Straight to the point

Five months ago, Vladimir Putin declared that the so-called “multipolar world” had become a reality. He surely imagined this meant Russia would be one of only a handful of powerful nations able to dominate 21st-century global politics. But if the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria is anything to go by, then the multipolar reality is for Russia one of chaos and enfeeblement.

For a quarter of a century, Putin has dreamed of ending the era of American hegemony that followed the Cold War. Just 11 days after his shock appointment as acting president in 1999, Putin signed a National Security Policy declaring that “Russia will facilitate the formation of an ideology of establishing a multipolar world”. In theory, the “multipolar world” describes the end of American unipolarity. In reality, it is a synonym for the return of Russia’s international standing. After years of humiliating decline — a national debt crisis, a military disaster on home turf in Chechnya, and Russia’s increasing marginalisation in international security discussions — Putin was promising a new era of national and international strength.

Russians hoped their nation would once again become a great power. Back in the Seventies, the Soviet Union was a major player in Africa and the Middle East. By funnelling money, arms, and propaganda to support friendly countries, and fuel chaos and revolution in unfriendly ones, the Kremlin was, effectively, wrestling with the USA in proxy economic and physical wars. But as the Soviet empire unravelled at home and economic strife hit, Moscow’s influence waned. Formerly friendly countries looked to Washington instead. Throughout the Nineties, the government of the new Russian Federation was powerless to stop its influence collapsing.

Yet Syria remained one of Moscow’s most enduring friends and obedient servants, a role it has played for much of the last 80 years. After the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1944, the USSR openly advocated on behalf of Damascus. Moscow poured arms and money into Syria as the country ended French colonialism in the Forties. The following decades saw ever more tokens of friendship. A Soviet naval base opened in Tartus in 1971, and Moscow assisted Syria in the Yom Kippur War. Billions of dollars went to propping up the relationship, all eagerly received by the Syrians themselves.

Even as the USSR’s foreign power flagged in the Eighties, then president Hafez Assad’s government expressed support for the disastrous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and continued to rely on Moscow for assistance. Their enduring relationship exemplified the old, bipolar world order. Come what may, the Syrian regime relied on Moscow for military and ideological firepower. Syria, in turn, was an unusually stable country in an often fractured region, while the Soviet Union could count itself a major regional player thanks to this one-sided relationship.

In the Nineties, Russia’s inability to provide any real support to Syria saw the partnership wither. Under Putin’s aegis, a plan was hatched to revive it. While Moscow was hesitant at first to directly intervene in the Syrian Civil War, its airpower and ground forces proved crucial in helping Bashar al-Assad cling on to power as rebel forces gathered steam. The Russian Air Force’s brutal bombing campaigns were conducted with the same disregard for humanitarian law and civilian casualties as its earlier war in Chechnya, and foreshadowed Moscow’s approach to the Ukraine conflict. In return for propping up Assad, Russia was able to keep its naval base in Tartus, which allowed it to reach further into Africa. More important, Putin sent a clear message: he was willing to use any means necessary to ensure Russia was a global power that Washington and its allies could not ignore. The “multipolar world order” — if that meant the West listening to a powerful Russia — seemed to be coming to life.

Assad has stuck by Moscow like few others in recent years. While other countries in the Kremlin’s economic and military orbit, including traditional partners in Central Asia and Africa, have attempted to play off Russia and an ascendant China, Assad remained the perfect vassal. Speaking at the Kremlin last year, the former Syrian leader expressed his fealty by parroting Russian propaganda. He offered support for Russia’s war “against neo-Nazis and their predecessors”, and went on to speak of his “devotion” to Russia and the “need to stabilise the world”. Subjugation to Russia meant stability for the dictator.

Today it transpires that this stability has been, along with Moscow’s military, economic, and cultural strength, another of Putin’s grand illusions. Just as the campaign against Ukraine revealed military weaknesses in hours, so Russian power in Syria has evaporated in a matter of days. Stretched to the limit by its war in Ukraine, where despite recent progress some 30,000 soldiers and billions of dollars are being lost every month, the Kremlin has no more forces, no more men, and no more money to send to the Middle East. The best it can offer is asylum to the humiliated Assad. Today’s “multipolar world order” has turned out to be a sham, more akin to the Eighties world of ailing Soviet power than the genuine strength of the post-Second World War decades.

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Putin’s power is crumbling across the old Soviet Empire and beyond. Ukraine may not take back Crimea and its eastern regions in the near future, but the country’s population has definitively turned away from Moscow. Ten years ago, for example, Ukrainians were ambivalent about Nato and EU integration. Today, they overwhelmingly embrace both. Across Central Asia, countries look to China, not Russia, for development aid. Azerbaijan behaves without regard for Moscow’s opinion, while Armenia looks to India, China, and the USA for support.  

Even worse, Russia has been forced to accept ever more negative trade terms with stronger countries, such as India and China, thanks to the West’s firm approach to sanctions. Its few real alliances, like those with North Korea and Iran, see the smaller partners dictating terms. Today, Putin needs those countries more than they need him, and they are extracting maximum benefits in exchange for providing soldiers and military equipment to Moscow. At any moment, Putin’s whole foreign policy facade could crumble.

Russian diplomats might today claim that their county “does not betray its friends in difficult situations”, but their world is one of  smoke and mirrors, in which Moscow’s PR men project dominance, with fake news, disinformation, and braggadocio about everything from Syria to ballistic missiles, to cover up their country’s comparative weakness. Russia deployed its usual range of propaganda tactics to claim Assad’s position was impregnable, but at the first sign of trouble, some of its propagandists now claim that Syria never mattered anyway.

Ever since 1999, Putin’s aim has been to recreate Russian power with mastery over vassal states like Syria and Ukraine, but he has presided over chaos. Moscow is capable of breaking things, of instigating revolutions, of creating this chaos, but it does not have the strength to institute new international power structures.

Russia no longer has any control over Syria, which is likely to collapse into a period of turmoil as new leadership is asserted and contested. It seems unlikely that the new Syrian leadership, carried to power by soldiers with memories of being brutally attacked by Russian forces, will be as favourable to Moscow as any of its predecessors. Russia today has less power in the Middle East and across the post-Soviet space than it did a decade ago. A combination of big economic and military players — above all China — and chaotic, independent-minded groups, like in Syria, is filling that vacuum.

The Kremlin lacks the money, materiel, and motivation to do little more than hope that its international influence does not erode further. Short on options, and following his response to the Arab Spring, Putin will likely attempt to boost his domestic standing with attacks on Ukraine and more aggressive nationalism at home. This inward turn is not the multipolar world order Vladimir Putin was hoping for.

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