Russia and the Middle East Amid a Global Realignment of Forces
Valdai Discussion Club Conference Hall, Tsvetnoy Boulevard 16/1, Moscow, Russia
Programme

On Tuesday, February 28, the 12th Middle East Conference of the Valdai Club opened in Moscow. Its theme is “The New Middle East and the Security Crisis in Europe: Effects of Mutual Influence”. The conference is being attended by about 50 leading experts on the region, current politicians and intellectuals from 18 countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Iran, China, Kuwait, Lebanon, UAE, Palestine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey.

At the beginning of the conference, Mikhail Bogdanov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, read Sergey Lavrov’s greeting message to the participants. In turn, session moderator Vitaly Naumkin, academic director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, recalled Russia’s proposal to create an inclusive security system in the Middle East and invited the speakers to share their views on the on-going realignment of forces in the region.

According to Kayhan Barzegar, Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Islamic Azad University, due to geopolitical dynamics, the countries in the region will increasingly be forced to cooperate with each other. Now the countries of the region can choose between the Western and non-Western blocs, he noted, and the non-Western bloc, consisting of the states of the region and countries such as Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, is becoming more and more significant in the international arena. This alliance, the Iranian scholar believes, is focused on creating common supply chains and economic interaction, and none of the states participating in it intends to represent the interests of any third countries.

Ramzy Ramzy, UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria (2014-2019), also spoke about the growing role of regional powers. The Egyptian diplomat pointed to the positive dynamics in relations between Syria and other countries of the Arab world. According to him, the Arab states realised belatedly that Syria cannot be allowed to disappear as a result of external interventions. The normalisation of relations between Damascus and other countries of the region was also facilitated by the recent, tragic earthquake which struck both Turkey and Syria.

Bouthania Shaaban, Adviser to the President of Syria, devoted her speech to the transformation of the world order. According to her, for many states the American formula for a “rules-based world order” remains incomprehensible. “No one knows what kind of world order this means or what these rules are. Of course, these rules are dictated by the United States, and many countries do not agree with this state of affairs. In this sense, the Russian special military operation in Ukraine launched certain processes that were doomed to happen, because the world can no longer exist within the framework of this unipolar order under the control of Western powers,” she stressed.

Çağrı Erhan, rector of Altinbas University in Istanbul, also touched upon the growing influence of regional players. He recalled that the very concept of the Middle East reflects a Eurocentric paradigm that is becoming less and less relevant. Nevertheless, the influence of extra-regional powers, in his opinion, will remain (in particular, the United States will remain in the region through its proxies). However, such powers will increasingly have to reckon with the identity of regional centres of power.

The second, closed-door session of the conference was devoted to the consequences of the Ukrainian crisis for the Middle East. The leitmotif of the discussion was that the United States had failed to attract anyone to the anti-Russian coalition, except for those who are already subject to binding relations with Washington. The matter is not about supporting Russia, but about the unwillingness of the countries of the Global South to follow the instructions of the United States.

According to one of the speakers, the Europeans and Americans sincerely do not understand why representatives of non-Western countries are not interested in the events in Ukraine, whose assistance, in their opinion, is the moral duty of all countries. Thus, according to the results of a public opinion poll in African countries, more than two-thirds of respondents have no opinion about the crisis in Ukraine, while the rest support Russia and Ukraine in almost equal shares. In Africa, it has not gone unnoticed that the European Peace Facility (EPF), originally created to support developing countries, has become a tool for financing the purchase of weapons for Ukraine: in 2022, the EPF spent a third of its money on Ukraine. Thus, the EU has clearly demonstrated its priorities.

According to another speaker, the sanctions imposed by the West against Russia were adopted without any coordination with other countries on which they have an indirect impact, primarily regarding the supply of grain and fertilizers. The West’s unwillingness to take into account the consequences of its decisions for non-Western countries does not elicit sympathy in the Global South.

During the third session, the prospects for the North-South transport corridor were discussed: how transport routes have changed amid a crisis situation, and what opportunities appear for new logistics projects on the continent. Despite the fact that the importance of this new transport route has been talked about for two decades, not enough real steps have been taken to promote it, the speakers noted. According to one of them, Russia was primarily interested in how to make money on transit, and so the North-South corridor was losing to the China-Europe corridor. Now, after a radical transformation of supply chains, it is necessary to approach its development not from the standpoint of obtaining rent, but on the prospects for the development of proprietary production. It was noted that modern conditions require full digitisation to reduce regulatory costs, and digital interaction should increase in all countries of the corridor and be as friendly as possible, otherwise the project may again get bogged down in bureaucratic coordination and harmonisation measures.