The soviet abroad.

• Author: Lieven, Anatol
• Position: Russia and the Arabs: Behind the Scenes in the Middle East from the Cold War to the Present - Book review

Yevgeny Primakov, Russia and the Arabs: Behind the Scenes in the Middle East from the Cold War to the Present, trans. Paul Gould (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 400 pp., $29.95.

Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov's Russia and the Arabs (which should really be led The Soviet Union and the Arabs, since most of it deals with that period, one in which Moscow still had enormous influence in the Middle East) is the latest contribution to the annals of the international competition for influence and power. The book--by a Moscow insider who held key positions in the USSR's, and later Russia's, foreign-policy establishment--is a firsthand account informed by decades of experience of Middle East crises, from the Arab-Israeli wars to Iraq and beyond. It also shows the profound impact of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry on the region and especially on attitudes toward Washington and Moscow in the Muslim world.

During the Russian-Georgian conflict of August 2008 I was in Pakistan, researching for a book; and viewing the war from that perspective was a profoundly disquieting experience. This was not just because of the apparent lunacy of the United States engaging in a really dangerous dispute with Russia over South Ossetia (South Ossetia, for Heaven's sake?) at a time when such monstrous threats loomed in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In some ways equally disturbing was the reaction of the Pakistani media and educated public, including military officers, to whom I lectured at the National Defense University in Islamabad a few weeks later.

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Very few Pakistanis indeed have any affection at all for Russia. They remember the helping hand Moscow gave India and Afghanistan in building up their defenses against Pakistan during the cold war, and of course the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 which initiated the Afghan disaster of the past thirty years. Russian atrocities against Muslims in Chechnya have also been given full coverage in Pakistan. And the Pakistani media is rarely restrained or careful about fact-checking when it comes to expressing their prejudices.

Given this background, what was truly striking--and disturbing for a Westerner--was the cool, balanced and objective tone of the discussion of the Russian-Georgian war in Pakistan. Was this the result of some miraculous transformation of opinion in favor of Russia? Not a bit. What it reflects is the fact that when it comes to external behavior, most Pakistanis today can see no difference between Russia and the United States; or even between the old USSR and today's USA.

I am sorry to say that most ordinary Pakistanis with whom I have spoken even see the Soviet and U.S. military "occupations" of Afghanistan in the same light; and this in turn explains why they see the Taliban as an unpleasant but legitimate resistance movement akin to the Afghan mujahideen. The United States and Pakistan did back these fighters together, but any Pakistani gratitude was wiped out by the way in which (as Hillary Clinton has now admitted) the United States walked away from its responsibilities in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal and the end of the cold war.

As far as Pakistani views of the wider U.S. role in the world are concerned, these are shaped above all by developments in the Middle East. U.S. support for Israel, and Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, are of course the principal (and often grossly exaggerated) themes; and the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of false propaganda about weapons of mass destruction is used constantly to justify crazed anti-American conspiracy theories.

However, even intelligent, well-informed and pro-Western Pakistani liberals who do not share these fantasies are apt to make two points about the United States and the Muslim world: twenty years after the end of the cold war the United States continues to support brutal dictatorships, including Saudi Arabia, which is far more ruthless in the suppression of its population (especially women) than either Iran or Syria. In those twenty years, during which it has been the sole external superpower in the Middle East, America has wholly failed to solve the region's problems--problems that during the cold war Washington habitually ascribed to malign Soviet influence.

These points are also made with even-greater force by a great many liberal Arab intellectuals. They are not points which it is easy to deny. President Barack Obama has made an excellent start in appealing to Muslim public opinion; but it will take actions, not words, to effect a deep and lasting transformation in the region's attitude toward America. For many decades now, the...