From Russia’s Borders To The Middle East And Central Asia, Strategic Balances Are Shifting

The US has just bombed Iranian IRGC bases in Syria. Strategic power blocs are shifting tectonically and no one seems to have noticed. To do so you have to connect the dots of seemingly unrelated incidents into cause and effect. Here’s a jumble of them. See if you agree with the cohering interpretation assayed by this column. US leaves Afghanistan, Russia launches full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Turkish drones damage Russian positions, Putin orders drones from Iran, Turkey re-establishes relations with Israel, US kills Al-Quaeda leader, Salman Rushdie is attacked, Iran nuclear talks drag on, Russia moves to shut the Israel-related Jewish Agency in Moscow, Turkey signs intelligence accord with Kazakhstan, Russia launches spy satellite on behalf of Iran. That’s a brief outline. Let’s see what it might mean.

As this column observed when the US left Afghanistan at the end of August last year, the ‘war on terror’ resources could now be freed up for focus elsewhere. During its span of roughly 20 years, Russia and China both became major geostrategic players. And Iran a regional power. After August 2021, Putin, no doubt realizing it was now or never, likely decided on his big move into Ukraine before the US could fully redirect its attention. On February 24, he pulled the trigger after some eight weeks of troop buildup. And then it did take Washington several months to respond properly to the invasion. Meanwhile, in the first weeks, Erdogan of Turkey had interceded on Ukraine’s behalf by providing highly effective military drones. Surprise! Wasn’t he cozying up to Putin when we last looked?

What would prompt Erdogan to betray his new-found ally in Moscow? For one thing, with domestic inflation running at over 80% his popularity needed a boost. Or put another way, he could ill afford the bad publicity of Russia beating up further on Turkey’s ethnic cousins, the Crimean Tatars, especially after Erdogan had let in some 10 million non-Turkic immigrants and refugees. (Let us not forget that Mustafa Kemal’s Republic had gained momentum in the 1920’s as a haven for persecuted quasi-Turkic peoples everywhere, most of them being under Slavic suzerainty at the time.) Erdogan’s gambit to return Turkey to a pan-Islamic neo-Ottoman state with Arabic-speaking Syrians flooding the cities has marred his nationalist posturing at home. Also, the strategic threat of Moscow possibly controlling the entire Crimean coast of Ukraine again, across the Black Sea from Turkey, would impel a return to full dependence on the Nato alliance. Meaning, pressure for democratic reforms and Erdogan’s eventual ousting. Still, despite defying Putin, he’s happy to make deals with Russia in rubles and host masses of Ruski tourists.

More about Turkiye later.

The shift in Russia-Israel relations marks another hotspot. At first, Israel tried not to take sides over Ukraine. The tremendous flow of Russian jewish communities and funds to Israel created a strong bond between the two countries in the post-Soviet era. Remember that Putin visited Israel before Obama in a highly symbolic gesture. But there was an even more existential reason for Israel’s warm (if wary) relations with Moscow. In the 2006 war with Hezbollah, 55 Israeli Merkava tanks were hit often using anti-tank rocket technology that had to come from Russia. The Israelis got the message. For example, Israel soon stopped helping arm Georgia with anti-aircraft missiles prior the 2008 Russian invasion. More recently, there has been a pervasive sense that Moscow has provided the Jewish State with intelligence on Iranian missile and drone build-ups in Syria that allowed Israel to knock them out pre-emptively. In short, a kind of balance existed in which both sides in Syria depended to some extent on Moscow.

Then, with the world crying out against Russian brutality in Ukraine (a country of origin for many Ashkenazy jews) Israel had to take sides, however tepidly, for Ukraine. Humanitarian aide and the like followed. Suddenly, in late June this year, the world heard news of Russian interest in acquiring Iranian military UAVs (drones) and Putin went on a public visit to Tehran. There is zero chance that Moscow expected such a deal to remain secret, especially to Israel. Such overtures have as much symbolic as practical purpose – in this case, a message to the Israelis that Moscow can easily tip the balance towards Iran in the skies over Syria. On August 9, Russia helped Iran launch a spy satellite into orbit. Also, there’s an implicit threat that Russia will enhance Tehran’s UAV capabilities with added tech contributions, creating severe headaches for Israel – and its allies, including Saudi Arabia whose oil installations have suffered attack from Iranian drones in the past. Plus, Moscow is moving to curtail and even close the Jewish Agency in Russia which enables all manner of interaction between the two countries’ populations, from emigration to money transfers. Some 40,000 of Russia’s 200,000 Jewish population have moved to Israel since the Ukraine invasion.

As noted in the most recent column, the timing of Washington’s strike killing Al Quaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri seemed anomalous, and possibly calculated to create domestic political capital for pursuing renewed ongoing nuclear (JCPOA) talks with Iran. The mullahs have for years provided safe haven to top AQ leaders, so Tehran would have interpreted the hit as personal. Plus, the top brass there likely needed similar political capital domestically to continue the negotiations. And so we have the rather anomalous timing of the attack on Salman Rushdie. And the attacks on US bases in Syria. For which the US retaliated, in recent days, with manned aircraft strikes against Iranian IRGC bases also in Syria. The message to all and sundry from both sides: don’t worry we are not going soft on the bad guys just because we are negotiating over nukes.

Meanwhile, of course, Israel has for some years taken a forward strategic position against Iran by allying with Azerbaijan, a country which is also an ally of Turkey. The idea being that a strong Azerbaijan could appeal to the large Azeri community within Iran possibly creating a secessionist movement, especially along a pan-Turkic geographical continuum from Turkey to the Central Asian Turkic ‘stans. This is, potentially, Erdogan’s dream come true, and it seems like Israel is on board. It would reunite Turkic speaking peoples geographically for the first time in over 200 years. It would boost Erdogan’s domestic popularity and outweigh talk of corruption, nepotism, and state capture. Hence, Turkey’s move to re-establish formal relations with Israel, after years of alienation. And a little-mentioned recent entente between Turkey and Kazakhstan to share military intelligence.

As this column repeatedly observes, the Central Asian gambit against the soft underbelly of Russia, hitherto Moscow’s power playground, would outflank the Kremlin’s focus on Ukraine, shake Putin’s hold on power and threaten to fragment the Russian Federation via its restive Turkic populations such as the Tatars and Bashkirs et al. It looks like the first steps in that direction are underway.

CaspiannewsKazakhstan Approves Military Intelligence Protocol with Türkiye

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2022/08/25/from-russias-borders-to-the-middle-east-and-central-asia-strategic-balances-are-shifting/