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Russia's Policy in the Middle East: Prospects for Consensus and Conflict in the Middle East
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Dmitri Trenin,
The Century Foundation,
3/2/2010
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View other Russia Working Group papers.
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In "Russia's Policy in the Middle East," Dmitri Trenin maps the
complicated relationship between Russia and the Middle East, and how
Russia's renewed involvement in the region will have far-reaching
effects on American foreign policy. Russia, by the mid-2000s, had
recovered from its domestic crisis, and so did its global ambitions.
While Moscow’s principal interests still lie mostly toward the west, the
Middle East is back on Moscow’s radar screen and Russia’s withdrawal
from the region has been reversed. The Middle East is important to
Moscow for several reasons-- its physical proximity; the Muslim factor,
as continuing religious and political turbulence within the Muslim world
brings radical ideas and militants from the Middle East into Russia and
impacts Russia’s policy in the Caucasus, the central Russian republics
of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, and post-Soviet Central Asia; large
emigration from Russia to Israel, where 20 percent of the population are
former Soviet Jews; the energy riches of the region; and Russian
attention to the current U.S. focus on the region, and American military
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Download the paper.
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Edition: online
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