The recent visit to Moscow of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal came shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. There he aligned Russia with the Arab consensus supporting the Saudi-mediated Mecca Agreement between the Palestinian factions, called for the lifting of sanctions against the new Palestinian unity government, discussed energy cooperation and sought both to increase Russian arms exports to the Arab world and to attract Arab investment for the non-energy sector of the Russian economy. These moves have underscored the resurgence of Russian interest in the Middle East. Under Putin, Russia has sought to achieve three major goals in the region. The first is to demonstrate its renewed power and influence in an area where American influence is on the decline. The second is to increase trade with the nations of the region so as to buttress the Russian economy, especially its non-energy sectors. The third goal is to minimize Arab, Turkish and Iranian support for the Chechen rebellion against Russian control, which the rebels are carrying out in the name of Islam. Putin has always wanted to restore Russia to the ranks of the great powers, and this became clear soon after he took office in 2000. However, the then-weak Russian economy and the increasingly severe Chechen rebellion against the 1999 Russian invasion limited his options. After the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, Putin moved to form a tactical alliance with the United States because the Taliban in Afghanistan, who hosted terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, were as much a threat to Russia and Russia’s allies in Central Asia as they were to the US. Russia moved away from Washington, however, during and after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2004, Putin’s efforts to restore Russia to great power status suffered two major blows. First, in September, Putin and his government looked incompetent when, after a group of Chechen rebels seized a school in Beslan, his security forces badly bungled the rescue mission, leading to a loss of well over 300 Russian lives. Two months later, Putin suffered an embarrassing failure in Ukraine when, following the mass demonstrations of the “Orange Revolution , the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko defeated the pro-Russian candidate Victor Yanukovich in a presidential re-election that Putin had publicly opposed. These events put Putin on the diplomatic defensive, and he sought an area where he could once again demonstrate that Russia was a great power. That area was the Middle East. Beginning in December 2004, Putin began a major effort to increase Russian influence in the region. This was the case for two reasons. First, the US, hitherto the dominant external power in the region, was now badly bogged down in Iraq and increasingly in Afghanistan. Second, a sharp rise in oil prices had strengthened the Russian economy and given Moscow the ability to waive the debts that a number of Arab countries had incurred with the USSR. More than two years later, what is the balance sheet for this concerted Russian undertaking? First, Russian activity in the Middle East has become a major challenge to the United States, whose position in the region is weakening. Moscow’s arms sales to Iran and Syria and its diplomatic efforts to legitimize Hamas and the Hamas-led Palestinian national unity government have rendered US efforts to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, already a difficult task, far more difficult. While Russia’s recent delay in the supply of nuclear fuel for the Bushehr reactor and its willingness to consider additional limited sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council may be seen as an effort to reverse the trend of deteriorating US-Russian relations, they may also be interpreted as an important gesture to key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all very concerned about the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Second, Russian-Israeli relations have also suffered a major blow in recent years because of Putin’s policies. Relations were soured by arms sales to Syria – some of which were transferred to Hizbullah and used in its summer 2006 war against Israel – as well as by the decision to supply a nuclear reactor and sophisticated surface-to-air missiles to Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Moscow’s embrace of Hamas, an organization that remains dedicated to Israel’s destruction, has further damaged relations, and few Israelis believe Putin’s protestations of friendship to Israel. While Russian-US and Russian-Israeli relations have been severely damaged by Russian policies in the Middle East, the question remains as to the extent to which Russian influence in the region has increased. To be sure, there has been a drop-off in Arab support for the Chechen rebels, and this is a plus for Moscow. In addition, Putin has laid the groundwork for increased commercial relations between Russia and a number of countries in the region, although whether Russia will get the Arab investments and additional arms sales Putin seeks remains to be seen. On the diplomatic front, despite its weakened position, the US remains the main guarantor of the Arab regimes of the Gulf as well as of Egypt and Jordan. While Putin’s efforts have enabled these countries to distance themselves somewhat from the US – something helpful domestically given America’s lack of popularity in the region – whether Russia has achieved significant influence in these countries is a very open question. Robert O. Freedmanis the Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone Professor of Political Science at Baltimore Hebrew University and a visiting professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the forthcoming “Russian Policy toward the Middle East since the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Cambridge University Press, 2008). This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter publishing commentaries on Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs.
The bear is back: Russia's return to the Middle East
