Russia Tries to Manage Arab Awakening From the Outside

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In The Media

Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center

Russia Tries to Manage Arab Awakening From the Outside

Russia is clearly concerned with the rise of Islamist extremists in the Middle East and is looking for ways to prevent destabilization in the region. At the same time, it is seeking to improve ties with various Arab countries.

By Dmitri Trenin

Published on May 14, 2013

Source: World Politics Review

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Mohammed Morsi, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egypt’s first post-Arab Spring president, even as Russia continued to back Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus against an assorted opposition that includes the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood. This apparent contradiction illustrates the challenges Russia is facing in the post-Arab Spring Middle East.

Like virtually everyone else, Moscow was surprised by the groundswell of change that began in the Arab world in early 2011. Experts advising the Russian government call this a tectonic shift and compare its impact to that of the two defining periods in the region’s 20th-century history: the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the secular revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. The present “Arab Awakening,” they opine, may take years, even decades, to unfold and is likely to transform the entire shape and fabric of the region. Its future course and dynamics are hard to predict, but in the end it will give a boost to the processes of social and political modernization that so far have largely bypassed the Arab Middle East and North Africa. ...

Read the full text of this article in World Politics Review.

About the Author

Dmitri Trenin

Former Director, Carnegie Moscow Center

Trenin was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2008 to early 2022.

Recent Work

Commentary
Mapping Russia’s New Approach to the Post-Soviet Space
- Dmitri Trenin
Commentary
What a Week of Talks Between Russia and the West Revealed
- Dmitri Trenin

Political Reform Foreign Policy Egypt Levant Maghreb Middle East North Africa Russia

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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