Speaking to
the UN General Assembly in September, President Vladimir Putin laid out Russia’s position on Syria. It was a mistake, he
claimed, to refuse co-operation with the Syrian Government.
Assad was the only participant
in the Syrian war with any democratic authority, Putin said, and was the best hope for defeating terrorism in the region,
of which Islamic State (IS) was only one element.
In making his case, he said
that Russia had legitimate interests in this and other parts of its “near
abroad” and that they would be pursued with vigour, even when they conflicted
with Western policy.
Putin’s strategic clarity of purpose was striking and took many observers by
surprise—but the logic underpinning his analysis was not new. It was strikingly similar to the Tsarist foreign policy of the
early twentieth century.
For a region with such ancient provenance, it is remarkable
how the shape of the Middle East today owes so much to events of the early
nineteenth century.
The Ottoman Empire had provided unbroken rule of the region
for 600 years. At its head was the conjoined role of sultan and caliph, the
first embodying temporal leadership, the latter, religious.
The sultanate could
not survive defeat in the First World War and was abolished on 1 November 1922. The caliphate followed in March 1924 as part of the sweeping secular reforms
instituted by Mustafa Kemal, first president of the Republic of Turkey and
better known as Ataturk.
This left vacant the post of spiritual head of Sunni
Islam to which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of IS, is the latest
pretender.
The fall of the empire was hastened
by the Arab Revolt of 1916, led by the Sherif of Mecca and abetted by T E
Lawrence (of Arabia), which marked the beginning of a sense of collective Arab
identity and nascent nationalism.
This was followed, and incalculably
complicated, by the British Government’s Balfour Declaration of November 1917
and its commitment to the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for
the Jewish people”.
But if there is a single legacy that, in conventional
wisdom, holds the key to the Middle East today it is that left by 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 Lausanne Treaty in June 1924.
But there was a third participant
in what was a tripartite discussion.
Without him, and the national interests
he represented, no sense can be made of the Middle East, then or now. Sergei
Sazonov was Foreign Secretary of the Imperial Russian Government, and, in his
1916 discussions with Sykes and Picot, he was holding most of the aces.
The 1915 Dardanelles and Gallipoli
defeats were shocks to the British and French who had underestimated Ottoman
resistance.
Worse was to follow in 1916 as Anglo-French attention became fixed
on the apocalyptic battles of the Somme and Verdun, even as General Townshend
was surrendering a substantial British force at Kut al-Amara, in present day
Iraq.
To cap it all, the Dardanelles Commission (the Chilcot Inquiry of its
time) reported, and the scapegoat Churchill lost his reputation and his place
in government.
While both Sykes and Picot were
playing weak hands, Sazonov was operating from a position of strength. Russian
forces crushed the Ottoman armies on the Caucasus Front (eastern Turkey today)
in early 1916 and became poised to attack the Anatolian heartland of the
Ottoman Empire.
What’s more, he was playing at home. Russian imperial ambition
had coveted the glittering prize of Constantinople, which the Russians called
Tsarograd, and access to the Mediterranean since Catherine the Great.
Sazonov
knew exactly what his country’s strategic objectives were and he pursued them
ruthlessly.
In contrast, Sykes and Picot were
on more uncertain ground.
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 because Britain was, and Italy too. For neither country did
it represent the strategic priority in a world war that remained in the
balance, and it showed.
The first cut of the deal ceded
Arabia, Mesopotamia and Palestine to the British, which satisfied requirements
for oil and links to India, but little else.
On the basis of a tenuous
Napoleonic linkage, France picked up Syria and Cilicia and Russia was given the
Constantinople Corridor linking the Black Sea to the Aegean.
Russia also gained
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, common 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. This was a substantial gain, and it was all down to
Sazonov.
Then, as now, Russia gets a vote. What aces does Lavrov
hold? At least two: strategic clarity and a plan with a chance of tactical
success.
Russia’s aims are to mitigate its international isolation, to defend
and secure a Syrian regime loyal to Moscow (though not necessarily its leader,
President Assad) and secure a Russian footprint in the region, including
valuable military bases.
These aims have the advantage of being clear, limited
and mutually supporting and bear scrutiny far better than the west’s
ill-defined, over-ambitious and under resourced efforts.
Russian strategy also has the most effective tactical
instrument in the current conflict. The Syrian army is reviled and complicit in
war crimes but knows what it is fighting for and, with Russian air support, it
is beginning to enjoy some tactical success.
Over 90 per cent of Russian air
sorties are now against Islamist and opposition groups other than IS. The clear
aim is to leave only two protagonists standing: the Syrian regime and IS.
Faced
with this choice, the West will have to reach an accommodation with Assad that is brokered through Russian
mediation.
It is a dangerous strategy. Russian policy runs the risk of
creating a stand-off between a Shia bloc comprising the Assad regime, Iran and
Hizbollah and a Sunni bloc comprising the Syrian rebels, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
and Turkey that can only increase the poisonous sectarian tensions within the
Middle East and the possibility of a regional war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
But it’s a plan, and, compared to the
recent agonised Parliamentary debate about sending a handful of aircraft to
support a rebel army of dubious provenance and doubtful loyalty, it has the
advantage of being connected with reality.
Right on cue, the United
Nations Security Council agreed on Friday a Syrian roadmap to elections within
18 months. Limited time places a premium on strategic clarity and tactical
advantage: the starting pistol has been fired and the Russians are fast out of
the blocks.
Whatever the outcome, Russia cannot
and will not be ignored—just as Sazonov intended.
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