The geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East.

• Author: Kreutz, Andrej

THE NEW RUSSIAN STATE CREATED after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 is neither a simple continuation of its legal Soviet predecessor nor of the former Russian Empire, which ended during World War I in 1917. As the Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has recently pointed out: "Neither its current political system nor its outer frontiers and immediate geopolitical surrounding have a precedent in Russian history. By all indications, the Russian Federation is a new state functioning in a radically changing system of international relations. (1) The collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia and the emergence of a completely new geopolitical and social reality, which is strikingly different from its forerunner, probably represented the most important breakthrough in modern world history, by far exceeding the limitations of the regional boundaries and the relatively brief period of time. As one outcome of this, the previous bipolar system of the Cold War era has been rep laced by a new situation that, although still somewhat shapeless and volatile, is nevertheless marked by American global hegemony and an unexpected, sudden decline of Russian power.

There are at present many discussions among scholars about the models of the new international system, but as Samuel Huntington has indicated and as recent developments after the tragic American events of September 11, 2001 seem to prove, contemporary international politics are in fact "a strange hybrid, a uni-polar system with one superpower and several major powers" (2) and "the settlement of key international issues requires action by the single superpower, but always with some combination of other major states" (3) According to the still prevailing, although by no means unanimous opinion, (4) Russia, despite its critical problems remains one of the major states and its current and potential impact on and role in the regions which are near its borders, certainly deserve attention and careful analysis.

This discussion will focus on the issues of Russia's historical and geopolitical links with the Middle East and the causes and forms of her involvement there. At the very end of the presentation I will look at the present day Russian Middle Eastern policy and the prospects for Russia's potential future contribution to a more stable and balanced situation in the area.

RUSSIA'S HISTORICAL AND GEOPOLITICAL LINKS WITH THE REGION

Historical Background

Russia is certainly no newcomer to the region and Russian links with the Middle East and the Islamic world at large have been unusually deep-rooted and long lasting. Located on the Eurasian lowland, Russia has always been a territory with a "natural coexistence, mutual influence and interaction between the Eastern Slavic and Turkish, Caucasian and Persian peoples," which as many Russian scholars argue, "create the foundation for a positive relationship between Russians and Muslims." (5)

Between 1677 and 1917, the Tsars of Russia fought thirteen wars with the Ottoman Empire for control of the Black Sea area and the Caucasus, and in 1872 the Russian fleet even briefly occupied Beirut. (6) Russian policy toward the southern states directly adjacent to its borders, such as Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, was in many ways often similar to the one then employed by Western Europe. (7) However, it did not have any impact on the general tolerance which Islam has enjoyed in the Russian Empire, and its relations with the Arab world have also been particularly friendly.

In the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, the Russian Empire was not involved in the colonial carve-up of the area and its "moral credentials among the Arabs, both on an official and a popular level, were considerably higher than those of the West." (8) As early as 1901, the Emir of Kuwait applied for Russian protection and some other Arab rules also looked for communication, trade and cultural links with the Russian Empire. (9)

After the October 1917 Revolution, the victorious Bolsheviks inherited a strong base to build on and were able to add a new ideological dimension to it. They condemned the Western powers' underhanded diplomacy toward the Muslim countries, and the Soviet government's appeal of December 20, 1917 to "All the Working Muslims of Russia and the East", which was signed by Lenin himself, officially declared that "the Arabs as well as all Muslims had the right to be masters of their countries and to decide their own destinies as they wished". (10) Although during the following Stalinist period, political problems and wars in Europe and the Far East, and Stalin's own denial of the progressive values of the national liberation movements put a long freeze on further Middle Eastern involvement, by the mid 1950s, Khrushchev's rise to power and the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's political turnabout opened a new period of the USSR's political and military presence in the region. (11)

During the following decades, up to the second half of the 1980s, the USSR and its Eastern European allies supported the Arab people's cause, and in practice, all fronts of their national liberation struggle towards economic and social development. Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Libya, South Yemen, and last but not least, the most difficult client to protect -- the Palestinians -- had all in their own time relieved generous diplomatic, economic and even military help from the Soviet bloc countries which, in addition, often protected them in the international arena against threats of direct Western intervention and annihilation.

However, the perestroika period, which started after Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985, brought to Soviet politics a completely new outlook and direction. Following the so-called "new political thinking", and trying both to bring an end to the Cold War with the American superpower and to alleviate Soviet economic problems, Gorbachev and his advisers looked for better Soviet-Israeli relations and limited previous Soviet support for the more radical Arab regimes and the Palestinians. During the Iraqi-Kuwaiti crisis in 1990-91 and the Second War in the Persian Gulf; the Soviet Union basically supported the U.S., even though at a later stage of the drama, Gorbachev's envoy, Yevgenii Primakov, tried to conclude some form of agreement between the Iraqi government and the U.S.-sponsored coalition, and to prevent its ground military attack. However, all his promising efforts were apparently spurned by the Americans and the collapsing Soviet Union was in fact both too weak and too internally divided to take a stronger position." (12)

At that time developments in the Middle East palpably demonstrated that the very nature of Soviet-American relations had changed dramatically and the well-known Russian journalist, Stanislav Kondrashov, described the Soviet role in Madrid as "the last tango." (13) But, even then, Moscow did not completely forget its Middle Eastern interests and its presence there was widely supported by many otherwise openly pro-American regimes in the region. In September 1991, Gorbachev sent Primakov to the Middle East again in order both to express his personal gratitude to the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran and Turkey for their support during the failed coup and to ask them for economic assistance for the Soviet economy. His later evaluation of the trip reveals much for an understanding of the political role and importance of the Soviet Union in the region. According to Primakov, all the countries he visited, "clearly did not want the disintegration of the USSR" and saw the need to preserve it as a united economic and strategic area in order...