University of Helsinki

Russia′s Middle East policies (Russlands Nahostpolitik)

by

 Jan Michael Kotowski

Introduction 1

Analysis 2

1. The Yelzin Era 2

1.1 The Kozyrev Years 2
1.2 The Primakov Years 3

2. The Putin Era 6

3. Russia′s relations to Iran 7

4. Russia′s relations to Iraq 8

5. Russia′s relations to Israel 9

6. Russia′s relation to Turkey 11

7. Russia′s relations to other Middle Eastern states 12

Conclusions 13

Bibliography 14

Introduction

This Essay is supposed to analyse the Russian Federation′s foreign policies towards the Middle East. The first part of the essay has to be understood as a general historical survey over these policies. This survey will start with the Yeltsin government and a comparison of its two Foreign Ministers′ policies, namely Andrei Kozyrev and Yevgeny Primakov. Afterwards, more current developments under the Putin government will be discussed.

Subsequently, Russia′s specific relations towards the different states of the Middle East, whether they are based on military involvement, economic interests or on geopolitics, will be examined, whereby this paper will focus on Iran, Iraq, Israel and Turkey. The relations towards the other Middle Eastern states will be described more briefly.

A general aim of this essay is to show up a major shift from former Soviet to present Russian Middle Eastern policies. As for Russia, Transcaucasia and Central Asia are in nowadays the most important geopolitical regions in the world, only those Middle Eastern states that have borders and influence in these regions (like Iran and Turkey) are regarded as being of crucial importance for Russia. This of course does not mean, that for example the Gulf States have suddenly become uninteresting, but they play a smaller role in foreign policies.

In Soviet times, the core-region of the Middle East, meaning Israel and its neighbouring Arab countries, had been seen as a very important field to wage the ideological war against the USA (the USSR did this in form of supporting the Arabian states). In present times Russia is accepting the U.S. leadership in this region and only exercising "rhetorical politics". Nevertheless, Russia′s relations towards Israel are multifaceted and very contradictorily and its Arab neighbours are of a certain economic significance, mainly because of arms sales.

Another interesting aspect of this essay are the Russian-U.S.-relations that are touched in nearly all aspects of Russia′s Middle Eastern policies. This can either take place in form of cooperation (e.g. the Arab-Israeli-peace process) or in form of conflict (e.g. the relations to Iran and Iraq).

In this context one thing has always to be kept in mind: Russian foreign policies are always formulated in a very normative way (this doesn′t rule out the possibility of also acting pragmatic) and tend not to be very much implemented in reality. Russia may have now, after nearly a whole decade, accepted that is not a superpower anymore, but it still feels to have the entitlement of, if not a great, at least a power of special importance, with large influence spheres dominated by itself. Some Middle Eastern states are regarded as being an important helping-tool in this context.

Analysis

1. The Yelzin Era

1.1 The Kozyrev Years

Andrei Kozyrev’s first stage of Middle Eastern policies can in general be described as having been nearly completely pro American. In the 1991 Gulf War the collapsing Soviet Union was not part of the international alliance against Saddam Hussein and tried to pursue at least an own way of politics towards the Iraqi regime. But already in 1992 Russia, the USSR successor state, was taking part in enforcing sanctions against Baghdad. Furthermore, Russia was also backing up sanctions against Libya and encouraging the Arab-Israeli peace process. The only case in which Russia’s policies really differed from American standpoints was the delivery of arms to Iran. ¹

In the following years Russian President Boris Yelzin was moving further and further to the right of the political spectrum. This happened mainly because of the growing pressure and influence from two factions inside the Russian parliament: The centrist “Eurasianists”, and communist as well as nationalist hard-liners from the right. Both groups wanted better relations with Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and thought of Middle Eastern policies that would be completely different from the American ones.²

[...]

1 See Robert O. Freedman, “Russian Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Kozyrev Legacy”, Caspian Crossroads Magazine, Volume1, Issue No.4, Winter 1996, p.1. ( http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/usazerb/144.htm ), 1/24/2002.

2 Ibid., p.2