Page 52 - bne_Magazine_July_2018

52 Opinion
bne July 2018
government and economy alike. This Putin understands how corruption, clientelism and corporate mismanagement are undermining the economy and stifling a Russian lift-off which is by no means impossible.
But that means taking risks, challenging the entrenched elite
– who are also his friends and supporters – and reversing a trend towards isolationism and conservatism. Ultimately, it is the other Putin, the risk-averse one, who has – as usual – won the day. The Putin who hid for a fortnight while he agonised about what to do when Ramzan Kadyrov had Boris Nemtsov gunned down right outside the Kremlin. The Putin who almost withdrew his troops from Syria in 2016 before changing his mind, and bogging Russian down in this vicious war.
COMMENT:
Russia and Iran: Friends and silent foes
Emil Avdaliani in Tbilisi
Iran and Russia have historically been wary of each other’s geopolitical ambitions. Presently, their competing aims hamper their partnership from evolving into a full-scale alliance, but the two powers do have a number of converging interests in the Middle East and the South Caucasus. Now, with both Moscow and Tehran facing US sanctions, the development of their relationship will be intriguing.
One theatre of Russo-Iranian cooperation is Syria. Both
Russia and Iran are interested in stopping western (primarily American) influence gaining much of a foothold in the country. But, as is typical, real differences between war-time allies
start to emerge only after the main hostilities are over. From time to time there have been pointers in the media on various disagreements that have broken out between Russia and Iran on the methods, aims and results of the war in Syria. Iran has almost solidified its land reach to the Mediterranean via Syria and Moscow could well be worried that a strong Iran would
be less susceptible to following the Russian lead. Russia’s eventual level of willingness to listen to Israel when it comes to containing Iran in Syria could well attune to its own objectives.
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He could have brought economic reformers into the Presidential Administration to channel and back Kudrin, but he kept to his old squad. He could have found a new face for his Ukraine policy, and his foreign relations altogether, but he stuck with the existing ones. He could have looked for imaginative and disruptive outsiders, but he kept with
the current management and hired spooks and insiders.
Leonid Brezhnev was not so much the architect of zastoi, stagnation, as its victim and figurehead. He lacked the power to do much more than preside over the Soviet Union’s shabby decline. Putin, though, is under no such institutional or ideological constraints. The stagnation of “late Putinism”
is his, all his.
Mutual opposition to US ambitions in the Middle East have forged a Moscow- Tehran bond. Presidents Putin and Rouhani have met several times in the past few years.
Further north, another theatre of cooperation is the nascent North-South transit corridor between Iran and Russia, which passes through Azerbaijan. The three countries are already somewhat connected via rail links and there is the notion that Russia’s Baltic ports and the Persian Gulf could one day enjoy efficient connections. Tehran and Moscow see Azerbaijan as a vital component in advancing North-South trade and energy corridors in the South Caucasus. Such corridors rival the West-East ones promoted by Western countries and perhaps also the East-West Belt and Road initiative backed by China.
But Moscow’s hesitancy in firming relations with Iran is seen in how slowly it is welcoming the Iranians into the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) trade bloc, which currently lists Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia as its members. In mid-May, it was announced that the Moscow-led EEU and Iran have signed an interim free trade agreement (FTA). The Islamic Republic has never managed to conclude an FTA with another country or economic bloc since it was founded in 1979. So such a deal is now tantalisingly close, but could still be a two or more years away.