Abstract
Other than continental Europe perhaps no area on the globe saw a greater transformation of Soviet foreign policy in the Gorbachev era than the Middle East. In an effort to provide the background for an analysis of continuity and change in the policy of Russia, the chief successor state of the USSR, towards the Middle East, this essay will begin with an analysis of Soviet Middle East policy under Gorbachev. Next the chapter will examine the evolution of Russian policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict under Russia’s new President, Boris Yeltsin, and it will then evaluate Russian policy towards Iran and Turkey. Finally, an analysis will be made of Russian policy towards the continuing conflict between the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and its Gulf Arab neighbours, principally Kuwait, which had been invaded by Iraq in 1990. The essay will conclude with an analysis of the areas of continuity and those of change between Yeltsin’s policies towards the Middle East and those of his predecessor, Mikhail Gorbachev, concentrating on the December 1991–January 1996 period when Andrei Kozyrev served as foreign minister of Russia.
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Notes
For an analysis of the pre-Gorbachev period, see Robert O. Freedman, Moscow and the Middle East Soviet Policy since the Invasion of Afghanistan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
The Gorbachev period in the Middle East is discussed in Robert O. Freedman, ‘Moscow and the Middle Elast after Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait’ in Robert O. Freedman (ed.), The Middle East after Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993), pp. 74–136.
On the issue of Soviet Jews, see Robert O. Freedman, ‘Soviet Foreign Policy Toward the United States and Israel in the Gorbachev Era’ in David H. Goldberg and Paul Marantz (eds), The Decline of the Soviet Union and the Transformation of the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 53–95.
Cited in report by Dan Izenburg, Jerusalem Post, April 30 1992.
Cited in interview with Natasha Singer, Forward, January 1 1993.
Cited in report by Serge Schmermann, New York Times, January 26 1993.
Cited in report by Avigdor Esken, Jerusalem Post, June 9 1993.
For a summary of Yeltsin’s powers under the new constitution, see the article by John Lloyd, Financial Times, December 13 1993.
See the report by David Hoffman, Washington Post, December 24 1993. Zhirinovskii was also active in the Jewish group ‘Shalom’ in the late 1980s, an organization reportedly set up by the KGB to counterbalance the independent Jewish organizations that emerged in the latter years of Gorbachev. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, predicted that Zhirinovskii’s electoral success would spur more Russian Jews to emigrate
(Cf. report by David Makovsky and Batsheva Tsur, Jerusalem Post, December 15 1993).
Cited in Stephen J. Blank, ‘Turkey’s Strategic Engagement in the Former USSR and U.S. Interests’, Turkey’s Strategic Position at the Crossroads of World Affairs (ed. Stephen Blank et al.) (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, December 3 1993, p. 56).
Interview, Uzbek Foreign Ministry, Tashkent, September 30 1994. See also Islam Karimov, Building the Future: Uzbekistan Its Own Model for Transition to a Market Economy (Tashkent: Uzbekistan Publishers, 1993).
For a Russian view of the threat that the Turkish pipeline system would pose to Russia, see Vladimir Iuratev and Anatoly Sheshtakov of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, ‘Asian Gas Will Flow East: New alliance infringes on Russian interests’, Nezavisimaia Gazeta, May 13 1993 [CDSP vol. 45, no. 14 (1993), pp. 16–18]. For a Western view arguing that Moscow is practising economic warfare over the pipeline issue, see Stephen J. Blank, Energy and Security in Transcaucasia (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, September 7 1994).
For analyses of the oil pipeline issue, see Marshall Ingwerson, ‘At Your Local Gas Pump Soon: Caspian Sea Oil’, Christian Science Monitor, October 11 1995, and Robert V. Barylski, ‘Russia, the West and the Caspian Energy Hub’, Middle East Journal, vol. 49, no. 2 (Spring 1995, pp. 217–32).
For a solid analysis of the situation in Central Asia, see Anthony Hyman, ‘Political Change in Post-Soviet Central Asia’ (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, April 1994).
See Aleksei Bausin, ‘A Submarine Isn’t a Needle. You Can’t Hide One in the Persian Gulf — Why the West doesn’t want Russia to sell arms to Iran,’ Rossiskaia Gazeta, January 19 1993 (CDSP vol. 45, no. 3 (1993), pp. 15–16). For a study of Russian arms sales to the Middle East, see Andrei Volpin, Russian Arms Sales Policy toward the Middle East (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Research Memorandum No. 23, October 1993). The supply of the WER-1000 Nuclear Reactor to Iran became a major issue in Russian-American relations in 1995, and while US pressure did not succeed in preventing the sale of the reactor, Russia did promise to get all spent nuclear fuel returned to Russia, and not provide Iran with a gas centrifuge.
Olivier Ray, The Civil War in Tajikistan: Causes and Implications (Washington, DC; United States Institute of Peace, December 1993)
and Barnett R. Rubin, ‘The Fragmentation of Tajikistan’, Survival, vol. 35, no. 4 (Winter 1993–94), pp. 71–91.
Cited in the report by Serge Schmerman, New York Time, January 26 1993.
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© 1997 Roger E. Kanet and Alexander V. Kozhemiakin
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Freedman, R.O. (1997). Moscow and the Middle East since the Collapse of the Soviet Union: A Preliminary Analysis. In: Kanet, R.E., Kozhemiakin, A.V. (eds) The Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25440-8_6
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