, intimidation, and low-level violence to pursue its goals. One of those goals is to discredit Taiwan at every turn. Beijing is never pleased when either another nation formally welcomes a Taiwanese official or another nation’s official travels to Taiwan. VP Hsiao, an experienced diplomat and cat lover, she has promised to counter China with “cat warrior” diplomacy.
Given China’s behavior and her own high-profile as a global ambassador on behalf of Taiwan, hopefully Vice President Hsiao has nine lives (or at this point, eight left).
Automative harassment is apparently not new for Chinese operatives. Rebiya Kadeer, a Uyghur business woman and human rights activist was involved in a mysterious traffic incident in 2006. Kadeer had been active for Uyghur rights in Xinjiang and was arrested by Chinese authorities in August of 1999 and sentenced to eight years in prison. Under international pressure Kadeer was released in 2005 but pressured to maintain a low profile. She travelled to the United States, where her husband had previously resettled. Her arrival at Dulles International Airport, near DC became a media event. In DC, Kadeer resumed her advocacy on behalf of the Uyghurs.
On January 6, 2006 Kadeer was driving home in Washington, DC, when a utility truck struck her car, twice. She was injured and hospitalized but recovered. There were questions about the incident, but no definitive proof.
Quick Hits on VP Vance
Ostensibly the big news about J.D. Vance is that he was the tie-breaking vote to push the budget bill through the Senate. I’ve written before that the formal powers of the U.S. vice president are inconsequential and that when they are repeatedly invoked it is an indicator that we are in a bad place.
More interesting is that Vance’s past economic preferences are not in line with those of the administration’s budget. The budget is standard fare for the GOP of recent decades: tax cuts, spending cuts to government services and the social safety net, fun giveaways to special interests. Vance had criticized this approach in the past, but where you sit is where you stand. If you are Vice President, nothing you say publicly (or that potentially become public) should contradict the president. Vance’s posted:
Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.
This highlights Vance’s conversion to Trumpism in which every societal ill is due to illegal immigration and everything will be fixed when every undocumented person is deported (and maybe others as well.)
Speaking of obsequious, check out Vance’s praise of Trump in his remarks at the Oval Office signing of a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. If this administration is truly successful in bringing peace to this interminable and terrible conflict that is an unmitigated good. There are reasons to doubt that this agreement will truly end the conflict, including the administration’s own lack of follow-through.
Finally, there is the interesting case of where Vance does not appear. Politico’s Nahal Toosi published some real inside baseball about the Trump National Security Council. J.D. Vance was not mentioned. Does this mean he’s out of the loop? Unlikely since Andy Baker, who had been Vance’s National Security Advisor, is now the Deputy National Security Advisor on the National Security Council. But Vance is taking a page from vice presidents past and not appearing prominently as an advocate of any position (because he’ll look bad if the president decides against him.) Of Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson’s vice president and a world class courtier, it was written, “he rowed to his object with muffled oars.”