Dr. Harald Malmgren brought this piece to our attention which looks at the evolving role of Russia in the Middle East and looks at how that evolution fits into the broader approach which the Obama Administration has taken with regard to the Middle East.
In an article by Michael Doran published in Mosaic entitled “Our Man in Moscow,” the question of how the Russians and Iranian resurgence is part of the Obama strategy is the focus of attention.
…..The Obama strategy has indeed been shaping the Syria crisis in myriad unseen ways, one of the most important of which has been to clear the path for Vladimir Putin to play a major role in the Middle East and, by extension, to present himself as the savior of Europe.
The rehabilitation of Putin, that is to say, is not occurring during a fit of absentmindedness in the White House; it is a direct consequence of Obama’s vision of global order.
To see why this is so, how it got to be so, and why, barring a truly radical reconsideration, it will almost certainly remain so for the rest of Obama’s tenure, we need to spool back all the way to the first months of his first term and then follow the threads forward to the multi-dimensional crisis now facing America in the Middle East—a crisis in whose unfolding the president’s strategy has played a deep and calamitous role.
In the beginning was the Russian “reset”: the effort, launched two months into the president’s first term, to repair relations between Washington and Moscow.
Those relations, Obama and his national-security team believed, had severely deteriorated under the presidency of George W. Bush, but a determined effort to start afresh would generate significant benefits in many areas of American concern. Throughout his first term, Obama and his inner circle regarded the Russian reset as a diplomatic masterstroke.
Then, in the second term, came the Snowden affair. In the summer of 2013, the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden stole and exposed details about the U.S. government’s surveillance programs and then managed to escape to Russia, where he eventually received asylum. It is an open question whether Russia had manipulated Snowden as he planned and executed his operation or was simply giving safe haven to a fugitive.
Either way, the incident damaged both the vaunted claims for the reset and America’s national security.
Things took an even worse turn in February 2014 when protestors in Ukraine overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych for scuttling an association agreement between that country and the European Union.
Yanukovych had acted in obvious deference to Putin, who as Russia’s president had strongly opposed Ukraine’s turn toward Europe. Following Yanukovych’s removal, Putin moved quickly to annex Crimea, an autonomous Ukrainian republic, and to foment unrest in eastern Ukraine, sparking a war between pro-Russian insurgents and the new government in Kiev.
From day one in the White House, Obama set out to create a new order: a club of nations that would work together to stabilize the Middle East. Central to that vision was Putin.
When Obama responded to Putin’s aggressive conduct by imposing sanctions on Russia, commentators were led to pronounce the reset a complete failure.
Yet the president, for his part, seems never to have skipped a beat. In his thinking, the reset was always intimately bound up with what he considered to be his greatest strategic challenge: namely, ending old wars and avoiding new ones.
In the Middle East, the old balance of power, resting as it did on the primacy of American military might, seemed to Obama like an invitation to never-ending conflict.
Needed instead was a new regional order—one that, beyond enabling a president to pull American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, would preclude the necessity of ever having to send them back in.
From day one in the White House, therefore, Obama aimed to create that new order.
His idea was a concert system: a club of nations that, united in their enmity to Sunni Islamic radicalism, would work together to stabilize the region by self-consciously maintaining a balance of power among themselves.
And central to that vision was Putin, who in Obama’s mind had been antagonized by the Bush administration’s war on terror and its foolish devotion to democracy promotion: policies that had caused Russia to react by withholding cooperation on matters of obvious mutual benefit like defeating al-Qaeda and containing Sunni radicalism.
The Russian reset had been Obama’s way of inviting Putin to join the new Middle East concert as a founding member.
To unlock the benefits of shared interest, America would take a step back and encourage Russia to take a step forward. Whatever obstacles Russian behavior might present along the way, the fundamental soundness of the strategy was not in question.
There were others to bring in as well—most notably, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Of course, in the midst of the controversy over Tehran’s nuclear program, it was impossible simply to issue an Iranian “reset.” But, the president’s thinking went, perhaps that controversy could be moved to one side or, rather, be made a means to a larger end.
Attaining an agreement on Iran’s nuclear ambitions—the prerequisite for any American opening to the regime in Tehran—would thus also become an avenue toward the prospect of Iran’s joining the envisioned concert system.
The Russian reset and the Iranian nuclear negotiations were thus two bright crimson threads in a single tapestry, and so they remain today.
For obvious reasons, the president has never described this vision in full; the American public, and America’s traditional allies in the Middle East, deeply distrust both Russia and Iran.
Instead, he has proceeded step by step, justifying each new step as an ad-hoc response to immediate developments while keeping his eye firmly fixed on the final goal…..
That’s where Syria comes in, and where the threads begin to merge.
A country of vital importance to both Russia and Iran (and of limited importance to America), Syria offered opportunities for showcasing Obama’s respect for Russian and Iranian interests. …..
For the rest of the article see the following:
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