At one end of the Gulf, an invasion is being planned. At the other, arms salesmen are plying their trade. Deaglán de Bréadún reports from the largest arms fair in the region.
The military strategist Karl Von Clausewitz said that war was politics by other means but he didn't give the full story. War is also business by other means.
Thus it is not really surprising that when immediate and terrible war was being prepared in one part of the Persian Gulf this week, in another they were holding an arms fair.
Shocking to some, distasteful to others, it was all perfectly natural and normal to the participants in the International Defence Exhibition (IDEX) at Abu Dhabi which concludes its five-day run tomorrow.
If you could close your eyes to the items on display and just look at the people, you would think you were at a travel fair or an exhibition of computer equipment. The men were mostly in late middle age, staid husbands and fathers who spoke affectionately of their families back home. The women were generally younger: elegant and well-coiffed, definitely Fifth Avenue rather than no-man's land.
Ithe background, Celine Dion was blaring from the loudspeakers, just like any other middle-of-the-road event anywhere in the world.
Despite the bland equanimity of its participants, the arms fair was a startling illustration of mankind's ever-growing potential for destruction.
Take an example at random. Switzerland has a reputation for neutrality and avoidance of conflict but a Swiss government firm called RUAG was displaying a deadly robot which specialises in tank-busting.
A kindly looking man (they are all kindly looking men) showed me how the robot marches into battle while its human controller remains safe in a trench or behind a wall. It looks like one of those bomb-disposal contraptions seen in Northern Ireland but in fact it carries a deadly armour-piercing guided missile on each of its angular, metallic shoulders.
Computer technology ensures that once it is pointed at its target, no amount of bobbing and weaving will enable the intended victim to escape.
The controller does not even have to watch the final result but can go off and have a smoke while waiting for the explosion. The salesman said the technique was called "Fire and Forget".
Fire and forget: the phrase sums up a great deal of modern warfare. Computers have almost removed the personal element from killing.
In the spacious USA pavilion at the arms fair, you could sit inside a mock-up tank and shoot up the enemy from a screen. Pow! Bam! Gotcha! It could be the latest computer game: smoke, flames, twisted wreckage, yet all curiously clinical and antiseptic at the same time.
At an Indian government stand, two fellows with permanent smiles and jolly as teachers in a kindergarten showed off their new computer-aided simulated firing range. A terrorist is about to cut the throat of a soldier in uniform but, thanks to the computer, you can take perfect aim and "blow him away".
Here's another guerrilla coming straight at you: he hasn't a chance, a computer-guided shot soon leaves him for dead.
A Jordanian colonel is doing very well at this simulated rifle-range, but churlishly refuses to give credit to the computers. He said that when he was a boy he used to throw stones at goats and sheep, that's why his aim was so good. Ironically, one of the companies involved in creating this product is called Zen Technologies.
Some companies pulled out of the exhibition because of what was happening "up the road", but they were said to be few and it was still reportedly the biggest fair of its kind that Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, of which it is part, had ever seen. A newspaper published during the exhibition summed it up on the first day with a picture of a tank in the desert and a headline, "The show must go on."
There are Russians everywhere. Sergei Kharin told me he was originally from Siberia but now ran his company's office in the UAE. Although the huge machine he was selling had wheel-tracks and a revolving gun-turret, he insisted it was an armoured troop-carrier and not a tank.
When I asked him how much it would set me back, he replied: "A million US dollars." Then he paused considerately and reduced the figure to $900,000. Who said there were no bargains any more?
But it wasn't all armoured cars and tanks and guns. The armaments and defence industry is adapting to new developments.
A US-based company offered masks for protection against chemical and biological warfare under the ominous slogan, "Not if, but when: be prepared."
The brochure offered a helpful list of chemical and biological agents that attack your nervous system, your skin, your breathing, and the circulation of your blood, noting that Sarin, used in the infamous attack on the Tokyo subway, can have a "fruity" odour whereas VX, which Saddam Hussein allegedly holds in abundance, has no smell at all.
Mustard gas, strangely enough, has a garlic aroma and the lesser-known phosgene (CG), which can choke you to death, smells like newly mown hay.
Like others in the region, the forebears of the present-day rulers of the UAE dived for pearls to make a living. But then oil was discovered, bringing vast wealth.
The IDEX exhibition is motivated in part by a desire for commercial diversification in this traditional but business-oriented society and in part also by the eagerness of foreign arms firms to dangle their latest toys before wealthy Arab clients.
In addition to members of the Maktoum family, who as well being in government in the UAE are also well-known to the Irish horse-racing fraternity, the opening ceremony at the weekend was attended by Jordan's King Abdullah.
The ceremony consisted of Bedouin troops enacting a traditional dance with rifles and swords followed by horsemen in white robes who rode past the viewing stand, carrying the flags of the 46 participating countries. Like a scene from Lawrence of Arabia, the trappings of the lead horse were edged in gilt.
A display of dune buggies, troop carriers, tanks and trucks followed, each of them obliged to negotiate an obstacle course of sand, hills and a stretch of water. One machine, a sports utility vehicle, gloried in the name the Desert Irish.
In addition to land-based military hardware, this year's fair features 12 warships including an aircraft carrier, perhaps the only one in the region at present with peaceful intent.
The word most often heard at the stands and in the exhibition halls was "excellence". It is, of course, the buzz-word of modern business, the nirvana-like state to which commercial firms aspire nowadays.
There's no shortage of other catch-phrases: one sturdy vehicle was introduced as "a revolution in off-road mobility". Guns were being sold under the slogan, "Dominate the battle-space." You could do this by increasing your "shoot-on-the-move fire-power". At the very least, you should "upgrade your fire-power".
There was a strong line in riot-control equipment and vehicles. A protective mask for the police had been used in the massive Seattle anti-globalisation rally. As we passed an armoured police van, a Portuguese colleague remarked that it would be "good for Northern Ireland".
There were lots of men and a few women in uniform and many of those in civilian clothes also had a military bearing. One of the latter spoke thoughtfully of how his company was providing "training solutions" to problems such as in-the-air terrorism.
We are entering the age of the air-marshal who will police long-distance and maybe even short-run flights in the future. Posing as passengers, they would "blend into the natural plane environment" while remaining ever-vigilant to possible threats, with the cockpit as the key area of concern.
South Africa had a significant presence although a brochure sought to deflect possible criticism by pointing out that it was one of the first countries to ban anti-personnel mines and "the first - and only - country voluntarily to dismantle its nuclear weapons capability".
The South Africans were displaying a massive howitzer, a kind of mobile mansion of death.
Of all the exhibits, the one that caught my imagination most was the "NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) Family Protection Shelter". Emerging from a large suitcase, it expands into a see-through PVC-coated bubble, complete with air-filter, for use in case of gas, chemical or nuclear attacks. Just the thing for the modern age of anxiety, your very own portable Panic Room.