Emile Simpson, Foreign Policy

In his masterful account Strategy: A History, Sir
Lawrence Freedman defines strategy as “the art of creating
power.” This is a useful lens through which to consider one of
this year’s key geopolitical trends: Russia’s return to the
Middle East.

Apart from its close ties to the Syrian regime, which date back
to the 1970s, Moscow has had no substantial role in the Middle
East since 1972, when President Anwar Sadat kicked Soviet
advisors out of Egypt.

Why return now? At a general level, it’s clear that Russian
President Vladimir Putin wants to challenge the notion of a
U.S.-led world order and encourage the return to a multipolar
one, though there are certain self-imposed constraints on his
ambitions.

Although he has intervened in Georgia and Ukraine, he doesn’t
seem willing to start a wider war by attacking any Eastern
European states that are already members of NATO. In the Middle
East, however, Putin has a theater to undermine Western
influence, and to create power for himself, without the risk of
triggering a war with the West.

As any demagogue knows, one way to create power out of nothing is
to find a division and then exploit it. In the Middle
East, the fundamental division Russia has exploited is the one
between the West’s aversion to Islamists, on the one hand, and
human rights abuses on the other. The conflict between these aims
often produces equivocation in Western foreign policy. It also
opens up political space where Russia can operate by investing in
repression and discounting democracy.

Moscow unequivocally supports the current authoritarian regimes
in Damascus, Cairo, and Tobruk, which it portrays as bulwarks
against the spread of radical Islam. In Egypt, Putin has
consistently backed President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s actions
against the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, in the face of
widespread evidence of repressive tactics by his
military government.

Vladimir Putin and Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi
REUTERS/Alexei
Druzhinin

Since 2013, Russia has stepped in to provide arms to the Egyptian
government, exploiting U.S. reluctance to provide military
hardware that could be used for domestic political repression.
Although Egypt continues to depend on much greater levels of
financial support from Washington than from Moscow, this action
exemplifies Russia’s strategy for exploiting any seam between the
United States and its regional allies when Washington equivocates
between security and human rights.

We see the same thing in Libya and Syria, where Russia does not
contend with an established U.S. partner. In Syria, despite human
rights atrocities by the Syrian government that have attracted
Western scorn, the West has not been able to explain how getting
rid of Bashar al-Assad’s regime would improve the country’s
security, since that could lead to a rise in Islamist anarchy.

Putin has exploited this gap by unreservedly backing Assad,
leaving the West arguing for a gradual “transition” away from the
Syrian president. And that further boosts the influence of Russia
and Iran, the only countries with the leverage to initiate any
such transition.

As for Libya, the United States is invested in the U.N.-backed
Government of National Accord, based out of Tripoli, which seeks
to unify a divided country. The problem is that the separatist
government in Tobruk in eastern Libya, which is supported by
Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, has not agreed to this
merger.

Sensing an opportunity to get between the United States and two
traditional allies (Egypt and the UAE), while nominally
supporting the official U.N. process, Russia has funneled arms,
likely via Serbia and Belarus, to the
forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who supports the Tobruk
government.

Then-General
Khalifa Haftar speaks during a news conference at a sports club
in Abyar
Thomson
Reuters

And following Haftar’s successful takeover of the oil terminals
in Libya’s Sirte basin over the last two months, and his hard
line against Islamist groups in Benghazi, the West currently
appears to have accepted the reality — and, to an extent, the
necessity — of his power and, by extension, Russia’s influence in
Libya.

Much the same could be said about Putin’s surprise diplomatic
volte-face toward Turkey. Again sensing an opportunity to chip
away at the NATO alliance, after the attempted coup against
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July, Putin invited the Turkish
leader to Moscow.

Russian sanctions imposed after the downing of a Russian fighter
jet in Syria last year were lifted, and the West now has to deal
with the tricky situation of a NATO member whose president’s
political philosophy has more in common with Putin’s than the
democratic values NATO is supposed to protect.

Though Putin has tried to insert himself into several other areas
of Middle Eastern politics this year, we should not exaggerate
his influence. Recall for example that the propaganda
value the Russians attached to a Syria bombing raid from an
Iranian base in August irritated Tehran, and the Russians were
kicked off the base three days
later.

Russia’s
President Vladimir Putin (L) and Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan attend a news conference in Istanbul December 3,
2012.
Murad
Sezer/Reuters

Likewise, Putin’s attempt to carve out a role in the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process this year, which appears
primarily designed to challenge the United States as the key
broker, is not likely to result in any breakthrough.

So is Putin a strategic mastermind or a reckless gambler? The
reality is more prosaic. Yes, Russia has made diplomatic gains
this year, notably in eastern Libya and Turkey, and has propped
up Assad, but this has come at serious long-term economic cost to
Russia.

As any demagogue knows, the only way to maintain power generated
out of nothing through division is to keep stoking the flames of
perpetual conflict upon which these divisions depend. But when
you make a perpetual enemy out of the West, you can’t be
surprised when you seem to be perpetually on the receiving end of
economic sanctions and a general wariness by Western firms to
invest in your country.

It’s possible that Putin believed his actions in the Middle East
would give him leverage to bargain sanctions away, despite the
fact that Ukrainian and Syrian sanctions are not formally linked.
But it’s more realistic to assume that Putin’s encouragement of a
state of perpetual conflict with the West makes a relaxation of
sanctions unlikely in the near term, especially if Hillary
Clinton enters the White House.

If anything, Putin has boxed Russia into a position where it must
increasingly orient its economy toward China, and away from the
West, which gives Beijing considerable leverage over Moscow.

It’s also important to note the role of deception and bluff in
Russian strategy. This is a way of generating power out of
nothing, but it’s a duplicitous kind of power that in the long
run destroys one’s credibility.

Take for example Russia’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Despite
being on different sides of the Syrian civil war, Putin has
managed to bring Riyadh into its diplomatic orbit through
cooperation on oil policy, given how both Saudi-led OPEC states
and Russia need substantially higher prices for government
budgets to break even.

Moscow has voiced commitment to such cooperation, and the Saudis
appear to have bought into this assurance — for without it,
Russia could simply gobble up much of any market share conceded
by a Saudi production cut. But Riyadh will almost certainly lose
out in any such deal. Last month, Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russian
state-controlled oil company Rosneft, said his company would not
take part in any such cut, implicitly contradicting Putin.

Russia seems to want to get the Saudis to sign on to a deal
Moscow has no real intention of supporting. But it’s hard to see
how long Putin can trick them into doing the heavy lifting. In
the short term, the official announcement of an OPEC-Russia oil
production deal, which is expected to come this month, will
temporarily lift prices. But in the long term, when the deal
breaks down, as it must, it will erode Putin’s credibility with
Riyadh and OPEC.

Gauging the success of Putin’s strategy really depends on the
time frame: In 2016, Russia is up in the Middle East; in the
longer term, the damage he has done to the Russian economy by
breaking with the West will outweigh the value of an alliance
with the likes of eastern Libya or even perhaps Turkey. Already
battered by low oil prices,
the Russian economy can hardly afford to be unplugged from
Western capital markets and investment.

But maybe Russian international success is entirely the wrong way
of thinking about what Putin gains from a strategy of perpetual
conflict. Strategy might be the art of creating power, but the
power the strategist is most interested in might be at home.
Perpetual conflict abroad clearly helps rally popular support
among Russians to keep Putin entrenched in the Kremlin, even as
his country rots around him.

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