PUTIN’S MEDITERRANEAN GAMBIT - Endgame Unclear - Mark N. Katz

Katz The Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East examines political and economic dynamics in the Middle East and recommends US, European, and regional policies to encourage effective governance, political legitimacy, and the unlocking of human and economic potential in the region. [...] Notable Tsarist pullbacks from the The Growth of Russian region occurred during the Napoleonic Wars, when Tsarist forces had to concentrate on their fight Influence in the Mediterranean against Napoleon inside Russia itself; as a result during the Putin Era of Russia’s humiliating defeat in the Crimean War The most dramatic example of increased Russian (1853-56); and the downfall of the Tsarist Em. [...] The relatively limited Russian military presence in Syria has been much Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, Moscow has more successful than the much larger Soviet especially good relations with Algeria, which has one in Afghanistan in the 1980s and US ones in become one of the largest buyers of Russian Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. [...] What is needed instead is a US effort to show all states in the Mediterranean and the outside powers On the other hand, a counterproductive policy active there, especially Russia, that the United would be one in which the United States determines States is not leaving the region and remains strongly that Russia is so great a threat that Washington committed to it. [...] The most effective way, though, for the United Conflict resolution and reduction initiatives, of States to contain or even reverse the more harmful course, are not something that the United States aspects of Russian behavior in the Mediterranean should pursue just to limit Russian influence in the would be for Washington to do the one thing that Mediterranean.