With the race for the White House picking up steam, American eyes are focused squarely on the presidential race and who will be elected Barack Obama’s successor. So, too, has the Kremlin’s focus sharpened. Moscow knows its window of opportunity is limited. Barring a series of unprecedented events, the next president is likely to take a tougher line both with Moscow and in defense of American interests in the Middle East. If Russia is to secure its newfound position of strength in the region, its leaders know it must act quickly to shape the status quo on the ground to its advantage. The race toward that objective is on.
It has been hard to ignore the brazenness with which Russia has reasserted its lost Soviet-era influence in the Middle East since Barack Obama delivered his second inaugural address. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the West from trying.
In early 2014, Vladimir Putin became the first European leader to invade and annex neighboring territory since Joseph Stalin in 1945. The Western world’s boundless determination to preserve its placid existence was tested by the invasion of Ukraine, and the Kremlin discovered that the post-War order was far less important to the Atlantic Alliance than the commercial empire fueling its prosperity. The West’s fateful choice to allow Moscow certain latitude has proven disastrous.
In late 2013, Barack Obama leaned heavily on Moscow – already a partner of necessity in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program – to compel its ally in Damascus to surrender its stockpiles of chemical weapons in order to avert even “unbelievably small” retaliation over civilian massacres. The resulting deal failed to achieve the destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons nor did it avert war, but it did affirm Moscow’s role as patron of both the rogue regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and it legitimized Russia’s regional influence.
Calculating correctly that meager bleats of protest from Western capitals would be all that might accompany full-scale intervention in Syria, Russian ground forces and air assets inaugurated an expeditionary campaign in Syria last autumn. Moscow’s goal was two-fold: secure Bashar al-Assad’s faltering position and force Western-aligned nations out of theater. To that effect, Russia’s opening gambits in its new foreign war was to strike U.S.-backed rebel positions, expose CIA weapons depots and destroy them, shadow and harass Turkish fighters and American drones, and to hem the West’s anti-ISIS operating theater into an ever-shrinking space over Syria. Barack Obama assured his nation that America did not want a “proxy war,” even as new videos of U.S.-manufactured weaponry destroying Russian heavy armor popped up in online venues almost daily.
Russian intervention has been largely successful in securing Moscow’s interest in the region, but the fluidity of the multi-front war in Syria has rendered that achievement impermanent. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that, “without a political solution,” the United States has “little influence” over outcomes in Syria. Even as Russian warplanes pound rebel targets, destroy field hospitals and level mosques, it, too, has found its ability to shape the situation on the ground limited. With this mutual understanding, Russia is pressing ahead with that “political solution” the Times referenced.
At a meeting in Munich on Thursday, the Orwellian-named International Syria Support Group – which consists entirely of nations executing military strikes on the ground in or in the skies over Syria – gathered with the intention of seeking a ceasefire. The push for a negotiated settlement to the five-year-old hostilities in Syria comes at an advantageous time for Russia, as Assad’s forces have gained substantial ground against anti-regime insurgents. A ceasefire remains, however, unlikely. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two members of the Syria Support Group, are dedicated to destroying the Assad regime. Following the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkish forces in November, Turkey and Russian relations have rarely been worse. Moscow has made theatrical public overtures to rebel Kurdish factions in Syria’s North, which has frustrated leaders in Ankara wary of the Kurd’s independent streak. The Saudis, for their part, are determined not to miss an opportunity to roll back Iran’s growing influence in the region by tossing Assad’s bloody regime on history’s ash heap.
If this all sounds complex, it is. The bottom line is that there can be no peace while all parties to hostilities believe there is plenty of fighting left to do. But Russia has not limited its diplomatic influence to multilateral talks in which the United States is a participant. Moscow isn’t waiting around for an invitation to displace the United States from the region.
While the Obama administration bends over backwards to ingratiate itself with the Mullahs in Tehran — and to little effect, as Iran routinely humiliates its new partners in Washington — the Islamic Republic knows its bread is buttered in Moscow. Russia, meanwhile, has been making overtures to the region’s Sunni powers, which are deeply suspicious of Tehran’s influence in the region and are now leery toward their traditional United States ally. Russia has secured arms deals with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and has sought to guide Cairo into Russia’s anti-European Union competing economic trade zone, the Eurasian Economic Union. Russia has been engaged in high profile, bilateral negotiations with Saudi Arabian representatives regarding long-term economic and security cooperation. In January of 2015, Saudi representatives signed a “multifaceted” security cooperation agreement that was followed on with a sweeping joint counterterrorism agreement in October. Perhaps the most disturbing from the perspective of U.S. policy makers, however, has been Moscow’s overtures to the Iraqi government.
In October of last year, Iraqi officials revealed that a joint intelligence-sharing operation with Russia and Syria had yielded a trove of actionable information used in actions against ISIS. The revelation included the shocking detail that two Russian one-star generals were stationed in Baghdad and working closely with Iraqi officials. Today, as anti-ISIS coalition officials prepare for the siege and liberation of Mosul, Russia has launched a major initiative aimed at creating firmer bilateral ties between Baghdad and Moscow and displacing the United States from the nation it liberated 13 years ago.
“Frustrated with the pace and depth of the U.S.-led military campaign against the militants, Iraqi officials have said they would lean heavily on Russia in the struggle to defeat the Sunni Muslim jihadists,” Reuters reported in a dispatch on the 100 Russian government and business officials descending on Baghdad. For months, Iraqi officials have quietly signaled that Russian intervention against ISIS in Iraq would be a welcome prospect. The Pentagon curtly informed Baghdad that it would sacrifice its relationship and military cooperation with Washington if it agreed to allow Russian forces access to Northern Iraq. Iraqi sovereignty isn’t what it used to be; Turkish forces abruptly invaded Iraq as part of its anti-Kurdish operations in the region in December, and only partially withdrew them after an international uproar. Should Russia intervene in Iraq against ISIS with the tacit acceptance of Baghdad, American threats for retaliation would be exposed as hollow. The United States can no more afford to cede Iraq to Russia, ISIS, and Iran than it could to surrender Syria to those destabilizing forces, no matter how hard it tired.
America’s deteriorating position in the Middle East is wholly a creation of its own inept, halting, insecure approach to the maintenance of its interests in the region. Despite its military and economic challenges, Russian leaders are struggling with no such crisis of self-confidence. Russia is making the most of what’s left of the Obama administration. By the time the president leaves office, the next president will inherit a substantially weaker position in the region.
