Why Russia has found a role in the Middle East

As the grinding fight in Syria draws to a close, there is much reflection in western capitals on how Russia has elbowed its way through to a leading role in the Middle East. It is seen as an arriviste power, with little to commend it as a strategic arbiter in a troubled region. Russia benefits from the fact that American foreign policy has gone AWOL and permitted Moscow to fill a vacuum previously occupied by responsible US diplomacy. 

This characterisation of the Trump White House is probably fair enough, but the view that Russia has no previous history in the region is wide of the mark. Russian strategic ambition has eyed the Middle East since at least the rule of Catherine the Great, and, remarkably, its goals remain pretty much the same today.

Public awareness of the history of the Middle East probably starts around the time where the names Lawrence, Balfour, Sykes and Picot are loosely jumbled together. But if there is a single legacy that, in a collective imagination, holds the key to the Middle East today, it is that left by Sir Mark Sykes and Georges Picot. Sykes and Picot were, respectively, British and French civil servants, who, in 1916, began the process of carving up Ottoman territory that was finally completed with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1924. So ubiquitous has their legacy become that it now represents shorthand for the complexities of Middle East politics, captured in a single soundbite and much favoured by those politicians and commentators who love to flavour their interventions with the grand sweep of history.

The trouble is, that grand sweep has airbrushed the third participant in what was a tri-partite discussion and without whom no sense can be made of the Middle East, then or now. Sergei Sazonov was Foreign Minister of the Imperial Russian Government. In his 1916 discussions with Sykes and Picot, Russia was holding most of the aces. 

The defeats in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli in 1915 were salutary shocks to the British and French, who had entirely underestimated Ottoman resistance. Worse was to follow in 1916, as Anglo-French attention became fixed on the Western Front and the apocalyptic battles there; at the same time, General Townsend was surrendering a substantial British force at Kut al-Amara, in present day Iraq. To cap it all, the Dardanelles Commission (a public inquiry into the failures of 1915 that was the Chilcot Inquiry of its time) reported and the scapegoat, Winston Churchill, lost his reputation and his place in government, at least temporarily. 

While both Sykes and Picot were playing weak hands, Sazonov was operating from a position of strength, as Russian forces crushed the Ottoman armies on the Caucasus Front (eastern Turkey today) in early 1916 and were poised to attack the Anatolian heartland of the Ottoman Empire. What’s more, he was playing at home. Russian imperial ambition had long coveted the glittering prize of Constantinople (today’s Istanbul — and Tsargrad to the Russians) and access to the Mediterranean. Sazonov knew exactly what his country’s strategic objectives were and he pursued them ruthlessly.

In contrast, Sykes and Picot were playing away — and in over their heads. Britain was in the region because of Suez, oil and the almost accidental acquisition in 1882 of Egypt as a protectorate. France was in the region simply because Britain was. In a world war that remained in the balance, the Middle East did not represent a strategic priority for either country — and it showed. 

The first cut of the deal ceded Arabia, Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) and Palestine to the British, which satisfied requirements for oil and links to India, but represented a chunk of territory with little to make it cohere. On the basis of a rather tenuous Napoleonic link, France picked up Syria and Cilicia. Russia was given the Constantinople Corridor linking the Black Sea to the Aegean, naval basing rights that would guarantee control of the Black Sea, and the eastern Ottoman provinces comprising Turkish Armenia, Persian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. 

For the British and French, it represented the almost arbitrary acquisition of territory that became habitual in the late phase of empire. For the Russians, it represented a maritime line of communication to the Mediterranean, sea control of its adjacent waters and the strategic hinge of the southern Caucasus. Game, set and match to Sazonov. But then the troublesome grand sweep of history intervened again with the Russian Revolution in 1917. All bets were suddenly off and Russian fingerprints were wiped from the scene of the diplomatic crime.

Fast forward 100 years and the picture looks remarkably similar. Russia continues to have a few local difficulties with Turkey; it senses and seeks to exploit the strategic discomfort of third parties (America this time, in place of Britain and France); it continues to seek maritime – and now air – basing rights and a role in the Eastern Mediterranean; and it hopes to mask an exposed flank by gaining leverage in the southern Caucasus. To paraphrase Palmerston, Russia’s interests are eternal and perpetual.

So much for context; but how have the Russians proceeded this time around? It’s clear they have learned from our mistakes. There has been no large-scale commitment of Russian ground forces in Syria, a sharp contrast with the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq by American-led forces, followed by protracted counter-insurgency campaigns. By boxing clever, Russia has avoided the meat grinder of territorial occupation and moved directly to the mature operational profile that America and other western forces used so effectively against ISIS: the provision of the aircraft, drones and field artillery to indirectly engage rebel concentrations, plus the requisite special forces to direct them and advise local forces on the best techniques of ground manoeuvre. The messy business of closing with the enemy has been left to an assorted cast of the Syrian army, Hezbollah, Shia militias and mercenaries.

The provenance of the mercenary Wagner Group is as murky as other aspects of Russian hybrid warfare, but it presents as a private military company, albeit with close links to the Kremlin. The western view is that mercenaries most closely resemble football hooligans with live ammunition, but that conveys an inadequate sense of an organisation clearly capable of sophisticated military operations. 

The Group has conducted all arms engagements (i.e. involving a combination of armoured vehicles, indirect fire and ground manoeuvre) which are normally the domain of well-trained and equipped professional armed forces. In doing so, it illustrates the Russian capacity for inventive, novel and morally abhorrent military solutions. A similar approach has characterised Russian air operations, which have been effective, though indiscriminate.

Overall, Russian operations look poised to deliver national strategic objectives by the limited and partially outsourced application of tactical force, the exact opposite of the effect achieved by western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. In doing so, they have won few friends internationally and tested the outer boundaries of the laws of war. Yet, in prosecuting Russia’s eternal interests with a singular and ruthless sense of purpose, they have followed closely in Sazonov’s footsteps.