Russia and the Arab Spring

Russia has spent over a decade trying to recapture the influence the Soviet Union once enjoyed in the Middle East, but President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to position Moscow as a key regional player have come up short. With revolutions across the Arab world overturning old orders and ushering in Islamist governments, Russia’s chances for strengthening its position in the region look increasingly slim. The Kremlin must change course and ensure that its approach to the Middle East and Islamists reflects post–Arab Spring realities.

Key Themes

· Under Putin, attempts to shore up Russian influence in the Middle East are motivated by nostalgia for Soviet influence, a desire to demonstrate to Russia’s Muslim population that the Islamic world’s affairs matter to the Kremlin, and strategic national interests, including having a military presence in the region.

· Putin’s strategy has involved emphasizing Russia’s special position as a power that can act as a bridge between the West and the Muslim world.

· Moscow has tried to act as mediator in a number of conflicts, including failed attempts to prevent the U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein and the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Both leaders were Kremlin allies.

· Many in Moscow see mediating a solution to the Syrian crisis as crucial to the Kremlin’s regional strategy. But Russia’s support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been met with international criticism and has eroded Moscow’s position.

· The changes in leadership ushered in by the Arab Spring have damaged Moscow’s few remaining political and economic ties to the Middle East.

· The rise of Islamism has resonated with the Russian Muslim population and encouraged the development of radical Islamist opposition movements within this community.

A New Russian Approach

Define a contemporary Middle East strategy. An effective Russian policy would reflect current realities and a pragmatic understanding of national interests. Moscow should carve out Russia’s place in the new regional dynamic rather than attempt to preserve what it inherited from the Soviet Union.

Deepen cooperation with Arab countries based on shared interests. Moscow could help establish a regional security system that can preserve stability in the Middle East and stop the spread of Islamist upheaval before it destabilizes Russia and its neighbors.

Develop a more sophisticated approach to Islamism. The Kremlin would benefit from reaching out to newly elected Islamist governments in the Arab world and addressing the growing influence of Islamists in Russia.

Introduction

Since Vladimir Putin was first elected president in 2000, Russia has pursued a foreign policy designed to recapture the influence that the Soviet Union once enjoyed in the Middle East. These efforts, however, have been unsuccessful, and the Russian Federation has never reclaimed the vestiges of Soviet power in the region. Now, the Arab Spring has brought to a close the era of Soviet-Arab relations.

The Arab revolutions have drastically changed the situation not just in the Middle East but also globally. The world’s leading powers are directly or indirectly being drawn into the developments unfolding in the region. The revolutions have helped fuel contradictions between Russia and the West, which took opposing stands in the Libyan conflict and even more so in the Syrian conflict. The Arab Spring has also given Islamism a seal of legitimacy as a permanent factor in politics in the Muslim world, a development that has ramifications for Russia’s domestic stability. As Russian Middle East analyst Georgy Mirsky said, the “Arab world is radical political Islam’s testing ground.”[1]

The changes in the Middle East in general are forcing the Kremlin to reflect on Russia’s prospects in the Arab world and on how to go about building relations with the new elites coming to power in several Arab states. Moscow now has to concentrate not on trying to preserve what it inherited from the Soviet Union but on developing a new strategy and tactics to define Russia’s place in the post–Arab Spring Middle East.

Russia’s Historical Ties to the Middle East

Russia’s relationship to the Arab world has gone through several distinct phases. Pre-Soviet Russia, or the Russian Empire, did not have any major aims and ambitions in the Arab Middle East, save for protecting the Orthodox Church’s interests in Palestine. Its strategy focused instead on other regions—the Mediterranean Straits, Persia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and China. The Middle East itself lay at the periphery of the Russian Empire’s interests, all the more so as the region was dominated by Turkey and the European powers.

There was no fundamental change in this situation after the 1917 revolution that overthrew Russia’s czarist regime and established the Soviet state. The Middle East held little strategic interest for the ruling Bolsheviks, who decided that the Arab countries did not have great revolutionary potential. Marxist circles and parties set up in the Arab world with Moscow’s help had little influence, and local liberation movements did not depend on the Bolsheviks.

The situation began to change after World War II, when, flush with victory, the Soviet Union’s global ambitions grew and seemed entirely realistic to Soviet leaders. The substance of Soviet policy in the Middle East and the Arab world was the fight against the West, and Moscow’s approach to the region fit into the paradigm of confrontation between the two systems that characterized the Cold War era. The Soviet Union sought alliances with those Middle Eastern countries whose political orientations were closer to the Soviet system, so its main allies in the Middle East were Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, and Libya.

These partnerships gave Moscow political advantages in its confrontation with the West, but the Kremlin harbored hopes for the ideological as well as political rapprochement of these Middle Eastern countries with the Soviet Union. Kremlin ideologues sought to plant the Soviet version of social, economic, and political development in the Arab world, and Moscow did its best to facilitate this work. Governments in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, and Libya did indeed at various moments show interest in the Soviet model, and some of them spoke favorably about Marxism. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Soviet scholarship developed the concepts of “socialist orientation” and the “noncapitalist development model,” which were supposed to explain the reasons why Arab countries and others were drawing on the Soviet model and make it look like an attractive path for the Third World.

Many of these socialist-oriented countries became military-political launch pads for the Soviet Union in its confrontation with the West. The Arab-Israeli conflict remained the epicenter of Middle East tension, and here the Cold War turned into actual military action, at times with the direct involvement of the Western countries and the Soviet Union. Such was the case in 1956, when the British and French took Israel’s side in its conflict with Egypt. Soviet military personnel—pilots, air defense crews, even tankers—after 1967 took part on Egypt’s and Syria’s side in a number of clashes with Israeli forces, though this was never officially recognized by Soviet officials. In Libya during a military parade in 1979, tanks were driven by Soviet sergeants.

The benefits of political and ideological rapprochement with Middle Eastern countries outweighed the fact that economic benefits from cooperation with Arab “clients” were minimal for the Soviet Union. Indeed, Arab countries built up billions in debt to Moscow that post-Soviet Russia eventually ended up having to forgive.

For their part, Arab governments stood to gain significantly from cooperation with Moscow. The Soviet Union carried out ambitious projects in these countries, such as constructing the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the Nag-Hammadi Steelworks in Algeria; supplied them with cheap and quite effective weapons; and gave them unconditional support in their wars against Israel. The Soviet Union offered the only counterweight to Western pressure to accept Israel’s existence, and the Arabs thought that in extreme circumstances Moscow could take extreme measures, even military ones, to support its Arab allies. But that was an illusion. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 made it clear that the Soviet Union was not willing to resort to direct military confrontation.

This was the heyday of Soviet influence in the Middle East, but it did not last long. Arab disappointment in cooperation with the Soviet Union set in during the 1970s. Soviet military and political support failed to turn the Middle East conflict in the Arabs’ favor, and in financial and economic cooperation the Soviet Union could not compete with economically and technologically more developed Western countries. The Soviet Union suffered from an internal economic crisis that made it harder to expand support for its Arab allies. Some Middle Eastern countries expressed dissatisfaction with Soviet military supplies. Local media, especially in Egypt, complained that Moscow was supplying the country with defensive weapons when offensive arms were needed. When Soviet Jews started emigrating to Israel, people in the Middle East noted wryly that the United States was supplying Israel with weapons and the Soviet Union was giving it soldiers.

In 1972, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat expelled Soviet military advisers and specialists from his country. This was the beginning of the end for the Arab-Soviet friendship. At the same time, together with the United States and Israel, Sadat initiated the Camp David peace process, in which Moscow was given no role.

With the start of perestroika in 1985, the Arab world gradually shifted to the periphery of Soviet foreign policy. Post-Soviet Russia had neither the means nor the strength to maintain its former level of relations with Arab countries. Soviet diplomacy in the region underwent a reexamination, a symbol of which was the restoration of diplomatic relations with Israel in 1991. The Arab governments, for their part, were disappointed in Russia as an economic partner and political ally. According to a survey of Moroccan college students, Arab citizens did not recognize Russia as a strong successor to the Soviet Union—whereas 96 percent of respondents viewed the Soviet Union as a great military power, only 52 percent considered Russia a great power. As Soviet influence faded, Russia was left with only a tenuous foothold in the Middle East.

Putin’s Russia: Seeking the Soviet Legacy

During the 1990s, Russia did not even attempt to define its national interests in the Middle East and the Arab world. It was not until after Vladimir Putin came to power at the turn of the century that Moscow started pursuing a more active policy in the region.

Putin’s attempts to shore up Russian influence in the Middle East were motivated by a combination of nostalgia for the legacy of Soviet influence and strategic national interests. In part, Moscow’s policy in the region reflected its continuing “superpower” complex and the desire to be equal to—or at least comparable to and able to oppose—the West and, above all, the United States. But it also reflected Russia’s general loss of great-power status, waning global influence, and shrinking sphere of national interests, even if Moscow formulated these interests in overly ambitious and often populist terms.

Origins of Putin’s Policy

Unlike postimperial Britain, which managed to carve out a new place for itself in the world relatively quickly, post-Soviet Russia’s loss of global status was a painful process. Giving up its imperial claims lightened Britain’s load and gave it an international profile that more accurately reflected the country’s real economic and political weight in the world. By contrast, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia went through a prolonged bout of “Sovietism” in which it attempted to recapture its Soviet heritage.

To this day, the Kremlin sometimes gives the impression of having not yet realized the fundamental differences between the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation and the impossibility of reversing history. This mentality contributes to Russia’s desire to demonstrate at least some kind of military and political presence in the Middle East. Moscow hopes to hold on to the vestiges of the former Soviet base in the Syrian port of Tartus, for example, which is the sole remaining Russian military base in the region.

Putin’s Middle East policy is also motivated, at least in part, by military-technical cooperation, which—despite falling volumes—earns money for Russia’s defense industry and is seen as a means of “binding” the Arabs to Russia. Beyond this limited revenue stream, however, actual economic ties between Russia and the Middle East have little importance for both sides. This is especially true for the energy producers. Russia and the Persian Gulf countries, Iraq, and Algeria are direct and indirect competitors in the fight for markets. Attempts to organize cooperation in this area, such as Moscow’s efforts in 2009 to establish a gas-producing countries’ version of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, ended in failure.

Islam and Moscow’s Middle East Policy

Russia has another reason for attempting to establish an active presence in the Middle East—the Kremlin wants to show Russia’s own Muslim citizens that it is willing to cooperate with their fellow Muslims abroad. Russia has a significant Muslim population, especially in the North Caucasus and the Volga Region, and Moscow is anxious to demonstrate that it is involved in the Islamic world’s affairs and ready to defend Muslims’ interests if need be.

The Kremlin does not have a clearly defined historical position with regard to Islam or to working with Islamist regimes. Russian politicians have repeatedly declared their willingness to work with whichever government a people elects, reflecting a pragmatic position. Moscow is engaged in dialogue with Iran’s leadership and has tried to build relations with the Hamas Islamic resistance movement. After Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, Russia even offered its services to help settle the differences between the movement and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Russia has also been trying to develop tolerable relations with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which has played a prominent role in the country since the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak.

Moscow’s attitude toward Islamists depends on the positions they take on issues of importance to Russia. The Kremlin shows respect for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example, but considers its Syrian counterpart—which is currently participating in a civil war to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian ally—a terrorist organization. Moscow also clashed with the Islamists in Libya who took part in overthrowing Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, another Kremlin ally, in 2011. In addition, Moscow categorically opposes Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda, which has contributed to violent insurgencies in Russia’s restive North Caucasus region.

Islamists and the architects of Russia’s state ideology share one common feature: an identity built on a base of anti-Western sentiment. Islamists and the Russian Orthodox Church both stress that they each have their own understanding of democracy and human rights that is different from the Western interpretation. Islamist radicals, especially the Salafis, reject the principles of democracy and can be compared to Orthodox fundamentalists, who call for a return to an idealized communal spirit and want to revive “Orthodox Russia” as a state matrix. Here, there are unexpected similarities to the idea of an Islamic state.

But these similarities are unlikely to ever result in Russia and the Islamists joining forces. Indeed, Russia rejects the Salafis, many of whom constitute a leading force of Islamic opposition in the Caucasus. But mutual respect and understanding between them are perfectly possible. A number of books devoted to the idea of a merger between Russia and the Muslim world and Russia’s Islamization have already been published in Russia.

The Faults in Moscow’s Middle East Policy

Putin’s strategy for pursuing a more influential role in the Middle East has involved emphasizing Russia’s special position as a distinct civilizational entity that combines West and East and reminding the Arab world that Russia’s population includes around 20 million Muslims. [2] The goal of this foreign policy is to present the country as a bridge between the West and the Muslim world.

But Putin’s attempts have failed to increase the Kremlin’s influence in the region. Moscow tried to play the part of mediator between the West and Iran, between the Arabs and Israel, and between the United States and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before Washington launched military operations against Baghdad in 2003, but these efforts did not produce political dividends of any real significance. The Muslim world did not accept Russia as one of its own, and the West had no need for Russian mediation in its relations with the Muslims. Putin’s meetings with Arab heads of state and government in 2005–2007 also failed to produce the desired results. He was unable to conclude a number of proposed economic contracts, including an agreement with Saudi Arabia on a joint railway-construction project (although Russia signed a similar contract with Libya in 2008). Putin’s proposal to create a regional security system was also rejected by Arab governments.[3]

The faults of Putin’s policy—and the weakness of Russia’s position in the region—became especially clear when Moscow proved unable to prevent the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Kremlin spoke out repeatedly against a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and well-known Russian politicians such as Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov publicly expressed their support for Saddam Hussein, all to no avail. Moscow was incapable of playing the role of counterweight to the United States.

Failing to stop the U.S. invasion also cost Russia one of its last footholds in the region. Saddam Hussein was one of the few remaining “friends” who hoped to see in Russia the Soviet Union’s successor in the Middle East. After his departure from the political stage, Russia’s only remaining partners of any importance in the region were Syria’s Assad and Libya’s Qaddafi.

Over the next few years, Russia’s influence in the Middle East continued to fade. Polling numbers from Egypt indicate that the number of respondents with a positive view of Russia fell from 50 percent in 2007 to 30 percent in 2012. Respect for Russia dropped in Libya and Tunisia. In Jordan, only 25 percent of respondents had a positive view of Russia, and in Turkey the figure was 16 percent. Only in Syria did Russia continue to get a fairly high assessment, with 50–55 percent viewing it positively.[4] The Kremlin’s influence decreased further with the outbreak of antigovernment uprisings in 2011 that came to be known as the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring

With the start of the Arab Spring, Russia’s influence in the Middle East waned even further and its chances for strengthening its position in the region looked increasingly slim. The Kremlin at first interpreted the Arab Spring’s events as the result of planned Western intervention specifically designed to decrease Moscow’s hold on the region. Many in Russia saw in the protests an echo of the “color revolutions” against the governments in former Soviet countries that were believed to have been encouraged by Western powers. One Russian expert wrote that all the Arab revolutions “are very similar to the scenarios of the color revolutions.” Following this logic, he asked: “Who is really ordering and carrying out these revolutions?” [5] Countless Russian publications explained the Arab Spring in terms of conspiracy theories and the idea of a Western plot to further its own selfish interests—in particular, squeezing Russia out of the Middle East.

Eventually, Moscow moved away from the understanding of the events in the Middle East as a Western-orchestrated challenge to its place in the region. Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept, adopted in early 2013, describes the revolts as evidence that Arabs “desire to return to their civilizational roots” and says that “political and social-economic renewal of society is often taking place under the slogan of affirming Islamic values.” [6] But shifting the narrative surrounding the unrest did little to change the fact that the Arab Spring further reduced Moscow’s already-tenuous position in the Middle East.

According to Putin, Russia’s economic and political relations with countries in the Middle East have been negatively affected. He said that “in the countries that have gone through … [the Arab Spring,] Russian companies are losing the positions they built up over the decades on local markets … Economic actors from the same countries that lent a hand to changing the ruling regimes are now stepping in to fill the niches that have been freed up.” [7]

Political cooperation with many post–Arab Spring regimes is symbolic and limited to the statements issued after official visits. For example, political relations with Tunisia, which “never were a priority,”[8] have not improved with the ascension of the country’s new Islamist government. Ties are limited to diplomatic niceties.

Russia has also struggled in its political relations with postrevolutionary Egypt. In November 2012, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow was ready to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power in Egypt. He delivered to Mohamed Morsi, winner of the Egyptian presidential election, Putin’s invitation to visit Moscow. At the same time, a 2003 Russian Supreme Court ruling declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and a threat to Russia’s security remained in force. Analysts have long been proposing that the Muslim Brotherhood be removed from the list of terrorist organizations, fearing that keeping it there will result in Russia “losing its relations with the entire Arab post-revolutionary world.” They argue that supporting the new Islamist elites now may help Moscow in the long term.[9]

As this issue remains unresolved, Russia and Egypt have no political contacts of any significance. Neither Moscow nor Cairo shows any real desire to expand them, especially because there is no pressing economic reason to do so (Egypt’s trade with Russia represented just 0.3–0.4 percent of its total foreign trade in 2008).[10]

Since Morsi was forced to step down in July 2013, Russia’s relations with Egypt look even more uncertain. It seems a fairly safe bet that relatively more pro-Western politicians will come to power after the new parliamentary and presidential elections. This is a concern in other Middle Eastern countries as well; if the Islamists fail to keep hold of power in Tunisia and perhaps elsewhere, they might end up replaced by pro-Western elites. These forces are alien to Russia, and Russia is alien to them.

No matter who becomes the next president of Egypt, he will try to maintain strong ties with the Persian Gulf monarchies, which give Cairo financial aid worth several billion dollars and with which Moscow does not enjoy particularly close relations. In this situation, the Russian vector in Egypt’s policy will inevitably be increasingly limited.

Indeed, Russia’s post–Arab Spring relations with nearly every Middle Eastern regime are either unchanged or worse. Russia’s relations with Saudi Arabia have been practically nonexistent since the Soviet period, when the two countries had virtually no contact. Neither country has made any serious effort to improve the situation, which suggests that neither side is particularly interested. Russia’s relations with the other Gulf countries—including Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—remain low-key overall. Media reports that members of Bahrain’s Shia opposition had visited Moscow did nothing to improve Russia’s relations with these largely Sunni Gulf countries, most of which support the Bahraini government against this opposition.

Relations with some of the Arab nations that have been spared revolutionary upheaval—Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan, for example—remain unchanged. Russia does not have particularly strong relations with Morocco or Jordan, although it does enjoy some economic and political ties to Algeria that have not been significantly damaged by the regional upheaval.

The only exception to this rule of stagnant or deteriorating relationships is Yemen. Russia’s relations with Yemen look to be doing quite well in the wake of the Arab Spring. Popular protests overthrew Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in February 2012. But Yemen’s regime change model suits Moscow, which likes the fact that the protests ousting Saleh did not take place under the banner of the fight for democracy and appreciates that the events bore no resemblance to any of the color revolutions.

Unlike in Libya, the Yemenis got by without outside help and avoided humanitarian intervention. When they did reach out to foreign powers, they included Russia in the conversation—Yemen’s ambassador to Russia, Mohammed Saleh al-Hilali, suggested that then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev could send a special envoy to Yemen to persuade the opposing parties to resolve the conflict through peaceful means.[11] Ultimately, however, Moscow took no part in the country’s peace process, leaving it instead to the United States and Saudi Arabia. The Kremlin perhaps took the view that it was risky to intervene in Yemen’s affairs because the situation there was so complicated and extremists had a lot of influence; as one Russian newspaper put it, “it would be easy to get involved in Yemen, but the consequences would be serious.” [12]

Moscow did not take such a hands-off approach in other Arab countries. In those nations where Russia has become directly involved in the Arab Spring—Libya and Syria—the effects have been particularly problematic.

Direct Russian Involvement

During the Arab Spring, Russia has again attempted to act as mediator, both between antagonistic sides within the Arab countries as well as between outside actors—Americans and Europeans—and the regimes besieged by opposition forces in Libya and Syria.

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Notes

[1] Georgy Mirsky, “Krizis, nabirayushchy silu” (A Growing Crisis), Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 13, 2013.

[2] The number of Muslims in Russia is somewhere between 17 and 20 million people. The lower figure covers Muslims who are Russian citizens, while the second figure includes migrants from Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Nobody knows the real number of migrants in Russia at any one time.

[3] Alexey Malashenko, “Rossia i Musulmanski Mir” (Russia and the Muslim World), Carnegie Moscow Center Working Paper 3, 2008, 24.

[4] Arthur Lukmanov, “Rossiyskie Musulmane i ‘Arabskaya Vesna’” (Russia’s Muslims and the “Arab Spring”), Mejdunarodnaya Jizn, Russian Foreign Ministry, 2012, 86–87.

[5] A. Manoilo, “Revolyutsii na Blizhnem vostoke i v Severnoy Afrike: Severnoy Afrike: politicheskyi pragmatism i technologii upravlyayemogo khaosa” (The Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa: Political Pragmatism and the Technology of Managed Chaos), Mir i politica 9 (2011): 59–69.

[6] Russian Federation Foreign Policy Concept, Official site of the Russian Foreign Ministry, www.mid.ru.

[7] “Putin ob Arabskoi Vesne: ‘Ne mogu poniat, otkuda u stran NATO takoi voinstvennyi zud’” (Putin on the Arab Spring: “I Cannot Understand Why the NATO Countries Have Got Such a Military Itch”), nakanune.ru, February 27, 2012, www.nakanune.ru/news/2012/2/27/22264513.

[8] “Rossia i noviye elity stran Arabskoy vesny: vozmozhnosti i perspektivy vzaimodeystviya” (Russia and the New Elites in the Arab Spring Countries: Prospects and Opportunities for Interaction), Russian Council for International Affairs Working Paper V, 2013.

[9] Viktor Matynyuk, “Rossii pora perestat’ boyatsya Bratyev-musulman?” (Is It Time for Russia to Stop Being Afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?), KM.ru, June 25, 2012, www.km.ru/v-mire/2012/06/25/mezhdunarodnye-otnosheniya/rossii-pora-perestat-boyatsya-bratev-musulman.

[10] Eldar Kasaev, “Rossiya i Egipet” (Russia and Egypt), Open Economy, Expert Portal of the Higher School of Economics, www.opec.ru/1297965.html.

[11] “Narod Yemena—za peredachu vlasti mirnym i zakonnym putyom” (Yemen’s People Seeks a Peaceful and Lawful Transition of Power), interview with Yemen’s Ambassador to Russia Mohammed Saleh al-Hilali, Kommersant.ru, March 29, 2011.

[12] “Prezident Yemena soglasilsya peredat vlast’ premyeru” (Yemen’s President Agreed to Hand Power to the Prime Minister), Kommersant.ru, April 11, 2011.