In Focus: Superpower checkmate While the world focuses on what is happening on the ground across the Arab region, the contest for strategic influence between the great powers is easily forgotten, writes Galal Nassar Since World War II, the Middle East often seemed like a huge chessboard on either side of which sat two players: the US and the Soviet Union (or Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse). Over the course of the shifting state of play, there were various face-downs, wedges driven into ranks, skirmishes, armed conflicts and even massacres. After decades of shifting fortunes, as the players toppled some pieces here and captured other pieces there, the contest of wills and rival interests and the tug-of-war over regimes in the region appears to have entered the endgame, with Washington poised to declare "checkmate". Before examining this situation more closely, it is important to bear in mind an important rule in politics and its relationship with the events in this region. That rule is that the successful political decision-maker will undoubtedly have read Machiavelli's The Prince. The most important lesson that the master players in international relations have learned is that ethics and principles such as freedom and democracy are worth only so much as the amount they serve a player's vital interests and strategic requirements. They would also have learned that there is no such thing as a lasting friendship and that international law, on its own, is not the key to resolving disputes and rivalries between nations; it all depends on the contest of wills. There are no exceptions to these laws in the East or the West. Certainly during all the dramatic events that are sweeping many Arab countries today, the Machiavellian effect remains very pronounced. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the contest of wills swung heavily in favour of the US and its allies. The communist order collapsed and the Soviet empire crumbled as nationalist passions intensified and the former Soviet republics declared their independence one after the other. The tremors simultaneously travelled through the countries of Eastern Europe that rushed to board the train of the victors and to gain admittance into the EU and NATO. The legacy of the Soviet empire was quickly annexed to the West and the Russian Federation was left with nothing. The only concrete power it had was its albeit formidable nuclear arsenal and other lethal weaponry, but maintaining it and keeping it up to date required constant economic support from the US and Europe. Even to the east, the Chinese dragon swooped down on Indochina and wrested away erstwhile Russian allies. In the Arab region, the Soviet/Russian tide has long since begun to recede. South Yemen united with the north, terminating a line of rulers and politicians who had been bred on the principles of revolution in the University of Patrice Lumumba in Moscow, and stripping Moscow of the very strategic military bases and facilities it once enjoyed when its comrades were in power in Aden. The president of united Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, wasted no time in normalising his relations with the West and with the US in particular, and with this development Yemen no longer needed to depend on Russia for arms or even spare parts. Well before this, Egypt performed a sudden and dramatic shift westwards. In the run-up to the 1973 October War, president Anwar El-Sadat expelled all Russian experts and advisors, with almost insulting perfunctoriness, one might add. Then, with the signing of the Camp David Accords on 17 September 1978, Egyptian-US relations were notched up to the strategic level, one of the results of which was a complete economic break with the Soviet Union. Like Yemen, Egypt changed its armaments programmes, freeing it from dependency on Moscow in this domain as well. In fact, the Iraq-Iran War proved an excellent opportunity for the Egyptian regime to offload its Soviet-made weaponry, which it offered at not inconsiderable cost to Baghdad, replacing it with US and European imports. All that was left of the once close strategic alliance between Egypt and the Soviet Union was a cold and distant diplomatic connection. Moscow faired no better in Algeria and Sudan. Its once strong alliances with them have gone the way of those of Yemen and Egypt, stripping Russia of yet more military facilities and ties. With the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, Russia lost another strategic ally, with which it had cooperated closely in trade, finance, industry, agriculture and science and technology. Until this point, the famously oil-rich Iraq had depended on Russia for its military and technological needs. The declaration of revolution against the Gaddafi regime and the subsequent intervention of NATO forces on the pretext of protecting Libyan civilians ushered in the demise of yet another Russian alliance in this region. The political leadership in Moscow is now regretting that it had not availed itself of its right to veto in the Security Council vote sanctioning NATO intervention in Libya. Currently, tensions between the Russians and Americans are seething beneath the surface. The Obama administration, like its Bush predecessor, is striving to deprive Russia of all residual manoeuvrability after having virtually hemmed it in on all sides. The Russians are fully aware that they are not to be spared as the losers of the Cold War and that the Americans have no intention of relaxing their blockade. When the US moved to install components of the ballistics shield in Eastern Europe, Moscow made it perfectly clear that it knew that it was aimed at Russian missiles and not at any other target. The Russians are equally stung by US and European successes in depriving it of access to oil and gas sources and routes in the Caucasus and Black Sea regions. The Russians see Western talk about freedom and democracy in Syria and Western censure of the brutal security clampdowns there as yet another link in the US-led drive to strategically contain the Russian Federation. This is why Russia seems determined to reject any international resolution that will open a legitimate avenue for Western intervention in Syria. If Washington and its allies push for a Security Council resolution calling for sanctions against Damascus, Moscow will most likely use its right to veto this time. To Moscow, Syria is the last "castle" it possesses in the Arab region. It is the only place on the Mediterranean that offers facilities to the Russian navy (in the port of Tartus). And it is the only Arab country left that hasn't severed its military ties with Russia and that still equips itself with Russian-made weaponry. In view of this strategically vital relationship, Moscow has revised its earlier reluctance to furnish Syria with advanced defence weaponry. When it recently approved a military package that includes a sophisticated anti- ballistics system and anti-aircraft missilery it was indifferent to Israeli and US reactions. Syria and Russia enhanced their naval military cooperation. Syrian officials recently announced that Commander of the Syrian Navy Admiral Taleb Al-Bari, at the head of a large Syrian military delegation, was in Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky over enhancing the capacities of the Syrian navy. They also discussed developing the port at Tartus so as to furnish improved facilities for Russian naval vessels in the Mediterranean with an eye to eventually redressing the balance with the American Sixth Fleet. But what are the ramifications and possible repercussions of all this on the turmoil that has been rocking Syrian towns and cities for the past three months? Clearly, the Russians are working strenuously to promote the continuity and stability of the Bashar Al-Assad regime so as to safeguard their last remaining foothold in the region and on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Americans are obviously working in the opposite direction, eager to take advantage of the state of unrest in Syria in order to accomplish a range of objectives on their agenda for Syria and the region as a whole. For the Americans, the fall of the Bashar regime would serve two ends that are high in Washington's To Do list. It would sap much of the power of Hizbullah in Lebanon and it would cut Iran off from the Mediterranean. Both Hizbullah and Tehran are close strategic allies of the current regime in Damascus. It would also weaken the Iraqi resistance, many of whose headquarters are based in Syria. The new American drive in the region needs to capitalise on the "Arab Spring" if it is to succeed where direct occupation has failed in its campaign to redraw the political map. The more Damascus is preoccupied with the current domestic unrest, the more this will obstruct the flow of arms from Iran via Syria to Hizbullah and the smuggling of arms from Syria into Iraq. In fact, at the moment the arms smuggling flow has reversed direction; rather than heading outwards from Syria to either Lebanon or Iraq, it is heading inwards from various directions in order to support the Syrian opposition. The Americans also believe that if they could help engineer the fall of Al-Assad, they would be able to bring in an ally in Damascus that would facilitate a peace settlement between Syria and Israel. At the same time, it would help undermine Hizbullah and, at worst, eliminate it as a military force in Lebanon, converting it into an ordinary political party on par with the other parties in Lebanon. These developments would naturally beat back Tehran's influence and facilitate the encirclement of Iran. Meanwhile, the chess game and war of wills between the Russians and Americans will remain fraught as they continue to plot and execute their respective moves. As for the outcome, much will depend on the practical initiatives on the part of the people of this region who need to take some very quick steps towards genuine political, economic and social reform. If they do not, the region will be headed for yet more dramatic changes -- probably sooner than many expect.
