Window on Eurasia

Moscow’s Efforts to Play Islamic Card Said Likely to Backfire

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 4, 2006 – The Russian government’s efforts to win favor
in the Islamic world by providing arms to Iran and Sudan, meeting with
the leader of Hamas, and denouncing Israeli’s actions against
Hezbollah not only are unlikely to work in the way Moscow hopes but are
certain to backfire against Russia in the future.

This Russian policy of presenting itself as an ally of the Muslim world
against the United States, Moscow analyst Sergei Putilov argued on
Friday, not only represents a reprise of Soviet-era efforts but is
being undertaken at the urging of a man who helped design and implement that
earlier approach, Yegeniy Primakov.

But there are three compelling reasons, Putilov suggests, for thinking
that the new effort will be even less successful than the earlier one
and for concluding that such an approach will create new problems for
the Russian Federation not only internationally but in the first
instance at home
[http://flb.ru/info/38248.html].

First, power relationships in the world today are very different than
they were a generation ago. Consequently, choosing to back those who
oppose the United States on the basis of the old saying that “the
enemy of my enemy is my friend” simply will not work.

Instead, it will leave Moscow increasingly at odds with those
countries, including the U.S., that are now in a position to define the
international system, and also with those, including many in the Muslim
world, who do not share either the obsessions of Iran or the
Palestinians about Israel.

Second, Moscow is not forming an alliance with the best parts of the
Islamic world but rather with some of its worst – those committed to
the use of terrorism – largely because these countries cannot now
acquire the military means they seek from the West and thus have become
major customers for Russian arms.

Indeed, Putilov suggests, it is precisely concerns among Russians arms
producers that may be pressuing the politicians in this direction. At
present, most Russian arms sales go to China and India, but many in the
Russian arms business believe they will soon lose out in those markets
and consequently are looking “in the Middle East direction.”

And third, and this is the point to which Putilov devotes most of his
essay, Russia is viewed by many Muslims as part of the secular West
rather than a natural ally and thus can only successfully develop and
maintain an alliance with the Muslim world only by becoming
increasingly Islamic itself – something few Russians want.

Putilov in fact argues that this “playing with Islamists against
America can sometimes end in a very sad way” for Russia. In the
1920s, he notes, some Russian emigres despairing of the revolution that had
taken place in their country came up with Eurasianism, which called for
a Russian-Islamic alliance against “the rotting West.”

If some Russians were attracted to this movement – and there is
evidence that the Soviet secret services played a role in its rise –
more thoughtful Russian emigres saw through it and designated it as
“Chingizkhanstvo” – a reference to the Golden Horde – or
suggested that this movement was in fact seeking to create a new
entity, “Asiop.”

In Soviet times, Moscow routinely supported those the West opposed and
thus found itself on the side of radical Arab nationalists, an approach
that has long been associated with Yevgeniy Primakov, a Russian foreign
policy and intelligence specialist with close ties to the Middle East.

Today, Primakov is “the godfather” of this effort, Putilov
continues, and the former foreign minister has gained support from
“the millions of Russians” who “are inclined to see in the
collapse of the godless USSR not the will of God or their own mistakes
but exclusively the product of the machinations of the West.”

But just as Eurasianism tended to get out of hand, so too has the new
approach, Putilov suggests. He calls attention to a June 2006 article
in “VPK,” the magazine of the Russian arms industry, which goes so far
as to oppose Russia to “Judeo-Christian civilization,” as if
Orthodox Russians were not part of that civilization as well.

The dreams of Moscow politicians and thinkers for an equal alliance
with Islam against the West are just that dreams, Putilov insists, and they
are doomed to failure. Indeed, they only make it more likely that the
demographic transformation of Russia itself will continue and Russia
will be “transformed into a Muslim state.”

Some Muslim writers in the Russian Federation, Putilov notes, have
already pointed to the likelihood of that outcome. He cites Geydar
Dzhemal’s oft-quoted observation in “Nezavisimaya gazeta” on
January 31, 1992, that “the only way for Russia to avoid disappearing
geopolitically is to become an Islamic state.”

Such an outcome is neither desirable nor inevitable, Putilov maintains.
If Russia develops as an Orthodox state, he argues, that prospect can
be avoided: “Islam in our times is spreading only where first faith in
Christ is disappearing.” But he points out that few in Moscow who
seek an alliance with the Islamists understand that either.

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