What does the Ukraine conflict mean for West Asia?

Western commentators are struggling to describe the significance of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Fareed Zakaria has described it as a "seismic event," and believes it marks "the end of an age." Francis Fukuyama has called it "a critical turning point in world history." Thomas Friedman simply says, "Our world is not going to be the same again."

These cataclysmic prognostications from Western sources have not had the same reverberations in West Asia. Four years of the anarchy wreaked in the region by Donald Trump, followed by one year of Joe Biden's insipid and shaky presidency, have already created a diplomatic churn, with regional states pursuing fresh engagements and alignments, interactions that are independent of the US. The region, in short, has come of age and is anxious to define its own interests, and shape its own policy approaches and alignments.

This is best exemplified by the first reactions of the region's principal role-players—despite many being long-standing US allies, not one of them, besides Kuwait, has sided with the US in sharply condemning Russia; not one of them has imposed harsh sanctions to cripple the Russian economy.

Regional responses to the war

On February 23, a day before the Russian invasion, the UAE and Russian foreign ministers spoke telephonically about regional and international developments and emphasised their "keenness to enhance the prospects of UAE-Russian cooperation." On February 25, the UAE abstained on a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution that was critical of Russia. Two days later, it again abstained on a procedural resolution to refer the invasion to the UN General Assembly. Soon thereafter, Russia rewarded the UAE by abstaining on a UNSC resolution that described the Houthis in Yemen—who fired drones on Abu Dhabi on January 17 this year—as a "terrorist" organisation.

Saudi Arabia, a US ally from 1945, in response to the US' sanctions on energy exports from Russia, refused to increase its oil production to bring down global oil prices. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and his UAE counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, both refused to take calls from Biden when he was seeking to make personal appeals to them to increase oil production. Later, both of them took calls from President Putin and also spoke to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an apparent mediation effort. A little later, when an American journalist asked Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman if Biden had misunderstood him, the prince answered, "Simply, I do not care."

Qatar, the world's major gas producer, has been courted by both the US and Russia. The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, was the first Gulf leader welcomed in Biden's White House in January this year, with his country being conferred the status of a "major non-Nato ally." Biden's interest was to encourage Qatar to divert some of its gas to European markets to make up for reduced Russian supplies following the energy-related sanctions that the US imposed on March 8. In response, Putin addressed a letter to the emir setting out how bilateral relations could be expanded. Rather than choose sides, the Qatari foreign minister took the mediation route by making calls to his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.

Turkey, a Nato member with close political, military and economic ties with Russia, has been manoeuvring through a diplomatic minefield. It criticised Russia's recognition of the two break-away republics, and later, described the invasion as a "state of war," but announced no punitive sanctions.

Israel, perhaps the US' closest ally in West Asia, has opted for what an Israeli scholar, Eran Etzion, has called "strategic selfishness"—adopting a neutral posture and then diverting attention from its failure to back the US through some hectic interventions in Moscow and Kyiv as part of its "mediation" effort.

The Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, in his response to the Ukraine invasion, said Iran "opposed both war and domination." The last was a reference to Russian concerns relating to Nato's eastward expansion. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was more categorical: on March 1, he referred to the Biden presidency as a "mafia regime" and said, "All sorts of mafias control their country and bring presidents to power. They create crises in the world to maximise their power." He added that "the root of the crisis in Ukraine is US policies that create crisis. Ukraine is a victim of these policies."

West Asia's distancing from the US

The near-total absence of support for the US from across the region appears to have surprised many of its officials and even some commentators. But the factual position is that distancing from the US has been a steady process for some years.

In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the first concerns emerged in the early days of the Arab Spring—they saw the toppling of Hosni Mubarak, with the US doing nothing to back its old ally. This was followed by what they saw as US failure to intervene in the Syrian conflict and affect regime change. Later, in September 2019, they saw the Trump administration not responding to the serious attack on Saudi oil facilities, allegedly by the Houthis, but clearly with Iranian support.

The final straw was the ignominious US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, under Biden, with the US being viewed as again abandoning an ally—the government in Kabul.

Even as US credibility as a security provider plunged to new depths, many regional states simultaneously built substantial political, energy, economic and logistical connectivity ties with Russia and China. Russia built its regional credibility during the chaotic Trump period. After ensuring, through the use of its military, that no regime change would occur in Damascus, Moscow emerged as the go-to capital for almost all regional leaders who found Putin effectively serving their diverse interests.

For Israel, Russia was the only player capable of restraining the presence of Iran and Hezbollah at its northern borders with Syria, even as it periodically provided the green signal for Israeli attacks on Iranian assets in Syria.

In contrast to the Trump presidency, Biden was hostile to Saudi Arabia and its crown prince throughout his election campaign, when he referred to the country as a "pariah" and then, early in his administration, announced he would not interact with the crown prince; for good measure, he also released the CIA report that strongly suggested that the crown prince was behind the Jamal Khashoggi murder.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia and Russia have been partners from 2016 in the management of oil supplies in world markets by the "OPEC +" coalition that brings together OPEC members working in tandem with Russia and a few other oil producers: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, South Sudan, and Sudan.

This grouping, through considerable internal discipline, was able to ensure adherence to national quotas by member-states and successfully weathered the challenge of low prices in the face of shale oil production.

Turkey's outreach to the region has been more fruitful. Ankara hosted the UAE national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed, in August 2021, and then, in November, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. The latter announced UAE investments of USD 10 billion in Turkey's ailing economy, after which the UAE central bank placed USD 5 billion in a swap arrangement in Turkey to bolster the national currency. Turkey has also made diplomatic overtures to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Besides the impetus provided to these engagements by possible US disengagement from the region, other motivating factors are the reduced sense of concern emanating from political Islam among the Gulf leaders and Egypt and, linked with this, the need to adopt a fresh approach to the conflicts in Syria and Libya, which have reached a military stalemate.

The Ukraine war has created a fresh churn in regional diplomacy.

Turkey's tight-rope diplomacy

Erdogan had every reason to be deeply concerned about the Ukraine war: his economy is in dire straits, he is under considerable US pressure to play a role as a Nato member even as he has been reluctant to alienate the Russian leader, and, above all, he faces national elections in June 2023.

As of now, Turkey is crucially dependent on Russia—the latter supplies about half of Turkey's natural gas, two-thirds of its wheat imports and a big chunk of its tourism revenue. Russia is also building Turkey's first nuclear power plant and is a partner in the Syrian peace process. But Turkey has close ties with Ukraine as well: it is a valued market for its military products and a partner in the development of certain defence items. Hence, the need for tight-rope diplomacy.

UAE's diplomatic activism

As the UAE abstained on the UNSC vote criticising Russia's invasion of Ukraine, its commentators appeared to be in a triumphant mode. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, who is believed to reflect official thinking, wrote that the UAE vote followed from the country's "foreign policy activism," which in turn emerged "from being confident in its decisions and approach" to regional and global affairs. He added that this approach might not please Washington, "but that's the way things are going to be from now on." Abdulla went on to describe the present scenario as a "post-American world [and] post-America Gulf," which "translates into also more of China, in the region and throughout".

Iran and the JCPOA negotiations

Towards the end of February this year, the talks in Vienna on reviving the nuclear agreement with Iran, technically called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that had started in April 2021, seemed to have reached their final stage. Following the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from February 24, the negotiators attempted to insulate the discussions in Vienna from the conflict, even though Russia was a member of the P4+1.

On March 5, the Ukraine war seeped into the conference room when Russia sought written guarantees that the sanctions imposed on it due to the war would not affect its role in the implementation of JCPOA. The reference here was to the JCPOA provision that Iran would ship its extra enriched uranium to Russia, and the latter would also help to downgrade the Fordow nuclear facility to shift it from its weapons potential to medicinal use.

It took 10 days for this matter to be resolved—with Russia's role in the JCPOA being reconfirmed. During this period, Russia was castigated in the Western media for seeking to deliberately scuttle the agreement at the last moment. That this was just posturing became clear when, nearly a fortnight after the Russian issue was resolved on March 14, the nuclear agreement has not been finalised.

Israel and some Arab states, possibly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, want the talks to fail so that the sanctions on Iran are not lifted, and Iran's role in regional affairs remains restricted. But the argument against this position is that it is far better to restrict Iran's weapons programme than live with the constant threat of it opting to develop nuclear weapons. US withdrawal from the JCPOA only encouraged Iran to violate the JCPOA provisions and enrich uranium up to 60 percent—just short of weapons grade.

The challenge of food security

While political positions, engagements and alignments are being pursued among different actors in West Asia and North Africa (WANA), the dark cloud haunting the entire region is the threat to its food security. Russia and Ukraine together provide 40 percent of the region's wheat imports. The dependence of some countries is even higher. The conflict has exacerbated the existing problem of hunger: 55 million people in WANA experience hunger, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Linked with the disruption in food supplies is the problem of rising prices; in war-torn Yemen, Australia has quoted for wheat supplies at USD 600 per tonne, as against the pre-war Ukrainian price of USD 255 per tonne. Given the sensitivity of food prices in a country where a third of the population is below the poverty line, in Egypt the staple flat bread is heavily subsidised, with consumers paying just a tenth of the production cost: the annual subsidy on bread is USD 3.2 billion; in the 2021-22 financial year, the additional cost will be nearly USD 700 million.

Not surprisingly, given that the Arab Spring uprisings a decade ago were triggered by a region-wide economic crisis, some commentators are suggesting that the Ukraine war could aggravate popular discontent.

Outlook for WANA

A month after the commencement of the Ukraine war, the principal feature of politics in West Asia has been the attempts of the principal regional states to maintain a balance as between the US and Russia, basing their position variously on "strategic diversity," "strategic selfishness" or just plain hedging. Despite considerable US pressure and behind-the-scene cajolery, none of the states concerned has rushed to the US embrace—an extraordinary exhibition of independence of action.

What the region has witnessed has been a flurry of interactions, with national leaders sitting in bilateral and even trilateral conclaves to exchange views and assessments. Their most immediate concerns relate to the Ukraine war and the JCPOA and, related to that, Iran's role in regional affairs. The most interesting conclave has been the one that brought together Egypt, the UAE and Israel at Sharm el-Sheikh, but, before the Ukraine conflict we had seen Iraq, Jordan and Egypt announcing an economic and political partnership, while Iran could still bank on its support bases in Syria and Iraq, even though the latter was wearing thin under popular pressure.

What is different about these alignments from the Trump era is that, earlier they had constituted conflictual battle lines—Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt were ranged against Iran, Iraq, Syrian and the militia, Hamas and Hezbollah. At present, none of these alignments is inherently conflictual.

The second change in the region is that the influence of political Islam, as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and its diverse affiliates, has largely abated. This absence of ideological competition has opened opportunities for new interactions, with Turkey and Qatar now open to fresh interactions with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, as also with Israel.

The third feature of regional affairs is the long-term value that each regional player attaches to ties with Russia and China: based on the solid foundations of energy, trade, investment and logistical connectivity initiatives, for each country these ties have begun to include a strategic content—increasing dialogue on political matters and expanding defence ties. These relations, taken together, constitute a significant change from a few years ago when the US was the sole go-to partner for most regional states.

Commentators are generally baffled about the shape of things to come. Most suggest, somewhat lazily, that the present-day assertions of autonomy by regional states will be short-lived and they will fairly soon re-join the US alliance. This assessment has misread the powerful signals emanating from national capitals—West Asia has truly changed.

A longer version of this article has been published on the India Narrative, a news and views website.

Talmiz Ahmad is a former Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE.