How the Soviet Union collapse impacted the Arab world

Sudden collapse

Nobody expected it to be as quick, however, not even policymakers in the United States, although, according to then-secretary of State James Baker, he had received an internal memo as early as 25 October 1991 saying: "The Soviet Union as we know it no longer exists. Our aim should be to make the crash as peaceful as possible."

In his seminal book Diplomacy, Baker's predecessor, Henry Kissinger, who had spent a lifetime working towards a Soviet dissolution, wrote: "The Soviet empire collapsed even more suddenly than it had erupted beyond its borders."

As for Russia's long-time Arab allies like Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, they were seemingly convinced – very erroneously - that having survived many challenges in the past, the Soviets could bounce back.

The Soviet Union had indeed lived through World War II and years of US-led isolation under the Cold War, still managing to turn itself into a global superpower after Joseph Stalin died in 1953.

The last serious Soviet intervention in Arab affairs had been co-chairing the Madrid Peace Conference on 30 October 1991 by then-Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev and then-US president George HW Bush.

But it had been clear to all those at the Palacio Real in Madrid that Gorbachev's presence was purely ceremonial. It was the Americans who were calling the shots in Madrid, not Gorbachev.

Nothing demonstrates this more than a special letter of assurances sent to the Palestinians to convince them to attend as part of a Jordanian delegation. It was signed by the Americans only, without the Russians.

Distorted picture

Arab state-run newspapers were mostly mute about the back-to-back revolts in the USSR's former satellite states across Eastern Europe. And when they did cover them, they were always described as US-engineered.

No one said anything about Estonia being the first satellite to declare sovereignty on 16 November 1991, nor about Lithuania, which came next with full independence, followed by Georgia.

Kazakhstan was the last, proclaiming independence on 16 December, ten days before the USSR ended. The Berlin Wall had fallen in November 1989, leading East and West Germany to reunite officially, which was only mentioned on Arabic television in retrospect after it became irreversible, and not while it was actually happening.

Signs and warnings ignored

For months, the Soviets had been sending their Arab allies one signal after another to downplay their expectations from the USSR, politely saying that the days of patronage were over.

When meeting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in November 1987, Gorbachev said to him, rather bluntly: "We engaged in plenty of competition and confrontations with the United States over the Middle East. That stage is now over."

Arafat smiled and took a mental note, not fully digesting the message. Moscow had opened an office for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation as far back as 1976, and in November 1978, it gave it diplomatic status. That was now history, Gorbachev seemed to be saying.

Gorbachev also reached out to Arab friends of the US like Jordan's King Hussein, who was received in Moscow with full honours in December 1987, followed by Hosni Mubarak in May 1990, who was given a rescheduling of Egyptian debt – a total of $3bn accumulated since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal visited Moscow twice, in January 1988 and then again in September 1990, formally re-establishing relations after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The diplomatic exchange was accompanied by a Saudi loan of $4bn, intended to save the stagnated Russian economy.

Then came a landmark meeting between Gorbachev and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz in Moscow on 5 September 1990 — one month after the invasion of Kuwait. Gorbachev said "We know that the United States is willing to resort to force if its interests are threatened, and we in the Soviet Union cannot do anything to prevent that."

Aziz was shocked, replying: "We had hoped that you would stand by us, morally at least." Gorbachev shrugged and looked the other way. He had nothing more to say.

Arab denial

Still, many Arabs refused to believe that the mighty Soviet Empire on which they had pinned so much hope was ending rapidly.

In October 1989, Gorbachev held a conference in Moscow entitled "Perestroika and the Third World," outlining before his country's many allies the difficult situation the country was in, hoping that they would understand.

In explicit detail, one Russian academic explained to the audience the terrible condition of the Soviet economy, to which veteran Palestinian leader George Habash replied: "You have accomplished a lot for which you should be proud. You are underestimating the value of what you have accomplished, losing confidence in your own abilities while retreating from your right to be one of the two superpowers."

Yeltsin and the Arabs

By December 1991, it had become crystal clear to all that the USSR had begun its long march into history books and that a new country had emerged led by a man named Boris Yeltsin, about whom the Arabs knew very little.

Under Yeltsin, Moscow retreated significantly from the Arab world and was far more interested in what was happening in its own backyard than in the Middle East.

Although he prioritised turning a new page with the West, he nevertheless realised, very early into his term, the importance of the Muslim world since six of the 14 new states that had emerged on his border were Muslim. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan were all dealing with the revival of Islam, which had been suppressed under communist rule.

For Yeltsin, there were 25 million "Russians" still living in these former satellite states, and to deal with their Muslim populations, he needed influential Muslim countries. He turned to Iran and Turkey rather than traditional allies like Syria, Libya, and Iraq.  

Russia's new friends in the Middle East

The two countries suddenly became Moscow's new best friends in the region, helping deal with two wars in Chechnya, the civil war in Tajikistan, and eventually, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani was careful not to upset the Russians when he delayed recognising the independence of Azerbaijan until after the formal dissolution of the USSR.

He stayed out of the first Chechen war that began in December 1994, helped the Russians reach a political settlement in Tajikistan, and cooperated with them against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But when the fighting in Chechnya intensified, the Iranians felt compelled to be more critical of Russian policy while continuing to stress that Chechnya was an "internal" Russian affair.

Turkey, however, was far more critical and made sure never to cross a red line with Yeltsin since trade between the two countries had reached a whopping $10-12bn/year since 1991.

At the start of the Soviet collapse, then-Turkish president Turgut Ozal tried expanding his country's influence in Azerbaijan while pledging more than $1bn in credit for newly independent Central Asian states.

They began to invest in banking, education, and transportation in former Russian satellite states with a sizeable Muslim population, which was eventually slowed down by Yeltsin's overtures towards Ankara.

Turkish construction companies were lured with attracting deals in Moscow itself, even to repair the Russian Duma, while selling Ankara much-needed Russian gas and military equipment denied by the Americans, including choppers that Washington feared would be used against Kurdish separatists.

Yeltsin and Israel

Going hand-in-hand with the newfound alliance with Turkey and Iran, post-Gorbachev Russia also reached out towards Israel, with whom diplomatic relations had resumed just two months before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev sent acting foreign minister Boris Pankin to the region to explain his position to the Arabs, telling him: "Arafat, Gaddafi, they call themselves our friends, but only because they dream of our returning to the past."

Up until curtain fall, relations had been strained between the two countries, with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens commenting on the eve of the Madrid Peace Conference: "After events in Europe, the idea of viewing the Soviet Union as a superpower equal to the United States needs examination."

Once constantly criticised for what it had done to the Palestinians, Israel suddenly became Russia's leading trade partner in the Middle East, despite major differences over its sale of sophisticated weapons to Iran. 

On 24 April 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin officially visited Moscow, signing six agreements in technology transfer, culture, education, medicine, and tourism.

In October 1995, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Eli Dayan said, "We have complete trust in Russia." By then, bilateral trade between the two countries had hit an all-time high of $500mn.

Israel supported Moscow in Chechnya, and in return, when the first intifada broke out in September 2000, Russian lawmakers at the Duma voted to blame "extremist forces" rather than the Israelis for the escalation of violence inside the Al Aqsa Mosque and its environs.

Iraq

Then came the issue of what to do with Iraq and its president Saddam Hussein, a historic ally of Moscow that Yeltsin decided to drop to please both the Americans and Iran.

Iraq had signed a 15-year treaty of friendship with the USSR back in 1972, which strained bilateral relations with Washington. The Soviets acted in good faith, sending arms and hundreds of advisers to Baghdad, but in 1978, Saddam Hussein, then vice-president, began his crackdown on Iraqi communists, signalling a shift towards the US one year before he formally replaced Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr.

Although relations would soon be mended between Baghdad and Moscow, the USSR was not consulted on Saddam's 2 August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and its leaders supported a UN resolution authorising the use of force, if necessary, to enforce an arms embargo on Iraq.

In his memoirs, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze wrote: "Now that a new world order is being built based on cooperation and interaction, to commit an act of aggression meant to commit suicide. It was not possible for Saddam Hussein not to understand this."

President Yeltsin went further than most would have expected on Iraq, supporting sanctions and sending two warships to the Arab Gulf to help enforce the US-led embargo. In return for supporting the UN resolution, he was later rewarded with a $1bn credit line from Kuwait and a $4bn loan from Saudi Arabia.

In June 1993, his Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev even supported the US bombing of Iraq in response to a failed attempt to assassinate ex-president Bush during a visit to Kuwait, saying: "We cannot consider hunting presidents, even former ones, to be normal. Tolerating this would be tantamount to endorsing a policy of state terrorism."

Along with Yeltsin, he would soon come into confrontation with the Russian Duma, which on 21 April 1995 voted overwhelmingly to lift sanctions against Iraq. Lawmakers argued that unless those sanctions were lifted, Russia would never regain the $7bn that Iraq owed it, dating back to the Soviet era.

Saddam grabbed at the opportunity, luring the Yeltsin administration back to his country with a multibillion-dollar agreement for oil development and training of Iraqi oil specialists. The Russian firm Lukoil was called in to develop the West Kurna oil field while keeping 75% of its profit without having to pay taxes to the Iraqi government.

Acting like a superpower

Throughout the 1990s, Russia continued to speak and act like a superpower, still unable to completely abandon its Soviet history while providing none of the patronage and support that superpowers give their client states.

Arab communists were still hopeful, nevertheless, that one day, hopefully in their lifetime, they would see a Soviet rebirth, one way or another.

Months into the Yeltsin presidency, veteran Syrian communist leader Khaled Bakdash said: "Re-birth of the Soviet Union won't be easy, but it is doable. The Soviet Union won't return as it was, neither formally nor in terms of structure, but the states that once composed it can unit into something that is more modern." 

In October 1992, foreign minister Kozyrev wrote in Moskovskiye Novosti that Russia was "doomed to remain" a superpower.

His successor, Yevgeniy Primakov, a former KGB operative with plenty of experience in Arab affairs, pushed for a multipolar world, advocating stronger relations with China, India, and former Soviet allies in the Arab world to counterbalance US hegemony.

He began returning Russia to the Middle East, a policy that would later be picked up by Vladimir Putin, who inherited the Kremlin from Yeltsin in 1999 and, since 2015, most of the Middle East.