Putin's War in Syria

Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America's Absence

Anna Borshchevskaya

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755634644
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Relazioni internazionali

"Skillfully lays out Mr. Putin's approach to the Middle East." Wall Street Journal
"Detailed and fascinating." Diplomatic Courier Putin intervened in Syria in September 2015, with international critics predicting that Russia would overextend itself and Barack Obama suggesting the country would find itself in a "quagmire" in Syria. Contrary to this, Anna Borshchevskaya argues that in fact Putin achieved significant key domestic and foreign policy objectives without crippling costs, and is well-positioned to direct Syria's future and become a leading power in the Middle East.
This outcome has serious implications for Western foreign policy interests both in the Middle East and beyond. This book places Russian intervention in Syria in this broader context, exploring Putin's overall approach to the Middle East – historically Moscow has a special relationship with Damascus – and traces the political, diplomatic, military and domestic aspects of this intervention. Borshchevskaya delves into the Russian military campaign, public opinion within Russia, as well as Russian diplomatic tactics at the United Nations. Crucially, this book illustrates the impact of Western absence in Syria, particularly US absence, and what the role of the West is, and could be, in the Middle East.

Part One

Russia and the Middle East

1

Tsarist Russia’s History in the Middle East and North Africa

Far from an arbitrary whim of the latest Russian authoritarian, Putin’s Syria intervention highlighted longstanding Russian interests, fears, and ambitions. Thus, a brief discussion of Russian history insofar as it relates to the Middle East and the Muslim world is crucial to understanding Putin’s Russia and its intervention in Syria.

Russia’s Identity, Fears, and Early Links to the Middle East

Internal debate over centuries about where Russia belongs—in the East or the West—has shaped, and continues to shape, Russia’s foreign policy. Nikolai Berdyaev famously wrote that within “the Russian soul,” East and West are in a continuous state of conflict.¹ This unresolved identity crisis has been a constant theme throughout Russia’s history. Russia’s early development resembled the Ottoman Empire, a growing nation that absorbed lands on its periphery. By contrast, Western European empires such as the British Empire conquered and held colonies separated geographically from the countries themselves. Thus, at least partly due to geographical separation, these countries developed their own identities, separate from their colonies. Russia did not. As prominent Russia historian Geoffrey Hosking argued, in Russia imperialism dominated the idea of nationhood.² Harvard historian Serghii Plokhy argued in the same vein, “Russia today has enormous difficulty in reconciling the mental maps of Russian ethnicity, culture, and identity with the political map of the Russian Federation. In other words, it has a major problem in responding to the key demand of modern nationalism[.]”³

Westerners tend to associate expansion with wealth and power, but in Russia expansion had been associated with poverty and insecurity. Indeed, Russia’s constant militarization and expansion created a debate that continues to this day about whether it is offensive or defensive, though from the Russian perspective there is simply less separation between two than in the West. In this vein, historically, Russian rulers were convinced that Russia’s more immediate threats came from the West and the South, including the so-called “soft underbelly” that encompasses modern-day Caucasus and the Middle East.

Russia’s links with the region we call today the Middle East and North Africa originated prior to the genesis of the Russian state. Geostrategic, economic, cultural, and religious considerations have driven Russian rulers to compete for domination there for centuries. Pursuit of great-power status, recognition as an equal by the West and access to crucial waterways—that is to say commercial as well as cultural and religious interests—have guided Russia in all its iterations, and continue to guide Putin’s Russia to this day.

It is important to remember that an independent Russian state emerged only in the 1470s. This process took centuries, and the Middle East and Islam played an important role. In the late 900s, Constantinople’s Orthodox Christian church began a major mission to Kyivan Rus, the first Eastern Slavic state established by the Rurik dynasty. The Grand Prince of Kyiv, Volodymir, received his baptism in 988 in Chersonesos, the ancient Greek colonial city off the coast of Crimea—itself an important, complex, and multifaceted place that straddled Christianity and Islam. Upon his baptism, Volodymir married Byzantine imperial princess Anna, the sister of Byzantine emperor Basil II—a feat that many had previously considered impossible for a pagan “barbarian.” From the moment of Volodymir’s baptism, the religious connection with Constantinople became critical to the Rus people as Eastern Orthodox Christianity began to spread over the coming decades, while trade with the Middle East emerged as one of Volodymir’s main achievements.⁴

Repeated Mongol invasions eventually weakened Kyivan Rus, and it broke into several principalities. By the early 1200s, the Golden Horde forced these lands to submit to its rule, held “under the Tatar yoke,” described thus because the Mongols attacked together with steppe tribes called the Tatars. Among the Horde’s key allies and trading partners was Mamluk-ruled Egypt on the Mediterranean—another important early Russian connection to the Middle East. The Mongols ultimately could not hold all their lands, but for an extended period of time subjugated the earth from which the Russian state would later emerge, the eastern Rus lands.

In 1261, Prince Daniel, a junior Rurik prince of the Great Vladimir-Suzdal principality (Suzdalskoye Knyazhestvo), or the Grand Duchy of Vladimir, inherited the land of Muskovy (now Moscow) upon the death of his father, Great Prince Alexander Nevsky. Under Prince Daniel it absorbed Vladimir-Suzdal and eventually emerged as the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, Velikoye Knyazhestvo Moskovskoye—the most powerful house in northeastern Rus, which continued to rise steadily in the coming decades and centuries, in large part due to Muskovy princes’ alliances with the Mongol khans.⁵

By 1453 Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Empire, but the Orthodox Church leadership remained. In 1472 Muscovy ruler Grand Prince Ivan III married Princess Sophia, niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Thomas Palaelogus. Symbolically, the marriage signaled that Byzantium would continue. Historians note Ivan functioned as both a khan and a basileus (Byzantine emperor). His claim to power was dual—both religious and secular. Furthermore, the title of Grand Prince also created an association with Kyivan Rus.⁶ In 1521, The Grand Duchy of Muscovy began official relations with Persia (as Iran was called until 1935).

Muscovy princes dreamt of overthrowing the “Tatar yoke,” but also of subduing other Rus lands, most notably Novgorod, a rival allied with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Unlike Muscovy, the Novgorod principality was a republic, ruled by an elected assembly. For Muscovy’s rulers, power and economic drivers centered on land. Novgorod chose instead to focus on trade as its vehicle for growth and development. Perhaps for this reason Novgorod enjoyed a relatively high degree of individual freedom for its day, while Muscovy became set on an authoritarian path.

By the 1470s, the Mongol Khanate, now called the Great Horde, ruled by Khan Ahmed, was weakened by persistent internal divisions. Ivan III of Muscovy saw an opportunity to challenge their rule, but first he attacked Novgorod in an alliance with the Tatars, whose support played an important role in a decisive battle that brutally crushed Novgorod in 1471. Ivan was now strong enough to assert full independence. He refused to continue paying tribute to the Horde and stove off the invasion Ahmed launched in response to the refusal. In 1478 Novgorod and the Horde each challenged Ivan III separately and for different reasons, but he crushed Novgorod’s resistance. Khan Ahmed for his part ultimately could not muster enough military power to fight Ivan and, in the fall of 1480, withdrew his military which he had originally intended to use to attack Muscovy. According to historians, the retreat marked the first clear assertion of Muscovite sovereignty. As Plokhy writes, “Muscovy, which got to keep Novgorod, began its history as a fully independent state by crushing a democratic rival.”⁷

Vasili III succeeded Ivan III and continued Moscow’s expansion by military force. His son, Ivan IV—Ivan the Terrible—was crowned in 1547. He proclaimed Russia a Tsardom (Tsarstvo Russkoye) and took on the title tsar, derived from the word Caesar—a result of Moscow’s vision at the time of Russia as the “Third Rome,” the last and final heir to Constantinople with a messianic mission to protect and spread the Orthodox faith. Indeed, nearly thirty years prior to Ivan the Terrible’ s coronation, the monk Filofey allegedly wrote him a famous letter, “[T]ake care and take heed, pious tsar; all the empires of Christendom are united in thine, the two Romes have fallen and the third exists and there will not be a fourth.”⁸ Thus Muskovy simultaneously claimed several sources of legitimacy: the Golden Horde, Christian Byzantium, and Kyivan Rus.⁹ Muskovy also acutely cared about its international prestige, “as a latecomer to the international scene.”¹⁰ Demand for Western recognition as an equal emerged at the very birth of the Russian state. That demand is still at the heart of how Russia sees itself. Meanwhile, the religious pillar of the Russian identity, its powerful Orthodox church, also continuously played out in Russia’s relations with the Muslim world and the Middle East. Historian Orlando Figes asserts, “Russia’s imperial identity was practically defined by the conflict between Christian settlers and [Muslim] Tatar nomads on the Eurasian steppe.”¹¹ Whether or not one agrees with that, certainly it is...