ABSTRACT
America’s invasion of Iraq and efforts to establish a Pax Americana throughout the Middle East have created major dif culties for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign policy. Indeed, America’s actions, in the context of contemporary world politics and of Russia’s development within that environment, have enmeshed Moscow’s Middle Eastern policy in multiple contradictions. These contradictions are most basically expressed in Russia’s effort to build a structure of international partnerships with other major powers against American unilateralism while simultaneously proclaiming itself a partner to the United States in the war against terrorism and, most importantly, retaining at all costs a free hand in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Recent Russian foreign policy moves, climaxing in Putin’s tour of the Middle East and his speech to the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy in February, 2007 blasted U.S. policies, re ect Russia’s effort to break out of that dilemma and to develop a concept of a new world order where Moscow is the leading balancer against American policy, not least in the Gulf and the Greater Middle East.1
