Russian President Medvedev and Egyptian President Mubarak (AP)
"Russia is surrounded by a belt of instability along its southern border. And Moscow is concerned that instability in the Middle East could spill over into the very fragile areas along its border with the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus as well as in Central Asia."What are Russia’s main interests in the Middle East and the Gulf Region?
If you look at Russia’s position today and over the past few years, since it recovered from the terrible ’90s, one of the major issues in Russian foreign policy has been to regain recognition as a major power; with not just a marginal voice in international affairs, but a real vote and a real veto. To be a party that other major powers, namely the United States, come to in order to consult when they want to address major issues on the international agenda. Clearly, the Middle East is one of those all-consuming issues for the United States and for the European Union, as well as increasingly for China and other countries. So, Russia feels that if there are major decisions to be made about the Middle East, it has to be at the table. So, that’s one.
Two, this presence as a major power does not occur in a vacuum. Russia has commercial and economic interests. And this cuts in two ways. One, Russia is an oil exporter and a gas exporter. As we’ve seen in the months since the economic crisis really took off, Russian well-being is very closely tied to the price of oil. So, while it is not a member of the OPEC, it is certainly very keenly interested in what other major players in the global oil markets are doing. Also, because of Russia’s dependence on gas exports to Europe—another major source of revenue—Moscow has been trying to form a ‘gas OPEC,’ to include major producers of gas into a cartel-like arrangement where Russia clearly would be the leader. That has been one of their objectives.
The other, of course, is arms sales. Russia is looking at a domestic market that is just not able to sustain the defense industrial sector that it inherited from the Soviet Union. Any and all opportunities to sell weapons, sometimes to parties that the United States does not necessarily like, are much appreciated and is viewed as matter of serious, almost national interest, for the Russian government.
Third, the Russians do have security concerns. Russia is surrounded by a belt of instability along its southern border. And Moscow is concerned that instability in the Middle East could spill over into the very fragile areas along its border with the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus as well as in Central Asia. Those in a nutshell are the key concerns.
Thus far Russia, along with China, has limited the severity of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. What role can Russia play in curbing Iran’s nuclear program and how much of an impact can it have on Tehran?
It depends very much on how you look at the situation. If Russia persists along its current path of essentially stalling on efforts to introduce harder, more effective sanctions against Iran on the grounds that Iran is very important to Russian interests and Russia does not want to spoil its relations with Iran, then I don’t think Russia has a whole lot of influence on Iran. However, Russia is very important to Iran, because it is clearly one of the two—or one depending on what China decides to do—votes in the Security Council that could make or break that decision on sanctions and could stop U.S.-driven sanctions against Iran.
If Russia is prepared to join the United States and Europe, which so far it has done only to a limited degree, in sanctioning Iran, it could have a lot of influence on Tehran. But up until now, I think the Russians have viewed Iran as too important to antagonize. It appears to be a relationship that they don’t want to upset for the sake of pleasing the United States and its European allies. As a result, Russian influence in Iran has suffered because it really has been a situation where the ‘tail has wagged the dog.’ Clearly, Russia is the bigger and more important partner in this relationship. Yet on a number of initiatives that Russia claimed to want to pursue quite seriously, such as an international arrangement for uranium enrichment that would create a joint venture in Russia with the international controls from which Iran could receive fuel for its nuclear reactors, Iran basically toyed with Russia, and in the end, rejected its proposals, even though Russia seemed to be seriously interested and committed. It was a quite frustrating episode for the Russians. But I’m not sure they are prepared to go as far as we want them to go. As a result, I think their influence will be quite limited. But that’s their choice obviously. They have their own calculus, and they see Iran as a very important country for them in the region, one of very few entry points into Middle Eastern politics. They seem to be quite settled on that.
Why do they consider Iran so important to them?
As they see it, it is a big country and a regional power. Up until recently, until this latest round of domestic political troubles in Iran, Iran seemed to be the rising power in the Middle East, and a rising power, in particular, in the Gulf Region—as a result of the demise of Saddam and his regime, as a result of development of patron-client relations with Syria, and so on. And as a result of what the Iranians probably saw as their unstoppable progress towards acquiring nuclear capability. It would be difficult for Russia to antagonize Iran, when Russia does not have many other partners in the Middle East. Also, Iran has been an important market for Russian weapons. Put that together with the nuclear power plant at Bushehr and it is a business opportunity they don’t want to turn down.
It is also important to note that Iran has been very careful not to antagonize Russia on issues that Russia claims matter to it the most—that is the countries of the former Soviet Union. Iran has been extremely careful not to do anything that would upset Russia in the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus or in Central Asia. In fact, in Central Asia, Russia and Iran have collaborated. They collaborated in the 1990s, when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan and supplied the Northern Alliance, and were really quite important to its survival in years when the United States did not play as much of a role in Afghanistan.
What effect do you think the recent meeting in Tajikistan between the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and Tajikistan will have on Russia’s role in Central Asia and on Afghanistan and Pakistan?
It is a development to be watched. One of the problems with Russian foreign policy is that they talk the talk, but they don’t always walk the walk. Or, they don’t quite deliver on the ambitions that they express in their statements. So, it remains to be seen as to what they actually deliver as a result of this meeting and how active, in practical terms, they will be in the region.
Russia is important to Central Asia, to Central Asia’s economic well-being, and as a result also domestic political stability. For a lot of these countries, Russia helps siphon off, in times when the Russian economy is doing well, a lot of excess labor. It is also important in terms of providing regional stability for Afghanistan, because you don’t want any more unstable states surrounding Afghanistan; it has enough problems as it is.
I think the meeting with the Pakistani leadership was also a positive development. The Russians are very nervous about developments in Pakistan. And maybe they will contribute more to the efforts of the coalition in Afghanistan. It is unlikely though that they will actually contribute personnel to take part in the international mission there, but perhaps a material contribution.
Moscow has been talking about hosting an Arab-Israeli peace summit for a couple of years and it’s also the only Quartet country that speaks to Hamas. What role does it play on this issue—the Arab-Israeli conflict, and what could it be doing?
That’s another puzzling aspect of Russian foreign policy: they talk to Hamas, but what do they get for it? They don’t seem to be able to generate any concessions from Hamas. They got the publicity from meeting initially, a year or two ago, even though they said they wouldn’t do so without Hamas meeting certain conditions, and they claimed that they would achieve results, but in the end, they’ve achieved nothing. I’m unclear on what the benefit is of the Russians talking to Hamas in the absence of any concrete steps on the part of Hamas to move the process along, the process to which the Russians claim they are fully committed. I am as puzzled as you are about this. It seems to be that the Russians could be gaining more, in fact, they could be using their somewhat independent position from the rest of the major powers to perhaps explore some new ideas with Hamas, with other parties, to get Hamas to make some concessions, but I haven’t seen any of it.
What would you say is the relationship between Russia and Israel?
That’s a very interesting question. I saw statistics somewhere—I wouldn’t vouch for it—but something like 1 in 6 Israelis is from the former Soviet Union and is a Russian speaker. So, there’s clearly a very active human connection between the two countries. Russia and Israel have a visa-free travel agreement. That’s quite significant for the Russians and also for the Israelis. When Russian and Israeli leaders have met, their meetings have been very positive. And they maintain that they face some of the same or very similar threats from international terrorism, so they share some of those positions.
They very clearly disagree on the issue of Iran. Russia is quite sanguine about the idea of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and for Israel, clearly, it is an existential question. So, I don’t think they have been able to bridge those gaps, but it’s one of those relationships that continue on two tracks. On the one hand, they have those profound disagreements, on the other hand, on the human level, they do have relations, and political relations in many respects. So, it’s clearly a reversal from the days when there were no diplomatic relations between the two countries.
And it seems like Russia is buying a lot of weaponry from Israel?
There have been reports that they were buying some unmanned aerial vehicles, but I don’t know how accurate they are.
How might the effort to re-set relations between the United States and Russia impact Russia’s policies in the Middle East?
Well, I think that a more positive relationship between the United States and Russia is overall a good thing for the international system as a whole. There’s no question about that. It improves the tone and the quality of the conversation between Washington and Moscow and other capitals on a range of important issues. Having said that, the so-called reset is still in relatively early stages. And as you know, and as your own Sam Charap has said and written, there are significant differences between Russia and the United States on some of the key aspects of that ‘reset.’
If you look at Vice President Biden’s interview in the Wall Street Journal, those have to do with the future of NATO, Georgia, and Ukraine. Those issues are very important to Russia and constitute its priorities in the reset. It views issues such as Iran and its nuclear program, which are the key priorities for the United States, as matters of secondary importance, surprising as it may seem. But you can read statements from prominent Russian analysts that suggest that ‘look, our immediate periphery, the near abroad, is far more important for us than it is for you. By the same token, your preoccupation with Iran and proliferation is far more important to you than they are for us. They are second order of concern issues for us. So, with this asymmetrical relationship why not trade off issues that matter to us for issues that matter to you?’ That, I think, in a nutshell, is the idea for the real reset for many in the Russian foreign policy establishment. It is clearly not something that is acceptable to the United States. The President and the Vice President, and others in the administration have spoken about that. So, I think that the reset itself is not moving as far as we’d like it to move, and as a result, there is less progress in our pursuit for peace in the Middle East, on the issue of Iran and its nuclear ambitions, or on issues pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s good to be moving in the right direction, we’d like to be moving faster, but I think progress is going to be slower than one would like to see it.
Views expressed in this interview are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense or the United States Government.
