Though it is premised on some serious options of hot engagement as well, as is happening in Syria when US planes took down an entirely bona fide Russian aircraft on a mission against Isis in Raqqa. But it’s happening right before our eyes. The detente is over.
Twenty years of hard work began in the 1970s under Messrs Nixon and Kissinger and brought to fruition with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union in 1989 under Reagan has run its course. What we have now are the clear signs of a new and sustaining Russo-American animosity which soon will traverse the globe for influence in a confrontational push to establish fresh lines of engagement. Here are the four strands of this new cold war.
Syria is the theatre where the two are in a near war, kinetically. After all, a couple of Russian aircraft have already been shot out of the sky; Russia only needs to respond in kind and you will have a conflagration between the two major powers. Behind these tactical mishaps lies the political game-playing which underwrites the objectives being pursued by them. The US has three clearly defined political objectives: the fragmentation of Syria, for which it is not loath to encourage separatist Kurds in the triangular adjunct regions of Iraq, Turkey and Syria with a splintering across in Iran as well. It also may encourage an easy west, north-south sub-division of it in control of more pliable hands.
A Syria sliced thus will cease to exist. This will be the indirect approach to seeing off Bashar al-Assad, which is America’s second or perhaps the most primary objective. A Syria cut to size, out of the hands of an Alawite-Shia Assad means both the Hizb in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza have their major supporting plank eliminated. That then assures Israel’s security. That it also weakens the Iran-Iraq-Syria axis around Shia political Islam is the obvious dividend.
The third and final American political objective is to also see the decimation of Isis, though it could happen in its own time after the other two are near attainment.
Look at the Russian design: preserve Assad’s regime to keep Syria intact, for if it fragments that only unleashes chaos and deep instability as has been evinced in Iraq and Libya. Russia can ill afford such mayhem in its neighbourhood when its adjoining regions of Caucasia and Chechnya are already restive with major streaks of Muslim militancy periodically rocking Russia. It will do whatever it takes to keep that from happening. Add to it the sensitivity that an incinerating Mediterranean can have on Russia which is connected to it through the Bosphorus. If Syria blows up, Turkey may not be far behind. Russian then gets bottled up in the Black Sea at its recently reacquired Crimean ports. Talk the great game there. A Russia embroiled in its south will hardly have time to expand its physical hold beyond the Crimea in its near abroad.
Of course, Russia wants to eliminate Isis which is currently the most ominous threat to Syrian integrity and the present regime’s continuity. There are other minor players too in this whole game including Turkey which is so confused that it doesn’t know whether to fight Assad or Isis or the Kurds. Or whether it should be doing American and Nato bidding in taking on threats, particularly Russia and Assad’s troops. So, if Isis were the prime threat in Syria and Iraq, it is the Assad regime and Russia who are at the forefront of fighting the menace. Others have intractable interests which might ultimately lead to finishing Isis off, but surely not as their top priority. This broth is just priming up.
The third plank of a brewing cold war between the two senior protagonists of the world is taking place in the Middle East, or more poignantly in the oil and gas producing regions of the world. Here I must invoke MK Bhadrakumar, a retired Indian diplomat of no ordinary insight, who has unravelled an interesting aspect of what lies beneath the ongoing drama in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC. The recently anointed young prince of Riyadh, Mohammad bin Salman, has travelled to Russia and met Putin four times in the last two years. His obvious concern was the plummeting prices of oil, which had done both Russia and Saudi Arabia in.
The two sides have been evolving a strategy to somehow bring buoyancy to a sinking oil market by controlling production. OPEC’s first stance was to price shale gas out by enhancing production and making oil cheaper. The oil economies took a hit but could not recover the prices. In the meanwhile, improving technology has only meant that shale has breached downwards the $50 mark as production costs drastically reduce. To sinking economies like Saudi Arabia it has meant a threat bigger than Daesh. Trump, ever the oil man himself and an ardent disbeliever in anything to do with climate change, must also change tack for a while and use shale and oil price manipulation to achieve geopolitical ends.
Prince Mohammad replaced crown prince Mohammad bin Nafay, a favourite of the American establishment. The new crown prince is with Putin in this high-stakes game of oil and energy. That is senior league all the way. By privatising Aramco, the Saudi Arab-American conglomerate, he is divesting state interests and then creating a wealth fund of about 2.2 trillion dollars to bring the Saudi economy to life. He may seem cavalier but how assuredly he may be able to bring back prosperity will need to stand the test of time. So, while Trump may have felt overly comfortable with his Saudi visit, the real game goes on between the prince and Putin.
The sacking of the previous crown prince is unlikely to go easy with the Americans, and there still is time before the young prince is elevated to kingship when he may decide which boat to ride in. Till then the dice is in the air. Howsoever the Middle East may unfold with these layers of intermingling forces, both Russia and the US are set to continue their game of influence – at times to, at another to buoy oil or to simply defeat shale. The game is on. And the young princes of the GCC are becoming players in this major-stake gamble.
The fourth plank of this new cold-war engagement between the US and Russia is in Asia, spread from the devastated Afghanistan to a simmering East Asia. Afghanistan was dispensable and has been thus duly trashed, but East Asia will be tread ever so easily, making for a riveting geopolitical game-play.
In the meanwhile, as the Middle East transitions socially, economically and politically, there are huge geopolitical shifts. This leaves the world of oil and gas wide open for strategic realignment. In that, the fissures in Islam make for an ideal backdrop for the major players to fish in. Some regions are already in turmoil, others on the anvil looking deep down the abyss. The game has only begun.
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