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Reviewed by:
  • Russia's Middle East Policy: From Lenin to Putin by Alexey Vasiliev, and: What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East? by Dmitri Trenin
  • Tristan Kenderdine (bio)
Russia's Middle East Policy: From Lenin to Putin, by Alexey Vasiliev. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018. 554 pages. £100.
What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East? by Dmitri Trenin. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017. 144 pages. £9.99 paper.

Russia has a deep and institutionally embedded history in the Middle East—as the self-styled successor state to the Eastern Roman Empire, as the protector of the Orthodox Church in the Middle East, as a Soviet expansionist power, and now reemerging on the world stage generally and in the Middle East specifically. The two books under review are likely a vanguard of a reawakening to and new courses to understand Russia's reemergence in a region that it is indelibly connected to.

Both Dmitri Trenin and Alexey Vasiliev tackle Russia's reemergence as a global geopolitical force in the Middle East. To be sure, Russia's extensive involvement in Syria and its resurfacing as a major external power in the region more generally deserve close attention. However, neither of these books clearly articulates what Russia is doing in the Middle East nor how Russia's Middle East policies have evolved.

Trenin's work, What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East?, is concerned with direction, weight, and balance. It focuses on state forces external to the Middle East and their impact on each other, rather than on the region itself. It essentially explores the uneven weight of various state actors in pursuit of their respective interests.

Trenin argues that Russia misses the imperial great power dynamic in which it had vied for power and influence in the region with France, Britain, and Germany. Ultimately Trenin argues that the world needs to acknowledge that Russia is again a major world power and thus a key external player in the Middle East.

Trenin's is not so much a book as a good essay. Trenin is insightful and his perspective elucidating, but this is an afternoon read that can be strolled through as a primer for a new government posting or a graduate school class on Middle East policy. References are scant, with the first chapter's citations double-printed by the publisher. The "case studies" in diplomacy are really vignettes; the view of a well-versed watcher of Russia-Middle East current affairs but not academically rigorous. The "war" chapter is light on detail, but full of indulgently broad statements. Here was a real chance to put forward Russia's foreign policy credentials and to analytically defend them against the frame of the United States' position on Syria.

Good political research brings a clarity that does not shy away from stating that which seems too obvious to say. And yet Trenin misses the opportunity here to live up to the book's title: what are Russia's policy motivations in the Middle East? How has Russia come down on the side of state sovereignty against separatism? The brevity and lack of source material turn a potentially light treatment into a shallow one. This book needed a stronger, perhaps even a courageous editor. And the research design of the project needed to be clearer and tighter at the start.

Nevertheless the book is enjoyable, useful, and a good entry to the subject matter. In What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East?, the reader [End Page 174] does get a very nice overview of the current affairs and contemporary history of Russia's reemergence on the regional stage. It feels like tea with an old diplomat friend and catching up on current events from a new perspective.

If Trenin's account is too broad, Vasiliev's treatment is encyclopedic. In Russia's Middle East Policy, Vasiliev offers up a condensed history of Russian Middle East policy-making, focusing on the states that have occupied the major geopolitical ground for both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation: Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. Vasiliev's scope and mastery of detail create an impressive compendium of history peppered with personal interviews.

Vasiliev...

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