Russia, the United States, and Regional Order in the Middle East

• In Event: US Retrenchment in the Middle East: Prospects and Implications

Abstract

Against the backdrop of US disengagement from the Middle East, Russia has aspired to redefine the authorized forms of political action and to promote its centrality as an order-builder in the evolving regional order. Russia’s contestation of liberal norms and advancement of the state-centric principles associated with multipolarity in the Middle East holds a wider global application and theoretical relevance as power becomes more diffuse across international and regional orders. At the same time, Russian conduct in the Middle East has reflected the persistent factors of its foreign policy including the country’s preoccupation with stability as well as tendency to ground its identity in the material and institutional practices constitutive of great power status. Therefore, this paper seeks to contextualize the implications of US retrenchment from the Middle East within Moscow’s understanding of a) great powers, great power management, and diplomacy; b) regional stability and security; and c) regional orders as indications and expressions of shifts in international order. By doing so, it elucidates Moscow’s perception of its role in the region, relations with the US, and engagement with local actors while providing a case to better comprehend state-led efforts to contest global order at the regional level.

Author

• Nicole Bayat Grajewski, University of Oxford