Brian M Downing
Israel and Russia have a sound working relationship. Antisemitism has permeated Russia for centuries. The Soviet Union restricted Jewish emigration for many years and only relented after protracted US pressure. Nonetheless, many Israelis retain fondness for their former country and respect Russia for liberating Nazi camps, including Treblinka and Auschwitz.
The two countries trade robustly with each other. Israel selected Russian companies to develop its gas fields in the Mediterranean, even though American counterparts have more experience. Despite being on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, Israeli and Russian generals communicate in order to prevent dangerous blunders.
Russia has been expanding its power in the Middle East, so much so that Israel should be wary. After all, who offers the opportunistic Vladimir Putin more, Israel or the Arab world?
Israel and the fragmented region
Since its founding after World War Two, Israel has fought four major wars with the Arab countries surrounding it, in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. The last one, the Yom Kippur War, was very costly for the small country.
The country’s strategic situation has changed tremendously in recent years – and for the better. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 destroyed Saddam Hussein’s army, shoved the country into protracted sectarian fighting, and saw the northern Kurdish area become all but independent. The Arab Spring broke Syria and Libya into pieces and plunged Egypt into a period of instability across the country and separatism along the periphery.
There is no country bordering Israel that can initiate a conventional war. Syria and Iraq do not exist anymore. Egypt is beset by domestic turmoil and in any case would never war with Israel without a major partner to the east. Israel has guerrilla bands on many sides but technology and the threat of fearsome retaliation make them nuisances, not threats to national survival.
Russian moves
In its effort to reassert itself as a major power, Russia has acted boldly and with considerable strategic vision. It has forcefully backed its Syrian ally and reestablished Damascus’s control over Aleppo and Palmyra. It has built up its naval base at Tartus and established a sizable airbase near Latakia. Syria may never return to what it was ten years ago, but with Russian help it could be an appreciable power again.
In Libya, Russia is backing the forces of Khalifa Haftar. The warlord and former CIA asset recently boarded the Russian aircraft carrier Kuznetsov and held a video conference with the Russian defense minister. This week Haftar retook two Mediterranean oil terminals in the country’s center and will likely hold a considerable portion of the country. With oil revenue and Russian arms, Haftar may turn Libya into a formidable power in the region, far more than it was under his mercurial and dethroned predecessor.
Russia deployed several hundred special forces troops to a base in western Egypt, presumably to help Haftar’s campaigns. However, their presence in Egypt, a country once close to Moscow until Anwar Sadat expelled its troops in the early seventies, indicates closer ties with Egypt are developing. The Saudis have already brokered an arms sale between the two.
Russia had promising relations with the Saudis until Moscow intervened in Syria. Though damaged by that, Saudi-Russian ties have not ended. The two powers cooperate on oil production quotas and are at least open to working on an agreement on Syria. Arms sales have continued. Russia has had astonishing success in taking Turkey away from the West’s sphere and moving it toward its own. The two countries are cooperating on Syria.
Russia, the Arab world, and Israel
Security thinkers in Israel will have to assess what these Russian moves will mean in coming years. Presently, they do not constitute a threat as Russia and Israel enjoy mutually-beneficial trade and have a modus vivendi in Syria. But things change in the Middle East, often quite rapidly, and Putin is not one to stand on principle or sentiment – or relatively modest trade.
What does Israel offer Russia compared to what the lands stretching from Libya to Saudi Arabia can? Israel provides technology, especially sophisticated armaments such as drones. The Arab world can offer far more: continued collaboration on oil prices, enormous purchases of defense hardware, military bases from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and an authoritarian alliance against American hegemony and calls for reform.
The Arab world’s importance is rising in Russia’s economic and geopolitical calculus. Arms sales and alignments go well together. The revitalized armies of Egypt, Libya, and a partially reconstituted Syria will be important parts of Russian foreign policy for decades. The Arab world will one day be positioned to persuade Moscow to decrease its cooperation with Israel and support them in opposing it.
Copyright 2017 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.