Post Soviet directions: Russia returns

Vladimir Putin has had two major international successes in recent months. In August he granted asylum to Edward Snowden, who had leaked details of the US National Security Agency's surveillance programmes, and was able to boast that Russia was the only country capable of standing up to US pressure - unlike China,Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba, which all buckled.

Putin's success was partly due to the pressure that US Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama put on governments tempted to welcome Snowden. The US behaved as if Snowden were a security threat comparable to Osama bin Laden, and even persuaded its allies to deny airspace to a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, which was suspected of having Snowden on board. The atmosphere made Putin seem all the more audacious at home and internationally. Many of Putin's opponents in Russia applauded his gesture, in the name of defence ofhuman rights and civil liberties.

But Putin's real success has been on Syria. Obama "provisionally" suspended planned air strikes on Syria after an undertaking from President Bashar al-Assad to destroy Syria's stock of chemical weapons, under the supervision of international monitors. Until then, the US had predicted Russia would face international isolation and rebuked it for supporting the Assad regime and opposing UN sanctions. Now Putin looks like a wise statesman who has managed to avoid a military expedition with potentially disastrous consequences.

Putin's triumph was facilitated by US miscalculations. Obama failed to persuade the UK to take part in the planned operation and was about to face a second humiliation in failing to secure the approval of Congress. Though the military action Obama had decided to support to maintain credibility was "unbelievably limited", as US secretary of state John Kerry put it (1), Obama hated having to do it. The day after the agreement made possible by Putin, Izvestia carried the headline "Russia Comes to Obama's Rescue". Putin prudently avoided the triumphalism of his more sycophantic supporters. He saw these developments as a sign of the times and a historic opportunity not to be missed; if Snowden had arrived in Moscow in October rather than July, he would probably not have been able to stay.

Behind the take on Syria

Russia's attitude to the Syrian conflict has revealed its fears and frustrations, as well as its long-term international goals and ambitions. It has also revealed Putin's problems at home.

The legacy of the Chechen wars (1994-1996 and 1999-2000) persists. Though bombings and attacks on the police are no longer on the same scale, they are still frequent, and have spread - especially to Dagestan and Ingushetia, even if the incidents there have more to do with crime than politics. Chechen militants are less coordinated and more dispersed, but still present: in July 2012 there were two unprecedented bombings in Tatarstan, a long way from North Caucasus; and the Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov, who has proclaimed himself emir of the Caucasus, has threatened to attack the Winter Olympics at Sochi in 2014.

A large section of the Russian media believes, like US observers such as Gordon Hahn of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (2), that several hundred Russian fighters are in Syria, opposing the Assad regime. This could explain the continued arms deliveries to the Assad government. Putin and his entourage fear that defeat for government forces would turn Syria into another Somalia, with more weapons, in a region that is far more dangerous and could become a support base for rebel fighters operating in Russia. It has taken some time for these fears to be shared by the US, which initially underestimated the resilience of those loyal to Assad.

Russia's aims in the Syrian conflict have been thought by some to be limited to preserving Tartus - its only naval installation (rather than base) in the Mediterranean - and keeping in power one of its arms customers. Though not negligible, these concerns do not explain Russia's obstinacy: it is keen to establish its position and role in the post-Soviet international order. In 1996, when the academic Yevgeny Primakov became foreign minister (before Putin's presidency in 2000), a consensus emerged among Russia's political elite that the US was trying to prevent the re-emergence of Russia as even a minor international power. Supporters of this view, who are now growing in number, see proof in the admission to NATO of the Baltic states and several eastern European countries, and in the US's wish to admit Georgia and Ukraine, despite the promises it made to Mikhail Gorbachev in return for his consent to the admission of the reunited Germany. Russian diplomats claim the US is trying to undermine Russian influence even in areas where it has legitimate interests.

Russia sees the way the US and its allies have ignored the UN Security Council in imposing international sanctions, and in conducting wars in Kosovo (1999) and Iraq (2003), as a way of avoiding all negotiations that would force the US to take proper account of Russia's interests. Russia has made it clear how much it dislikes the US's external military operations and the regime changes it has orchestrated without the backing of the Security Council.

The Libya precedent

In opposing action against the Syrian regime, Russia has invoked the precedent of Libya in 2011. Russia abstained on resolution 1973, intended to protect the Libyan people but hijacked to justify military intervention and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. At the time, Dmitry Medvedev was president, and the Kremlin was hoping for a fresh start in its relations with the US. Today the predominant view of international affairs in Moscow is geopolitical - a Russian tradition. Since 1996 the official goal of foreign policy has been to strengthen the global trend towards multi-polarity, so as to reduce US dominance. Putin, like Primakov, is a realist when it comes to Russia's current and future capabilities, and feels Russia needs partners to help promote multipolarity. So China has become Russia's first, and most important, strategic partner. At Security Council meetings, they work together, especially on Syria, just as they didon Iran, Libya or the Iraq war of 2003. China, more patient and more confident of its resources, lets Russia take the lead in defending their joint position. This is why Russia holds up the Security Council as the only legitimate arbiter of international politics.

Western analysts have been predicting the imminent collapse of this partnership since its beginnings, because of the fears of the Russian elite about China's demographic and economic weight. Yet cooperation has continued to grow on the economic front (Russia exports oil and arms to China), the political front (Russia and China work together at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) (3) and the military front (they hold joint military exercises almost every year). There is some friction, for example over trade with post-Soviet central Asian countries, in which China overtook Russia in 2009. But China has to date respected the primacy of Russian geopolitical interests and has not tried to establish its own bases. It recognises the collective security treaty that Russia has signed with most states in the region (4). By contrast, in spite of repeated requests by Russia, the US has always refused to agree to cooperation between NATO and the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation as a basis for cooperation on Afghanistan, preferring to deal separately with each state on individual issues, such as the establishment of bases or supply routes for its troops.

Russia is not looking for full-scale competition with the US; it doesn't have the resources. Each accuses the other of a cold war attitude, but when Russia celebrates US international misfortunes, it's more spite than revenge. Russia does not want to see the US defeated in Afghanistan, nor does it want a hurried withdrawal of US forces. And the clash over Syria is primarily about the rules of the international game. Russia is lookingfor a rebalancing of the world order that will set its relations with the US and the Euro-Atlantic world on a new footing; but that doesn't prevent it from competing ferociously where it can: Russia's South Stream gas pipeline project may well triumph over the US-backed Nabucco project (5).

More than a subordinate role

Has the time for rebalancing come? Is Russia's ambition to play more than a subordinate role about to be fulfilled? Putin's success on Syria is maintaining the impression ­ or illusion - that multi-polarity is happening. The defection of the UK, the US's unconditional ally, is seen as a sign of the times, as are the discussions at the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg, where there was vigorous opposition to any military intervention in Syria (6); the US Congress didn't want it, either. The more sober Russian analysts say it would be unwise to rely on neoisolationists in Congress and better to bet on the Obama who does not want US disengagement (which could have a destabilising effect) but to use international compromise to defuse the most dangerous conflicts. The most threatening are Syria and Iran (closely linked), and Russia believes it can make a major contribution to their resolution.

The rapprochement between the US and Russia over Syria began well before the turnaround in September. In May, John Kerry approved his Russian counterpart's proposal for an international conference on Syria's future, while continuing to insist on Assad's departure. At the G8 summit in June, a joint declaration on Syria was delayed to allow its approval by Putin. If Assad makes good on his undertaking to abandon chemical weapons, Putin will gain credibility in the West.

For months, Russia has been insisting Iran should take part in the conference on Syria, to give it a chance of success. Until now the US, under pressure from Israel, has refused, so Russia has been promoting dialogue between Obama and Iran's new president, Hassan Rohani. Even the beginnings of a compromise on the nuclear issue would help. Russia is working to strengthen its relations with Iran, which have deteriorated since 2010, when Russia backed sanctions proposed by the US at the Security Council and cancelled the sale of S-300 air defence missiles to Iran.

It's not the first time that Putin has tried to strengthen ties with the US, on the basis of (relative) equality; he saw a similar opportunity after 9/11. Without setting any conditions, he helped the US establish military bases on the territories of his allies in central Asia for the war in Afghanistan; as a further gesture, he closed the last Russian military surveillance installations in Cuba (though these had little importance). But shortly afterwards President George Bush gave a final green light to the admission of the three Baltic states to NATO and announced he US's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; the bright spell was over. Putin now believes it is possible to return to cooperation.

There is one serious obstacle - Russia's domestic situation. After his return to the presidency in 2012, Putin faced large demonstrations of popular opposition in Moscow, and to strengthen his position he has been cultivating anti-Americanism as an element of Russian nationalism. New laws require Russian NGOs that receive any finance from outside Russia, no matter how little, to declare themselves as being in the service of foreign interests. This goes back to Putin's KGB training, which tends to make him see foreign manoeuvres and influences as a key cause of domestic problems and political instability. Putin's credibility at home, or lack of it, will be a major influence on his chances of achieving his international goals.

Note(s):

(1) See Patrick Wintour, "John Kerry gives Syria week to hand over chemical weapons or face attack", The Guardian.com, 10 September 2013.

(2) See Gordon M Hahn, "The Caucasus and Russia's Syria policy", The National Interest, 26 September 2013.

(3) Established in June 2001. Its six members are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Tajikistan. Countries with observerstatus include India, Iran and Pakistan.

(4) Its signatories are Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

(5) The South Stream pipeline would run from Russia to Europe, bypassingUkraine; the Nabucco pipeline would run from the gas fields of the Caspian Sea to Europe.

(6) See Michael Klare, "The red line moment", Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, October 2013.