Russians, Americans and Middle East!

Shahzad Masood Roomi

The contours of Russian future policy towards the Middle East and the US were made clear by Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov’s, address to the UN annual session. He raised concerns over the current US policy against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and proposed a new inclusive and academic approach to address the problem.

“We propose to launch under the auspices of the UN Security Council an in-depth study on the extremist and terrorist threats in all their aspects across the MENA area. The integrated approach implies also that the longstanding conflicts should be examined, primarily between Arab nations and Israel."

He also pointed out longstanding issue of Palestine as the core reason behind the regional unrest.

“The absence of settlement of the Palestinian issue over several decades remains, as it is widely recognized as one of the main factors of instability in the region that helps the extremists to recruit more and more new Jihadists.”

 Most importantly, he raised some serious concerns over Obama’s new Syrian strategy against ISIS which rely on airstrikes and using local rebels against ISIS.

“We warned against a temptation to make allies with almost anybody who proclaimed himself an enemy of [Syrian President] Assad: be it Al Qaeda, Jabhat an Nusra and other ‘fellow travellers’ seeking the change of regime, including ISIS, which today is in the focus of our attention.”

Analysis:

This is something we don't often see from Russians. A diplomatic assault against the entire narrative of the US about ISIS. Washington never consulted with UN about attack on Syria and the reasons for not doing so are also obvious. In the presence of China and Russia, every move to seek a US planned military intervention would have vetoed. Reasons behind relying more on regional allies than on NATO are also obvious. The US and Europe don’t want to face any retaliatory actions by remnants of ISIS even if they succeeded in crushing the main body of this outfit. Apart from this obvious reason, inclusion of Islamic states is critical as it provides a moral and religious narrative in support of this fight against ISIS. Recent verdict by 100 top Muslim scholars is being consider a big moral victory for ongoing campaign against ISIS.

But still this military campaign is against the international law and norms as it has no UN mandate and is pursued under a pretext which is often challenged on the geopolitical grounds. This argument that whatever is transpiring in the Middle East, including the rise of entities like ISIS, is manifestation of geopolitical maneuvering has its own merits. According to the critics of the US policy, this is where the Russians are taking moral high ground in a bid to make the legitimacy of the entire anti-ISIS campaign questionable particularly after Obama's over-militarized strategy for Syria.

For now, the US and allies have a strong pretext of attacking ISIS in Syria and Russians are not in position to do anything more than using diplomatic means and international relations norms to question the legitimacy of Obama's new war in Syria. But Washington has already played that card preemptively "denouncing Russian aggression in Europe" which led Russians to consider cease fire in Ukraine and now Moscow is trying to rectify her mistakes but at the same time cannot allow NATO to expand too close to its borders. But that concern is not immediate one. Till Russia and Ukraine reach a settlement there would be no serious challenge to the US campaign in Syria. The scenario is changing fast in Ukraine as an initial cease fire has been reached which includes formation of a buffer zone. Question is, what if this new US campaign in Syria turns into another protracted war just like Iraq and Afghanistan something accepted even by the State Department as real possibility? What if Russia give her Ukrainian adventure a quick closure?

If that happens one thing is certain that Russian response to American interventionism against Moscow's allies would not remain confined to diplomatic and media overtures. From recent statements of Russian foreign minister it looks like Moscow is looking for a closure in Ukraine and European sanctions against Russia are also driving Moscow to look for a settlement in Ukraine. Despite these sanctions, Russians are well aware of the limitations of NATO. Almost entire Eastern Europe depend onRussian energy supplies particularly in winters. US cannot push too far with sanctions against Russia. This limits US diplomatic and political options against the Russian overtures. 

In 2012, The Economist, published following map showing the gas supply to Europe and it is self explaining about how much Europe needs Russian gas supplies.

On the other hand, any prolonged war in the Middle East would dent the US narrative. Civilian casualties would escalate as Washington is going to rely too much on airstrikes, at least in initial stages of war. The US faced international embarrassment over killings of innocent civilians in FATA region of Pakistan despite the fact that all the governments in Islamabad actually never resisted the US drone strikes. In the presence of a hostile government in Syria, it would be even more challenging for the US and her Gulf allies to justify each and every air strike and still ending the war soon. Any attack on Syrian military infrastructure would complicate the problem further, a scenario Washington would like to avoid but not sure for how long. By looking at the strategic flux the region is going through, one thing is certain that the chaos in Middle East is certainly a manifestation of international geopolitics and is bound to be compounded in coming weeks and months!