A poster of a smiling Vladimir Putin has the Arabic greeting “Marhaba” written above his face as Egyptian and Russian flags fly in the background. Photo: Mohamed El-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images
Part I: The Wars that Fuel Putin’s Ambitions
On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To many, this was a shocking development and an unthinkable escalation.
Others, however, were surprised that such an action under the leadership of Putin would be shocking. Had we forgotten the brutality of the Second Chechen War that lasted from 1999 to 2009? Did we not remember the Russo-Georgian War of 2008? Indeed, we have to recall the invasion and subsequent annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 that started the Russo-Ukrainian war that continues to this day.
These events in and of themselves show a consistent trend of Putin’s clinging to countries historically under the Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. But in the subsequent years since the annexation of Crimea, Russia has been steadily building power in another region entirely: the Middle East.
But why has Russia turned its sights to the Middle East at a time when American foreign policy has shifted distinctly eastward to China? What are Putin’s ambitions in the region, and how has that fueled the current crisis in Ukraine?
While speaking at the Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama slammed Russia as a "regional power" losing strength.
Taking Ground
Russian recovery in the wake of the Soviet collapse was slow. Even now, the Russian economy produces a mere 3 percent of the global GDP. In the 2012 presidential debates, it is perhaps understandable that Obama ridiculed Romney for stating that the United State’s number one geopolitical foe was Russia, saying, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back…the Cold War has been over for twenty years.” When giving a speech later in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, President Obama would also call Russia a mere “regional power” that was “weak.”
The “American moment” from the 90s to the mid-2010s where the United States enjoyed being a lone superpower fed a complacency that led to a profound underestimation of the once and potentially future Soviet Union. In Putin’s first term in the Russian presidency, strong cooperation marked American-Russian relations. However, when Putin came back for his second round as president, he implemented a different and more assertive Russian foreign policy. Putin did not suffer from the same complacency that his American counterparts did. After victories in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea, he was ready to test and build new Russian power in the upheaval of the Arab Spring.
Under the presidencies of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, there has been a push to divest the United States of Middle Eastern involvement and shift focus to China and the Pacific Rim. This policy has enjoyed broad public consensus. To many Americans, the ongoing US military engagements, intractable, complicated problems, and rising energy self-sufficiency made the region less interesting than partnering with dynamic East Asian economies and countering Chinese aggression.
However, this hard pivot to Asia has been misguided in many ways. All those dynamic Asian economies that the US would like to partner with are almost entirely dependent on Middle Eastern oil. US partners in Asia fear that if the US rebalances away from the Middle East, they will be vulnerable to upheavals and insecure in their energy sources. All this, ironically, would leave them more susceptible to Chinese pressure, making the focus on Asia at the expense of the Middle East self-defeating.
China and Russia have not missed this strategic opening. While China has embedded itself into regional infrastructure projects by building factories, ports, and telecommunications systems, Russia has focused more on energy partnerships, arms sales, and low-risk, high-impact military interventions.
The Great Syrian Shift
After Western sanctions targeting Russia were levied in response to the Crimean annexation, Russia pivoted to the Middle East. The sanctions and condescension from the West were meant as a tool to sequester and shame Russia, and Russia needed to prove that it was a global power and impossible to isolate.
Russia didn’t have to look far to flex its muscles. The only thing that separates Russia from the Middle East is the Black and Caspian Seas, and the region seemed ripe with opportunity.
Russia was already concerned about the Arab Spring and the movement’s general upheaval. It smacked of the “color revolutions” of post-Soviet countries such as Ukraine, which sought to topple authoritarian governments in favor of pro-Western democracies. In short, the Arab Spring seemed to strongly suggest Western manipulation to Russian and Chinese observers.
While suspecting that regional instability was the result of American machinations, Western de-prioritization of the Middle East left openings for Russian business investments. American investments and interventions often came with human rights and democratic strings attached, but the Russians were not so high-minded. They could offer themselves as alternative business brokers who didn’t make partners jump through ideological hoops like the Americans often did. Not only did this open up a new market for Russian arms sales and energy cooperation, but it also made Russia less dependent on Western markets, lessening the impact of sanctions.
But more than anything, the Russians wanted to present themselves as reliable and perhaps, superior allies compared to Americans. And so, after many years of supporting the Assad family, the Russians joined the Syrian Civil War in 2015 and reversed what might have been a successful overthrow of the regime. The US and the anti-ISIS coalition were already in Syria fighting ISIS, and Israel was fighting Iranian proxy militias. They were forced to open deconfliction channels to avoid dangerous incidents in the skies, lessening Russian isolation on the international level. The Syrian government, which had been fighting a losing war on several fronts, took back control of 70-80 percent of the country, thanks mainly to Russian airpower. Damascus gave Russia two bases in Syria for the next half-century, cementing Russian presence in the region.
Though the war in Syria was rife with human rights abuses and war crimes, Russia’s involvement has been overwhelmingly positive for its global image as a powerful actor. Many on the world stage thought that entering the war in Syria would mean becoming embroiled in yet another endless quagmire on the level of Iraq or Afghanistan. Still, Russia emerged from Syria transformed as a world power to be reckoned with and a new kingmaker in the region.
After Russia’s success in Syria, Moscow looked for new areas for low-cost, high-reward interventions in the Middle East, and Libya fit the bill.
In the Libyan Civil War, however, Russia is hedging its bets. Rather than the traditional “boots on the ground” that marked the Syrian intervention, Russia sent the Wagner mercenary group to promote Russian goals in Libya. Russia has maintained a channel of communication with the Government of National Accord in the west and General Haftar in the east. Eventually, Russia wants to reestablish economic opportunities in Libya that they lost after the fall of Gadaffi. Though not as apparent as its Syrian intervention, the Libyan Civil War has been profoundly affected by Russia’s indirect involvement in playing both sides and co-opting the conflict to fight a cold proxy-war with western powers.
Fuel for a Neo-Soviet Union
After the relative military success of its Syrian and Libyan interventions, Russia proved to be an ally willing to apply strong power to keep its partner in control. It has successfully brokered many arms and energy deals and postured itself as an attractive alternative to those disaffected by pro-Western forces across the region. It has soldiers fighting in actual theaters of conflict and gaining battle experience. It worked at building partnerships that would insulate it from Western sanctions.
So, after the general chaos that accompanied the global Coronavirus pandemic in the early 2020s, Putin saw the opportunity to finish what he had begun in the 2000s—an expansion of Russian influence and power, the halting and reversing of NATO’s eastward expansion, and ultimately the realization of a Neo-Soviet reabsorption of Ukraine.
In a speech made on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin made his grievances and intentions clear: Western powers were encroaching on Russian territory and violating Russian security. Russia would be “forced” to preemptively strike Ukraine to protect Russia’s supposed imperial hold over Eastern Europe. Though Ukraine was caught in the crosshairs of these two powers, it was clear from Putin’s speech that his actual grievance is primarily with NATO and the West. After the shame and relative powerlessness following the Soviet collapse, Russia went to the Middle East to be transformed. They gained newfound confidence and reemerged to confront NATO on equal terms. Putin revived the Cold War that President Obama had so casually laughed at ten years ago and shocked the world by eschewing any attempts at diplomatic solutions in favor of brute militarism.
Other countries across the globe are watching events in Ukraine go down with varying reactions. Strong allies of the West like Israel are nervous that they might become a new Ukraine, where the West is deterred from intervention in the face of Russian threats. Countries like Iran, traditionally more aligned with Russia, is in the midst of negotiating a nuclear deal with the West. It sees what happens to countries like Ukraine who voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons for “security guarantees” from the international community, and are determined to not make the same mistake.
If the Russian tactics in Syria are anything to go by, Ukraine is in for a long and painful war. The West would do well to reassess how seriously it takes both its presence and influence (or lack thereof) in the Middle East as well as its estimation of Putin’s expansionist ambitions. By miscalculating the importance of both, we have set the stage for the tragedies we see today both across the Middle East and in Ukraine, and for future devastations across the globe.
