• A necessary counterbalance  - Naim al Ashhab
The Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular lost a mighty strategic ally with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

• A view from Moscow  - Vitaly Naumkin
Relations with Turkey and Iran have contrasted sharply with relations with the Arab countries.

• Putin beneath the pyramids  - Jerzy Zdanowski
Moscow is still far from developing the capacity to counterbalance the US in Middle Eastern affairs.

A necessary counterbalance
 Naim al Ashhab

To evaluate modern Russian-Arab (including Palestinian) relations, it is worthwhile to take the October 1917 Revolution in Russia as a starting point. One of Lenin's first acts after taking power was to reveal to the world the text of the Sykes-Picot Treaty. Concluded in 1916 between the tripartite alliance of the United Kingdom, France and Tsarist Russia, the treaty intended to divide the Arab world among the three powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Lenin, however, declared the withdrawal of Russia from this conspiratorial treaty and denounced it.

In the event, however, the Arab world was then simply divided between the British and French victors and ruled under the mandate system. The governments of the new states in the Arab world were composed mainly of semi-feudal social strata. As an indication of their loyalty to the two dominating powers, the countries boycotted the Soviet Union, the successor of Tsarist Russia. The only exception was the state of Yemen, which, for different reasons, remained free from British and French domination. As a result, Yemen became the first Arab state to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

It was not until the end of World War II that a new qualitative era of Arab-Soviet relations was born. In 1946, the Soviet Union firmly supported, in the UN Security Council, the just demand of Syria and Lebanon for full independence from the French mandate.

In 1947, the British government took the Palestinian case to the UN General Assembly as a conflict between Arabs and Jews. By presenting the issue in this way, the British government was hoping to prolong its mandate in Palestine with a new resolution from the General Assembly. But the Soviet Union was pushing for a different solution.

In the special session that was held in April 1947 to discuss the Palestinian problem, the Soviet representative declared that the proper solution to the Palestinian problem was to terminate the British Mandate, to withdraw all the British troops, and to establish an independent democratic state for all the inhabitants of Palestine without any discrimination.

In this very critical period, however, not a single Arab official representative was ready to meet and consult with the Soviet representative due to British and American pressure, so instead, on November 29, 1947, the General Assembly adopted the partition plan with the support of the Soviet Union. The plan stipulated the termination of the British Mandate, the withdrawal of all foreign military forces and the establishment of two independent democratic states, with a united economy and one currency.

Soviet involvement in the region soon increased. After the Israeli aggression on Gaza in February 1955, which resulted in the killing of 29 Egyptian soldiers, Gamal Abdul Nasser resolved to find alternative sources of arms supplies, instead of relying on the western powers. The West, and especially the US, had then stipulated that in return for any arms supplies, Egypt must join western military pacts.

In the summer of 1955, Nasser thus took part in the non-aligned nations conference in Bandong, Indonesia and succeeded, with the help of Chinese Prime Minister Chou En Lai, to strike a non-conditional arms deal with Czechoslovakia. The deal was significant in that it was the first with an Arab country from outside the West. The Soviet Union soon stepped up to become a main supplier of military equipment to Arab states.

The immediate repercussions of this unprecedented arms deal, however, were stark. The World Bank, pressured by the US, withdrew its offer to help finance the construction of the Aswan Dam. In response, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, which was owned by British and French capital. This resulted in the tripartite aggression on Egypt in November 1956. Once again, the Soviet Union intervened and warned Great Britain, France and Israel that unless they stop the military operations against Egypt, they could become a target of Soviet ballistic missiles.

After the tripartite aggression had failed, the Soviet Union declared it's readiness to help Egypt build the Aswan Dam, and Soviet technological and material assistance deepened in several Arab states. Tens of thousands of Arab students received scholarships to study in the Soviet Union. Soviet-Arab relations developed rapidly on all fronts and reached a peak.

Palestinian-Soviet relations did not develop until after the Israeli aggression in June 1967. Nasser escorted Yasser Arafat and a PLO delegation to Moscow in 1968 and introduced them to the Soviet leadership. After that, the Palestinian-Soviet relationship developed independently.

In February 1985, however, Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan signed the so called "Amman Agreement" which was a joint attempt to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, through the American channel alone, following the Egyptian example of Anwar Sadat. Moscow considered this another serious blow to Soviet influence in the region, following the 1978 Camp David Accords, mediated by the US alone, and Palestinian-Soviet relations suffered their first major setback.

Warmth only returned to Palestinian-Soviet relations in the spring of 1987, when the 18th session of the Palestinian National Council held in Algiers cancelled the Amman Agreement, which had yielded no results. This cancellation paved the way to recovering the unity of the PLO and to resuming positive relations with the Soviets.

In this friendly atmosphere a high level Soviet-Palestinian coordinating committee was established to meet regularly. From the beginning, Mahmoud Abbas was the Palestinian representative on the committee.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, however, saw a dramatic decline in the role and influence of Russia in the region and vis-a-vis the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This minor Russian role has continued until today, even if Russia retains some influence as a member of the UN Security Council and of the Quartet.

There is no doubt the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular lost a mighty strategic ally with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even the conservative Arab rulers recognized that they lost their maneuvering margin and now are directly subject to the dictates of the remaining sole superpower.

The recent visit by Vladimir Putin to the Middle East indicates that Russia is still eager to recover its relations with the Arab world, even if gradually. From the Arab and Palestinian perspective recovering some of the weight Russia had in the Middle East would help balance, even if only partially, the biased policies of the US. It is worthwhile here to note that the first visit abroad of Abbas after he was elected president of the Palestinian Authority was to Moscow.- Published 16/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org

Naim al Ashhab is a former leader of the Palestinian Communist Party and a former member of the PLO’s National Council. He is now a writer and journalist.

In the years since the break-up of the USSR, two differently directed processes have unfolded simultaneously in Russia's relations with the countries of the Middle East. On the one hand, Russia established and actively developed relations with new partners (this process began even before the dissolution of the Soviet state). Cases in point are Israel and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The end of the Cold War, the immigration of a great number of Soviet Jews to Israel, Russia's renunciation of a "zero-sum game" in the Middle East, and the end of the policy of state-sponsored anti-Semitism radically changed the situation in Russo-Israeli relations, generating an interest among the Russian elite in promoting bilateral relations of cooperation.

On the other hand, the importance of the Middle East on the list of Russia's foreign policy priorities has gradually declined. For Russia, the region as a whole has not been a supplier of energy resources (as it has for all western countries and Japan) or a forward-deployment base for the defense of its interests and those of its allies (as it has for the United States); indeed, it had no such bases in the region in the first place.

Despite lingering ties of traditional friendship with the Arab countries, relations with some of them completely lost their ideological underpinning and gradually began to lose their economic foundation as well. With the end of the era in which the Soviet Union rendered assistance on preferential terms in creating industrial enterprises and supplied arms on credit to Arab countries, the volume of trade and economic cooperation between the latter and Russia turned out to be extremely low.

Yeltsin's Russia, beset--indeed, completely preoccupied--by its own problems, started to lose interest in a Middle East settlement and in a political presence in the region in general. True, Russia inherited the place of the USSR as one of the two co-sponsors of the peace process and had an opportunity to work with all the parties to the conflict. But in terms of its financial and economic capacities it could not be a match for the other co-sponsor. Nor did the Arab countries, for their part, display much interest in developing relations with Russia on a new basis; instead, they grieved to see the Soviet Union, the powerful counterbalance to the USA, leave the historical arena.

Russia's relations with Turkey and Iran stand in stark contrast to the above. These two countries bordering on the CIS territory have ranked among the priorities for Russia's interests.

Ankara quickly became one of Russia's main commercial and economic partners, with Russia regarding Turkey as a major consumer of its energy resources, natural gas in particular, an investor and contractor (notably in construction projects), and a haven for Russian tourists. The political conflicts that existed in the first part of the 1990s (CFE limits, "cultural pan-Turkism", NATO enlargement, the situation in Chechnya, etc.) were gradually mitigated, and the path ahead appears to lead to further rapprochement.

With Iran things went differently: relations in the economic field initially lagged behind political relations. A major role in the rapprochement with Iran was played by Tehran's constructive approach toward the conflict in Tajikistan and its position of support for Armenia, Russia's ally in the Caucasus. All this allowed Moscow to solve an important strategic task--ensuring a "friendly environment" along the CIS perimeter. A new high point in relations with Iran was reached after the signing of the contract for construction of the atomic power station at Bushehr. Moscow viewed American (and Israeli) pressure on this issue as reflecting a desire to oust it from the promising international atomic energy market. However, as a result of that pressure it tightened control over the export of technologies and materials that may be used in military nuclear and missile programs.

Aggravation of the situation in Chechnya and the increased threat of international terrorism have modified Russia's strategic interests in the Middle East. The task of neutralizing the international terrorist threat and ensuring a favorable attitude by Middle Eastern states on the Chechen question has come to the fore. Since September 11, 2001, the new partner-like relations with the United States in the war on terror have significantly impacted Russia's policies in the Middle East. However, Russia's aversion to US military action in Iraq and its negative attitude toward the American strategy of unilateral action as a whole as well as to the American concept of "regime change", have predetermined a certain cooling of the partnership which has in turn to an extent affected cooperation regarding a Middle East settlement.

In Putin's Russia, interests and policies in the region have largely been determined by the "multivector" strategy. Policy has become more active and even more pragmatic, Russian business interests have become entrenched, and Russia has increasingly acted without reference to the positions of other global players. At the same time, guided by its national interests, Moscow is keen to avoid actions that would seriously jeopardize its partner-like relations with the West.- Published 16/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org

Professor Vitaly Naumkin is director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Russia under President Vladimir Putin is returning to the Middle East after a relative absence during the 1990s. What assets does Russia have to offer, and what are its chances for regaining its previous status of counterbalancing power vis-a-vis American influence?

Russia has changed tremendously since the fall of the USSR, and so has the Middle East. A dozen years ago the visit to Israel that President Vladimir Putin paid in April 2005 would have been unimaginable. Its Cold War strategy prompted Moscow to sponsor and arm Israel's enemies in the Arab world, and to assume superpower patronage of the Arab cause in general and the Palestinian cause in particular. In the 1970s and 1980s Moscow was powerful enough to counterbalance American influence in the Middle East by drawing together the so-called "progressive" Arab countries.

With perestroika and glasnost the situation changed dramatically. First signs of the change became evident in 1988 when groups of Soviet Jews left the Soviet Union for Israel. For the new Soviet leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Jews became a bargaining chip vis-a-vis Washington; as a result, nearly one million Jews migrated from the old Soviet republics to Israel. Russia itself went through a sequence of internal transformations that reduced the possibility of its playing an active role in the Middle East. In the Oslo process, Moscow was no more than a mute spectator.

Since the beginning of 2001, oil prices have increased sharply and Russia has obtained significant economic relief. It also gained politically after 9/11, when the issue of human rights in Chechnya was transformed into an issue of terrorism. Moscow was ready to return to the Middle East. It brought with it a pragmatic approach to foreign policy adopted by Putin, who is committed to converting diplomacy into business and then business into political influence.

Accordingly, Putin sees oil and gas as a lever to regain positions in Iraq. Russia plans to sell short-range air defense missiles to Syria and is participating in the construction of a nuclear reactor in Iran, where it wants to expand business. It also seeks a role in Afghanistan. Moreover, Putin wants to raise Russia's profile as a peace broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even Saudi businessmen are now interested in exploring Russian markets. Russia has become the second-largest trade partner of Turkey, with $15 billion worth of bilateral trade projected for 2005. And, finally, Moscow is interested in selling more military equipment.

Russia launched its comeback to the Middle East by bitterly opposing the US campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and then questioning the invasion's legality. Events very soon proved, however, that Moscow is still a long way from regaining its previous status in the region. Weapons sales in the Middle East have become more sensitive now that an American military presence has been established. The proposed deal with Syria remains contentious for Israel, just as Moscow's stance on Iran's nuclear aspirations is highly controversial for both Jerusalem and Washington. The Russian president received little more than a polite acknowledgment of the proposal he made in Cairo to convene an international conference to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Israel, the proposal was simply rebuffed as premature and Putin was urged to abort the proposed sale of armored personnel carriers to the Palestinian Authority. Ariel Sharon and Hosni Mubarak apparently believe in the primacy of the United States in the peace process.

During the Cold War era, Eastern Europe followed the Soviet Union's pro-Arab line. Poland, for example, condemned Israeli aggression in the June War of 1967 and severed diplomatic ties with Israel. After the Cold War, Poland's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact opened the road to Washington; it turned out that a desirable detour went via Jerusalem. Thus, Warsaw became one of the transit points for Soviet Jews migrating to Israel, and in February 1990 Poland restored diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. From the point of view of a sovereign country this meant pursuing a more balanced line in Middle Eastern affairs. But for some Arab countries this constituted a radical shift in Polish priorities that they did not like.

At that time, Polish foreign policy had a solid moral basis. Warsaw condemned Iraq's aggression against Kuwait in 1990 and immediately implemented relevant UN Security Council decisions despite heavy economic losses. This position was appreciated by some of the Gulf countries and they established or reestablished diplomatic relations with Poland. Gradually, business started to promote state-to-state relations. Kuwaiti and other Gulf businessmen now visit Warsaw regularly.

Meanwhile, Putin's recent visit to Egypt and Israel marks a reassertion of his country's historic involvement in the region's affairs. But Putin's message from beneath the pyramids does not seem to have reverberated, thus proving that Moscow is still far from developing the capacity to counterbalance the United States in Middle Eastern affairs.- Published 16/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org

Jerzy Zdanowski is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, and at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.