Russia is breaking through to the South and East

    The Ukrainian crisis has ended the era of strategic partnership between Russia and the West
    access_time23 May 2022
    print 23 5 2022
     

     

    Assessment of the situation.

    The Ukraine crisis has ended the era of strategic partnership between Russia and the European Union, and, it seems, with the West in general. Russia is beginning to pivot eastward, a process that could take decades to complete. The idea of a greater Eurasia emerged, and the need to increase cooperation and cooperation with fast-growing markets in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and South Asia and through them to reunite the large integration space, including with the western part of Eurasia, was outlined.

    Now we are talking about the long-term perspective. Now we have to abandon the idea of strategic partnership in the European direction, to get out of the habit of the fact that the EU was the main trading partner of Russia and was significantly ahead of all other contenders for this role. In the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century, Moscow's strategy and economic component were based on the European policy vector. Until recently, despite sanctions and counter-sanctions, more than 40% of Russia's trade turnover was tied to 28 EU countries.

    Now they are talking about geopolitical risks. In fact, the country is beginning a revolutionary restructuring of a significant part of business chains and a change in the partner vector from the west to the east. One can even say to China.

    Indeed, over the past two decades, the Chinese economy has become one of the most powerful economies on the planet, and it is developing both intensively and extensively. In other words, the quality of Chinese products has become sufficiently high to be considered as a completely adequate replacement for Western ones.

    At the same time, China is conducting a powerful economic expansion and is keenly interested in expanding the sales market. It is believed that Russia needs to take advantage of the opportunities that are opening up, and that economic reorientation in this direction will allow it to gradually (and perhaps even quite quickly) resolve the consequences of Western sanctions.

    But not only that. The uniqueness of the situation is that, perhaps, the only region in the world where Russia is a leading and sought-after player is the Middle East, which opens up significant opportunities for it. This is due to the following objective factors: firstly, the dynamics of the development of production clusters in East and South Asia and their need for export of products.

    The flow of cargo from South and East Asia to Europe is steadily increasing every year. If transportation from East Asia does not directly affect it, then the situation with South Asia is different. The North-South corridor, which connects the Russian coast of the Baltic Sea with the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on the Indian Ocean coast, occupies a central place.

    Then – a short sea route to the Indian port of Mumbai, Pakistani Karachi, ports of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and ASEAN countries. Currently, the journey from the south of Iran to the suburbs of St. Petersburg takes less than 20 days, plus from 2 to 5 days to various ports in South Asia. Iran and Russia, as transit countries, play a key role in this project.

    Secondly, Iran, as well as other countries in the region, including Turkey, can themselves act as development clusters, conduct both bilateral and multilateral multidisciplinary cooperation, implement their own and common infrastructure and other communication projects, bringing them to the developing transcontinental networks, creating a synergistic effect.

    But so far, with obvious successes and prospects for Russia's further advancement in the Middle East, it is only taking its first steps in this direction. At the same time, the overall political and military weight in the region seems to be temporarily declining in Western politics. This is one of the important features of the developing situation, which creates additional opportunities for Russian politics there.

    The third feature is that this policy will take place against the backdrop of a growing confrontation with the West, which is also fraught with the emergence of certain new burdens for the Russian strategy, if Moscow fails to maintain the current policy of active, constructive, but generally equidistant, flexible, creative involvement in unraveling the tangle of regional problems. Because the threads from this tangle stretch in all directions and largely determine the state of security and the level of stability and opportunities for economic development.

     

    Problem statement.

    In the autumn of 2020, the 44-day second Karabakh war began, which changed the political and military balance of power in Transcaucasia. Given how quickly and powerfully the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict resumed after a 26-year freeze, the results of this war, especially for Armenia, were shocking.

    The Russia-Azerbaijan-Armenia trilateral peace agreement, signed on November 9, 2020, not only returned the previously lost areas to Azerbaijan's control, but also recorded the parties' desire to unblock all regional communications with access through Transcaucasia, primarily to Turkey, outlined a course for promoting economic cooperation projects between the parties, developing transport and other communications both along the line of both north-south and east-west. From a rational point of view, this is the right approach. This is how Russia's new goal-setting in the region was defined, with a defining reference to the Middle East.

    It wasn't an accident. After the collapse of the USSR, the post-Soviet space, represented by the Transcaucasian states, moved further away from Russia and gradually joined the Middle East region - with the prospect of becoming part of it. This fact has guided Russian policy towards finding more appropriate approaches to its Transcaucasian neighbours - in the broader Middle East, rather than in the post-Soviet or Russian-Western context.

    The goal is outlined: to build a line for restoring economic cooperation between the parties to the conflict and developing logistics links along the North–South axis with an active policy towards Armenia, Azerbaijan, as well as Turkey and Iran. At the same time, Moscow indirectly recognised Ankara's presence in Transcaucasia.

    Turkey took the initiative to create a regional platform "3+3" (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, Turkey, Iran). It provides for the participation of these countries in the creation of a regional security system, but without the participation of the United States and the EU. Tbilisi was not satisfied with this position, it refused to join the initiative, offering instead the format of the Georgia- Azerbaijan-Armenia troika (without Russia) or the "1+6" – the United States + Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria, which allegedly more corresponds to Tbilisi's views on itself as a European and pro-Western country.

    It is not known whether the agreements that were reached in the Russia-Azerbaijan-Armenia triangle following the second Karabakh war, especially in terms of unblocking regional communications, will be integrated with the agreements proposed in this format. So far, only Russia's new geopolitical game is striking, and Ankara's desire to somehow gain a foothold in the Transcaucasus.

    In a situation where the West is blocking Russia's communication opportunities with Europe due to the Ukrainian crisis, Moscow views the prospects for entering the markets of the Middle East and the Eurasian Economic Union differently. It can potentially become the main engine of the 3+3 project, playing its own "Transcaucasian solitaire" to expand the set of tools for influencing events in this region.

    Perhaps that is why Russia and Turkey carefully comment on the position of Tbilisi, do not burn "bridges", while Georgia itself does not say much in this direction.

    So the beginning of the new Transcaucasian "Big Game", which will be continued in Turkey in the "3+3" format, is still an equation with many unknowns. But the number of "unknowns" will decrease. As a result of its return to the political scene in the Middle East, Russia has regained not only the status of an influential external player in one of the key regions of the world, but also a global player, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

    This comeback was mainly due to Moscow's effective military intervention in Syria, but the restoration of Russia's position has not been limited to Syria alone, but has spanned the entire Middle East, and its newfound influence has both political, psychological, military and economic aspects.

    Finally, Russia's new role in the Middle East is particularly important in implementing Moscow's new strategy, which is designed to ensure Russia's status as a world power that forms the basis of Greater Eurasia. So the Syrian move and the Transcaucasian move converged at one point.

    Today, it is obvious that these calculations were largely justified. The military campaign in Syria has paved the way for Russia to return to the global geopolitical arena outside the former Soviet space, where Moscow's activity has been largely confined for the past quarter-century. Russia has achieved its most important goal: the West has de facto recognised the current status quo.

    In fact, Moscow has formed temporary military, economic, and diplomatic alliances with Damascus, Tehran, Ankara, Baghdad, and Amman. On closer inspection, it is possible to conclude that the Middle East has become the scene for a geopolitical breakthrough by Moscow, which will have much larger consequences.

    In addition, it is important to note that this happened at a time when Moscow was forced to admit the failure of two of its main strategies after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Russia's integration into the community of Western countries, as well as the internal integration of its former Soviet near abroad.

    Instead of positioning Russia as part of the Euro-Atlantic world (because the mutual estrangement between Russia and the West is so obvious) or as the cornerstone of a unified post-Soviet space (because it cannot be unified), the new strategy emphasises its true geographical position - in the north of the great Eurasian continent.

    The concept of the North, which the RUSSTRAT Institute has written about many times, provides Moscow with a 360-degree view that includes the countries of Europe, East, Central and South Asia and the Middle East, which form a single vast region washed by the Atlantic in the West, the Arctic Ocean in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the East and the Indian Ocean in the south. In this scheme, the Middle East is both a source of possible security threats and economic opportunities.

    Moscow's policy towards both the Middle East as a whole and individual states in Transcaucasia is becoming more balanced. The need to choose is primarily due to new trends and profound transformations taking place in the region, where new "centres of power" are emerging - Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

    Therefore, Russia's goals in this region are taking on new dimensions. Western sanctions are pushing it to find new economic partners, moves and use the growing disillusionment of Arabs in the United States, and its current actions in the region are unparalleled.

     

    Conclusions.

    Now that the Kremlin has set out to achieve the recognition of Russia as a global great power, Moscow is returning to a geographically close, hydrocarbon-rich region. In 2015, with the beginning of the military operation in Syria and the accompanying Russian-American diplomatic actions, the Middle East has become a testing ground for Russia to test its ability to return to the global stage as a leading player.

    Moscow's policy is based on geopolitical incentives that have deep historical roots. For more than two hundred years, the main goal of Russian foreign policy has been to oust the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans and the Black Sea region. Persia was effectively divided into Russian and British zones of influence. Russia's entry into the First World War was primarily due to its claims to Constantinople and the Bosphorus with the Dardanelles.

    The Soviet Union's active involvement in Middle East politics began in the mid-1950s and quickly developed into a tense rivalry with the United States. Some Arab countries, primarily Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, South Yemen, and Syria, were for some time part of the Soviet orbit of influence and were de facto allies of the USSR in the Cold War.

    But now the geopolitical map of Moscow's interests looks somewhat different. Turkey and Iran take the first positions. After the Cold War, Russia and Turkey, for all their differences, made an impressive transition from centuries of hostility to mutual respect and understanding. Russia and Iran began to treat each other with greater political confidence.

    At the same time, Russia is able to negotiate constructively with Iran, in particular, regarding the division of influence in the post-Soviet space, does not consider either Hezbollah or Hamas terrorist organisations, and in the Syrian war it was actually an ally of Iran. However, Moscow is officially neutral to the prevailing ideology in Iran, a regional strategy built on the confrontation between Shiites and Sunnis, as well as between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

    Russia has no permanent allies in the Middle East: unlike the United States, which traditionally supports Israel, Moscow acts flexibly depending on specific situations and conditions, based on its own interests in the region or global goals.

    Russia is trying to create an image of a pragmatic, non-ideological, reliable, sophisticated and sufficiently strong player in the region, capable of influencing the situation both by diplomatic, economic, and military methods. Russia, as a major world power, is ready to offer partnership to all those who share the concept of a polycentric world. So far, it’s got a lot going for it.

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