Iran provides a way out. A West preoccupied with containing and managing a crisis in the Middle East, the thinking goes, is far less likely to meddle in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. The West likewise will be unable to seriously challenge Russian efforts to reassert its dominance over parts of the former Soviet Union, either politically (as in the case of Ukraine) or militarily (as in Georgia, for example). This, in turn, has reinforced Russian convictions about the prudence of cooperation with the Islamic Republic.

STANDING BY SYRIA

Russia’s second major regional partner is Syria. Relations between the two countries date back to the Soviet era, when the USSR saw Hafez al-Assad’s regime as its most durable and lucrative client state. Indeed, from his rise to power in 1971 until the early 1980s, Assad ran what scholars have termed “the most consistently pro-Soviet state in the Middle East,” ²⁷building a formidable arms and strategic dialogue with Moscow. (Thereafter, the outbreak of Syrian hostilities with Israel chilled its external relations, at least for a time.) A centerpiece of that partnership was a 1971 agreement to house the Soviet navy’s Mediterranean flotilla in the Syrian port city of Tartus. ²⁸The Syrian regime also became a major consumer of Soviet arms. By the end of the Soviet era, Syria’s debt to Moscow was estimated to have totaled a whopping $9 billion. ²⁹

Strategic ties survived the collapse of the USSR. In fact, after a brief weakening in the early Yeltsin years, they grew stronger, as Moscow came to see its partnership with Damascus as part of a counterweight to U.S. policy in the region. ³⁰This focus was reinforced in subsequent years by the Clinton administration’s repeated efforts to engage Syria as part of the Middle East peace process—efforts that the Kremlin vociferously opposed.

The 2000 death of Hafez al-Assad held out the promise of a Russo-Syrian divorce—and of a Syrian rapprochement with the region at large. But Bashar al-Assad, Hafez’s son and successor as president, chose to maintain the status quo. This included perpetuating Syria’s strategic relationship with Moscow. Between 2000 and 2010, Damascus acquired roughly $1.5 billion in arms from Russia, making Syria Moscow’s seventh-largest contemporary arms client. ³¹This was made possible in large part by a 2005 agreement that wrote off the bulk of Syria’s debt to Russia, providing some much-needed relief to the Syrian economy. ³²In exchange, Syria has continued to serve as a staunch ally of the Kremlin and to provide its navy with vital access to the Mediterranean.

The Russia-Syria relationship has deepened still further since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011. Moscow has greatly aided the brutal campaign of repression Assad is waging against his own people. It has continued to provide Damascus with critical arms and weaponry—matériel that has been used against the Syrian opposition. ³³Russia likewise has run interference for Syria at the UN Security Council, complicating international efforts to create a durable coalition by which to pressure the Assad regime to end the war. ³⁴And, despite mounting evidence of a fundamental rupture between Assad and his domestic opposition, Moscow consistently has sought a political solution that would preserve the Syrian strongman’s hold on power. ³⁵

ADRIFT IN THE ARAB SPRING

In late December 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, frustrated over being prohibited by government functionaries from peddling his wares, set himself ablaze as a sign of public protest. The spark ignited a popular protest in the North African country, inciting demonstrations that forced the resignation of the country’s long-serving president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in January 2011. From there, the Arab Spring spread to Egypt. That month, popular protests erupted against the rule of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, leading the Egyptian president to step down in February 2011 after roughly three weeks of street clashes and political disorder.

Like Western nations, Russia was caught off guard by the rapid changes taking place in the region and as a result hewed a cautious foreign policy line toward the political transformations taking place in Tunis and Cairo. ³⁶But the outbreak of unrest in another North African country, Libya, caused a significant rupture between Russia and the West.

There, the resilience of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime and the growing prospects of a civil war in the country progressively provoked discussion of Western intervention. The Russian government strongly opposed such a course of action, warning of its destabilizing potential. ³⁷Western nations nonetheless went ahead, and the eventual outcome, the ouster of Gaddafi’s regime and his death at the hands of rebel forces, infuriated Russian officials, who saw it as a violation of NATO’s supposed neutrality.

It was also a tangible economic blow, since Gaddafi’s Libya owed Russia some $4.5 billion in debt, which Moscow now appeared to have to write off. ³⁸Ongoing arms sales and infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars were also called into question, significantly increasing Russia’s potential losses. ³⁹Russia thus aggressively pursued and secured new arms contracts with Afghanistan and Oman, as well as countries outside the greater Middle East (such as Ghana and Tanzania). ⁴⁰

This policy, Russian officials argue, is both prudent and pragmatic. Since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, Islamist forces have been gaining momentum from Mali to Egypt. These changes, as seen from Moscow, threaten important Russian interests and allies in the Middle East. They also have the potential to represent a mortal threat to the Russian Federation itself, insofar as Islamist tendencies could further mobilize Russia’s already-restive Muslim minority. As a result, Moscow has pursued outreach as a way of “controlling through investments,” as one former Kremlin official puts it. ⁴¹

Yet Moscow’s approach has increasingly placed it on the wrong side of the Arab Spring—and of the Muslim world writ large. Moscow has become embroiled in a civil war that is taking place within Islam itself because its two principal Middle Eastern allies, Syria and Iran, are both Shi’a Muslim states (although the former only loosely so), while the rest of the Muslim world is overwhelmingly Sunni (who make up some 85 percent of the planet’s 1.57 billion Muslims). As a result, Russia is now pursuing what one official in Moscow says amounts to an “accidentally Shi’a” policy in the Mideast. ⁴²And in response, Russia’s regional image has plummeted precipitously.

Just how much was illustrated by the late 2012 announcement of Yusuf Qaradawi, a spiritual leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and arguably the most influential Sunni cleric alive, that “Moscow has become the enemy of Islam and of Muslims these days.” ⁴³Qaradawi’s comments augur ill for Russia’s standing in the Middle East, where its policies—although historically consistent—have begun to make Moscow a pariah among the countries of the Arab Spring. But they could easily also portend Russia’s future, particularly if the Kremlin’s Middle East policy becomes a rallying point for Russia’s own radicalizing Muslim masses, or if the narrative of Russia as an enemy of the Sunni world is exploited by Islamist forces seeking to mobilize them.

But the Middle East is not the only place where the Kremlin is losing ground. Despite crafting an ambitious strategy to emerge as an Asian nation in recent years, Russia now finds itself in retreat there as well.