BY
It's not just Syria: Russia has been
quietly building power throughout the Middle East – and challenging America’s
superpower status.
In his
masterful account Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence
Freedman defines strategy as “the art of creating power.” This is a useful lens
through which to consider one of this year’s key geopolitical trends: Russia’s
return to the Middle East.
Apart from its
close ties to the Syrian regime, which date back to the 1970s, Moscow has had
no substantial role in the Middle East since 1972, when President Anwar Sadat
kicked Soviet advisors out of Egypt.
Why return now? At a
general level, it’s clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to
challenge the notion of a U.S.-led world order and encourage the return to a
multipolar one, though there are certain self-imposed constraints on his
ambitions. Although he has intervened in Georgia and Ukraine, he doesn’t seem
willing to start a wider war by attacking any Eastern European states that are
already members of NATO. In the Middle East, however, Putin has a theater to
undermine Western influence, and to create power for himself, without the risk
of triggering a war with the West.
As any demagogue
knows, one way to create power out of nothing is to find a division and then
exploit it. In the Middle East, the fundamental division
Russia has exploited is the one between the West’s aversion to Islamists, on
the one hand, and human rights abuses on the other. The conflict between these
aims often produces equivocation in Western foreign policy. It also opens up
political space where Russia can operate by investing in repression and
discounting democracy.
Moscow
unequivocally supports the current authoritarian regimes in Damascus, Cairo,
and Tobruk, which it portrays as bulwarks against the spread of radical Islam.
In Egypt, Putin has consistently backed President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s
actions against the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, in the face of widespread
evidence of repressive tactics by his
military government.
Since 2013, Russia has stepped in to provide arms to the
Egyptian government, exploiting U.S. reluctance to provide military hardware
that could be used for domestic political repression. Although Egypt continues
to depend on much greater levels of financial support from Washington than from
Moscow, this action exemplifies Russia’s strategy for exploiting any seam
between the United States and its regional allies when Washington equivocates
between security and human rights.
We see the same
thing in Libya and Syria, where Russia does not contend with an established
U.S. partner. In Syria, despite human rights atrocities by the Syrian
government that have attracted Western scorn, the West has not been able to
explain how getting rid of Bashar al-Assad’s regime would improve the country’s
security, since that could lead to a rise in Islamist anarchy. Putin has
exploited this gap by unreservedly backing Assad, leaving the West arguing for
a gradual “transition” away from the Syrian president. And that further boosts
the influence of Russia and Iran, the only countries with the leverage to
initiate any such transition.
As for Libya, the
United States is invested in the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord,
based out of Tripoli, which seeks to unify a divided country. The problem is
that the separatist government in Tobruk in eastern Libya, which is supported
by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, has not agreed to this merger.
Sensing an
opportunity to get between the United States and two traditional allies (Egypt
and the UAE), while nominally supporting the official U.N. process, Russia has
funneled arms, likely via Serbia and Belarus,
to the forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who supports the Tobruk government. And
following Haftar’s successful takeover of the oil terminals in Libya’s Sirte
basin over the last two months, and his hard line against Islamist groups in
Benghazi, the West currently appears to have accepted the reality — and, to an
extent, the necessity — of his power and, by extension, Russia’s influence in
Libya.
Much the same
could be said about Putin’s surprise diplomatic volte-face toward Turkey. Again
sensing an opportunity to chip away at the NATO alliance, after the attempted
coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July, Putin invited the Turkish
leader to Moscow. Russian sanctions imposed after the downing of a Russian
fighter jet in Syria last year were lifted, and the West now has to deal with
the tricky situation of a NATO member whose president’s political philosophy has
more in common with Putin’s than the democratic values NATO is supposed to
protect.
Though Putin has
tried to insert himself into several other areas of Middle Eastern politics
this year, we should not exaggerate his influence. Recall for
example that the propaganda value the Russians attached to a Syria bombing raid
from an Iranian base in August irritated Tehran, and the Russians were kicked off the base
three days later. Likewise, Putin’s attempt to carve out
a role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process this year, which appears
primarily designed to challenge the United States as the key broker, is not
likely to result in any breakthrough.
So is Putin a
strategic mastermind or a reckless gambler? The reality is more prosaic. Yes,
Russia has made diplomatic gains this year, notably in eastern Libya and
Turkey, and has propped up Assad, but this has come at serious long-term
economic cost to Russia.
As any demagogue
knows, the only way to maintain power generated out of nothing through division
is to keep stoking the flames of perpetual conflict upon which these divisions
depend. But when you make a perpetual enemy out of the West, you can’t be
surprised when you seem to be perpetually on the receiving end of economic
sanctions and a general wariness by Western firms to invest in your country.
It’s possible that
Putin believed his actions in the Middle East would give him leverage to
bargain sanctions away, despite the fact that Ukrainian and Syrian sanctions
are not formally linked. But it’s more realistic to assume that Putin’s encouragement
of a state of perpetual conflict with the West makes a relaxation of sanctions
unlikely in the near term, especially if Hillary Clinton enters the White
House. If anything, Putin has boxed Russia into a position where it must
increasingly orient its economy toward China, and away from the West, which
gives Beijing considerable leverage over Moscow.
It’s also
important to note the role of deception and bluff in Russian strategy. This is
a way of generating power out of nothing, but it’s a duplicitous kind of power
that in the long run destroys one’s credibility.
Take for example
Russia’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Despite being on different sides of
the Syrian civil war, Putin has managed to bring Riyadh into its diplomatic
orbit through cooperation on oil policy, given how both Saudi-led OPEC states
and Russia need substantially higher prices for government budgets to break
even.
Moscow has voiced
commitment to such cooperation, and the Saudis appear to have bought into this
assurance — for without it, Russia could simply gobble up much of any market
share conceded by a Saudi production cut. But Riyadh will almost certainly lose
out in any such deal. Last month, Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russian
state-controlled oil company Rosneft, said his company
would not take part in any such cut, implicitly contradicting Putin.
Russia seems to
want to get the Saudis to sign on to a deal Moscow has no real intention of
supporting. But it’s hard to see how long Putin can trick them into doing the
heavy lifting. In the short term, the official announcement of an OPEC-Russia
oil production deal, which is expected to come this month, will temporarily
lift prices. But in the long term, when the deal breaks down, as it must, it
will erode Putin’s credibility with Riyadh and OPEC.
Gauging the
success of Putin’s strategy really depends on the time frame: In 2016, Russia
is up in the Middle East; in the longer term, the damage he has done to the
Russian economy by breaking with the West will outweigh the value of an
alliance with the likes of eastern Libya or even perhaps Turkey. Already battered by low oil
prices, the Russian economy can hardly afford to be unplugged from Western
capital markets and investment.
But maybe Russian
international success is entirely the wrong way of thinking about what Putin
gains from a strategy of perpetual conflict. Strategy might be the art of
creating power, but the power the strategist is most interested in might be at
home. Perpetual conflict abroad clearly helps rally popular support among
Russians to keep Putin entrenched in the Kremlin, even as his country rots
around him.
Photo credit: ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images
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