An Alliance of Interests? Russia and Israel in Obama's New World

As the advent of the Obama Administration brings back the "multipolar" in international relations, some of its most enthusiastic backers are in Moscow. During the Bush years, President Vladimir Putin publicly criticized Washington's unilateralism. Sometimes the challenge was rhetorical to the "new bombs" of the US. Sometimes it was much more:  when the Bush Administration tried to isolate Russia from NATO’s "impact zone" in Eastern Europe by proposing a missile umbrella in the Czech Republic and Poland, Putin raised the threat of a nuclear attack if Poland accepted a US missile interceptor base on its soil.

The intensity of attention to the "change" in Barack Obama’s rhetoric, especially toward the Israeli-Palestine/Arab problem, has contributed to this transformation. While Washington disowns the policies of the Bush era and puts pressure on Israel for sufficient concessions to start negotiations with Arab states, France has opened its first military base in the gulf region since the 1960s. And Russia becomes one of the first beneficiaries of the "soft power" of the US.

After Russia agreed last year not to sell S-300 missiles to Iran in 2008 and halted the sale of advanced MIG-31 fighter jets to Syria last month, Israel expedited the production of unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia. This was more than a bit of military equipment: as Israel manoeuvres agianst the Arab Peace Initiative, Tel Aviv is seeking a new relationship with Moscow. The Foreign Minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, visited with President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin and declared that he would expand and deepen the strategic ties between two countries, albeit without any intention of replacing the US. "We are expanding in additional directions, including Russia, South America, central Asia and India, but our ties to America come first," asserted a senior official in Lieberman's office.

So the Netanyahu Administration is trying to use Kremlin as leverage against the pressure of the Obama Administration, using Russia's manoeuvring vis-a-vis the US to its advantage. Still, Israeli officials might want to remember that the multipolar works in more than one direction: Moscow has just welcomed Palestinian Authority representatives as part of its interest in a Middle Eastern peace process. If Russia finds common ground with Washington on issues from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus to Central Asia, will Tel Aviv again find itself isolated in this Very New World?

Comments

[UJ]

Another piece of the puzzle
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/06/iran_the_taliban_and_russia.php
(Note of Warning: Author is extremely hawkish and a known Islamophobe)

"One needs to step back and see where the Iranian weapons come from, and why the suppliers to Iran don't seem to care where the weapons end up. The answer is that Russia, who we still like to pretend is an ally in combating radical Islam, is the main supplier, and Russia has shown no qualms in arming radical groups (often via Iran).

The clearest example of the Russian-Iranian pipeline came in the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, where the pipeline provided the Shiite militants with armor-piercing rockets and other armament that the Israeli forces clearly were not expecting. Victor Bout (still held in jail in Bangkok, awaiting supposedly the final hearing on his extradition in August) helped move those weapons."

[Ali Yenidunya]

UJ, thank you very much for the link. You are right, this is the other half of the picture relecturing those strict hawkish lines of such authors in a sense that this is the way statecrafts based on national identities work...

If this is the case, then one needs to step back and see where today's radical Islamists' existence is coming from and why today's 'good guys' have no intention in accepting how they had supported & financed 'the anti-Communist antidote.' You know the answer...

Thank you UJ.

[UJ]

Remember when I said the real danger wasn't Russia supplying Israel...but Israel supplying Russia?

Ta-da!

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/06/whats-hebrew-for-chutzpah.php

"It seems that Yossi Peled, a retired general-turned-politician currently serving as Minister Without Portfolio in the Netanyahu cabinet, wants to sanction the United States in order to force Barack Obama to back down from his commitment to a settlement freeze. His specific proposals include “selling sensitive equipment that the Washington opposes distributing internationally, and allowing other countries that compete with the US to get involved with the peace process and be given a foothold for their military forces and intelligence agencies”

Again, for emphasis...
"selling sensitive equipment that the Washington opposes distributing internationally"