DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US
AND RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
AMERICANS
see individual pieces of geopolitical real estate in isolation, like hotels on
the Monopoly board, while the RUSSIANS look at the interaction of all their
spheres of interest around the globe.
SYRIA is of no real strategic interest to RUSSIA,
nor to anyone else for that matter. It is a broken wreck of a country, with an
irreparably damaged economy, without the energy, water, or food to maintain
long-term economic viability.
The multiethnic melange left in place by BRITISH
and FRENCH cartographers after the First World War has broken down irreparably
into a war of mutual extermination, whose only result can be depopulation or
partition on the YUGOSLAV model.
Background
Information:
FRANCES "COLONIAL
AMBITIONS" IN SYRIA
THE SYKES-PICOT AGREEMENT
SYRIA only has importance in so far as its crisis
threatens to spill over into surrounding territories which have more strategic
importance. As a Petri dish for jihadist movements, it threatens to become the
training ground for a new generation of terrorists, serving the same role that AFGHANISTAN
did during the 1990s and 2000s.
SYRIA AN
INCUBATOR FOR NATIONAL MOVEMENTS
As a testing ground for the use of weapons of
mass destruction, it provides a diplomatic laboratory to gauge the response of
world powers to atrocious actions with comparatively little risk to the
participants. It is an incubator of national movements, in which, for example,
the newfound freedom of action for the country’s 2 million KURDS constitutes a
means of destabilizing TURKEY and other countries with substantial Kurdish
minorities. Most important, as the cockpit of confessional war between SUNNIS
and SHI’ITE, SYRIA may become the springboard for a larger conflict engulfing IRAQ
and possibly other states in the region.
Background Information: THE KURDISH INDEPENDENCE GAMBLE
RUSSIA’S GOAL:
RESTORATION OF GREAT POWER STATUS
It is difficult to understand what Putin wants in
SYRIA. And in most likelihood the RUSSIA’S president himself does not know what
he wants in SYRIA, either. A strong chess player engaging an inferior opponent
will create complications without an immediate strategic objective, in order to
provoke blunders from the other side and take opportunistic advantage. There
are many things that Putin wants. But he wants one big thing above all, namely,
the restoration of RUSSIA’S great power status. RUSSIA’S leading diplomatic
role in SYRIA opens several options to further this goal.
WORLDS
ENERGY BROKER
As the world’s largest energy producer, RUSSIA wants
to enhance its leverage over WESTERN EUROPE for which it is the principle
energy supplier. It wants to influence the marketing of natural gas produced by
ISRAEL and other countries in the EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN. It wants to make other
energy producers in the region dependent on its good graces for the security of
their energy exports. It wants to enhance its role as a supplier of military
equipment, challenging the AMERICAN F-35 and F-22 with the new Sukhoi T-50
stealth fighter among other things. It wants a free hand in dealing with
terrorism among its Muslim minority in the CAUCASUS. And it wants to maintain
influence in its so-called near abroad in CENTRAL ASIA.
Background Information: RUSSIA’S
GAZPROM
AMERICAN commentators reacted with surprise and
in some cases dismay to RUSSIA’S emergence as the arbiter of the SYRIA crisis.
In fact, RUSSIA’S emerging role in the region was already evident when the
chief of SAUDI intelligence, Prince Bandar, flew to Moscow during the first
week of August to meet with Putin. The RUSSIANS and SAUDIS announced that they
would collaborate to stabilize the new military government in EGYPT, in direct
opposition to the Obama administration. In effect RUSSIA offered to sell EGYPT
any weapons that the UNITED STATES declined to sell, while SAUDI ARABIA offered
to pay for them.
Background Information: RUSSIA
AND SAUDI ARABIA
RUSSIA’S
GENIUS CHESSBOARD MOVE OVER EGYPT
That was a diplomatic revolution without clear
precedent. It is not only that the RUSSIANS have returned to Egypt 40 years
after they were expelled in the context of the real world war; they have done
so in tactical alliance with SAUDI ARABIA, historically RUSSIA’S nemesis in the
region.
SAUDI ARABIA has an urgent interest in
stabilizing EGYPT, and in suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood, which the SAUDI
monarchy nightly views as a risk to its legitimacy. SAUDI support for the EGYPTIAN
military against the Brotherhood is not surprising; what is most surprising is
that the SAUDI’S felt to involve RUSSIA.
Although there are a number of obvious reasons
for the SAUDI’S and RUSSIANS to collaborate, for example controlling the jihadists
in the SYRIAN opposition, we do not yet understand the full implications of
their rapprochement. The SAUDIS leaked news that they had offered to buy $15
billion worth of RUSSIAN weapons in return for RUSSIAN help with Assad. Rumors
of this kind should not be read at face value. They might be misdirection — but
misdirection towards what?
Putin’s chessboard encompasses the globe. It
includes such things as the security of energy exports from the PERSIAN GULF;
the transmission of oil and gas through CENTRAL ASIA; the market for RUSSIAN
arms exports; energy negotiations now underway between RUSSIA and CHINA; the
vulnerability of EUROPE’S energy supplies; and the internal stability of
countries on or near RUSSIA’S borders, including TURKEY, IRAQ and IRAN.
RUSSIA’S
GREATER CAPACITY TO INFLUENCE EVENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
For AMERICAN analysts, most of this chessboard
might as well be on the dark side of the moon. We see only what the RUSSIANS
permit us to see. For example, Moscow first promised to provide SYRIA with the
S-300 air defense system and then withdrew its offer. SAUDI ARABIA in early
August let it be known that it was prepared to buy $15 billion of RUSSIAN
weapons in return for considerations in SYRIA. A negotiation of some kind is
underway, but we have no idea what kind of carrots and sticks might be
involved.
What we may surmise is that RUSSIA now has much
greater capacity to influence events in the MIDDLE EAST, including the security
of energy resources which it had at any time since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
For the time being, it is in RUSSIA’S interest to keep its interlocutory
guessing, and to enhance its future strategic options. RUSSIA in effect has
placed the burden of uncertainty on the rest of the world, especially upon
major economies dependent on PERSIAN GULF energy exports.
US TO
FOCUS INCREASINGLY ON DOMESTIC AGENDAS
President Obama evidently considers this
arrangement beneficial to his own agenda. The president has no interest
whatever in enhancing AMERICA’S strategic position in the world; his intent may
be to diminish it, as Norman Podhoretz charged in the Wall Street Journal.
Obama is focused on his domestic agenda.
From that standpoint, handing over responsibility
for the SYRIAN mess is a riskless exercise. AMERICAN popular revulsion over
foreign military intervention is so intense that the voters will welcome any
measure that reduces AMERICAN responsibility for foreign problems. Although the
elite of the Democratic Party are liberal internationalists, Obama’s voting
support has scant interest in SYRIA.
Public commentary on foreign policy is an
exercise in frustration under the circumstances. Because AMERICA is a
democracy, and substantial commitment of resources requires at least some
degree of consensus, diplomacy was exceptionally transparent so long as AMERICA
dominated the field. Think tanks, academia and the media served as a sounding
board for any significant initiatives, so that important decisions were taken
at least in part in the view of the public. That is no longer the case on
Vladimir Putin’s chessboard. RUSSIA will pursue a set of strategic trade-offs,
but we in the West will not know what they are until well after the fact, if
ever.
Further dimensions of complexity will arise from
the eventual response of other prospective players, in particular CHINA, but
also including JAPAN. The self-shrinkage of AMERICA’S strategic position
eliminates the constraint for RUSSIA to choose a particular option. On the
contrary, RUSSIA can accumulate positional advantages to employ for particular
strategic objectives at its leisure. And Putin will sit silent on his side of
the chessboard and let the clock run against his opponent.
STRATEGIC
INSANITY
Putin may think that he is pre-empting a similar
strategy on the part of the West.
From RUSSIAN leadership’s point of
view, the IRAQ War now looks like the beginning of the accelerated destruction
of regional and global stability, undermining the last principles of
sustainable world order. Everything that’s happened since — including flirting
with Islamists during the Arab Spring, US policies in LIBYA and its current
policies in SYRIA — serve as evidence of strategic insanity that has taken over
the last remaining superpower.
PAYBACK TIME FOR BEING LEFT OUT OF THE LIBYAN EQUATION
As mentioned numerous times on this Blog, RUSSIA and CHINA
felt that they were left out of the equation regarding the LIBYAN operation
instigated by the USA, FRANCE and BRITAIN. CHINA and RUSSIA invested heavily in
LIBYA prior to the toppling of the LIBYAN regime, only to find out that they
were kept completely out of the picture regarding the true intentions the
Western coalition force had in mind with LIBYA once the regime was removed,
namely to share the cake of oil extraction between themselves.
Subsequently RUSSIA and CHINA learned their lesson and thus vowed
not make the same mistake regarding SYRIA, permitting LIBYAN style intervention
by WESTERN and GULF STATES coalition forces. No matter that SYRIA lacks oil
reserves or other natural resources worth fighting over, their veto was more of
a symbolic gesture telling WESTERN and GULF STATES coalition forces: that’s how
far you can go this time around, but no further. See also
RUSSIA’S persistence on the SYRIAN
issue is the product of this perception. The issue is not sympathy for SYRIA’S
dictator, or commercial interests, or naval bases in Tartus. Moscow is certain
that if continued crushing of secular authoritarian regimes is allowed because AMERICA
and the West support “democracy”, it will lead to such destabilization that
will overwhelm all, including RUSSIA. It’s therefore necessary for RUSSIA to
resist, especially as the West and the UNITED STATES themselves experience
increasing doubts.
RUSSIANS typically assume that AMERICANS think
the way they do; gauging every move by the way it affects the overall position
on the board. The notion that incompetence rather than conspiracy explains the
vast majority of AMERICAN actions is foreign to RUSSIAN thinking. Whatever the RUSSIAN
leader thinks, though, he will keep to himself.
The Obama administration has handed the strategic
initiative to countries whose policy-making proceeds behind a wall of opacity.
Adapted by
Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring from David P. Goldman who is Senior Fellow at the
London Center for Policy Research and Associate Fellow at the Middle East
Forum. Via crethiplethi.com. Originally
published
in The Asian Times
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