The Great Game Over

Why Russia’s geopolitical position has never been better.

One of the greatest geopolitical events of the last two hundred years is currently taking place and is going almost entirely unnoticed. No, I’m not talking about the possibility of China besieging Taiwan until the latter submits to the motherland. Nor am I talking about the accelerating Ukrainian collapse in the Donbass. I’m talking about the defeat of the United Kingdom and its successor empire, the United States, in the Great Game.

Throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, the animating principle of British foreign policy, and afterwards of American policy, was to keep Russia away from India and the Persian Gulf. Allowing Russia to reach “warm water ports” was seen as an existential threat that would make Russia too big of a threat to manage via European diplomacy and warfare. However, in July 2022, Russia reached India via Iran. Russia loaded a cargo train in Moscow. The cargo then went to the Khorasan-Razavi station on the Turkmenistan – Iran border. From there it continued via Iranian ports to India. This was the first time that the International North South Transportation Corridor, announced by India, Iran and Russia in 2000, was activated, after a dry run in 2014. The corridor involves countries like Oman, Pakistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and others. With Western sanctions escalating and Finland and Sweden joining NATO, the logic for the route seems stronger than ever, and so now it will probably be continuously upgraded and improved. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Shipping Lines (IRISL) also announced in July that it was dedicating 300 containers to transporting goods between India and Russia, with the option of increasing that number further. Trade between India and Russia normally goes through the Suez and takes 40 to 45 days. The new route reduces transport time by up to 25 days and the transport cost by up to 30%.

India’s logic

Although this transport corridor was two decades in the works, its activation now – at India’s request – in the face of Western attempts to crush Russia’s economy with sanctions, is indicative of how thoroughly India now ignores the West. India, among many other developing countries, insisted that it would maintain its trade ties with Russia regardless of American and EU sanctions. Of course, India and Russia have had warm relations since the days of the non-aligned movement and the Soviet Union. Even though India relies on a wide range of suppliers for military hardware, Russia is perhaps the most preeminent. But what has happened since July 2022 is different. Now, the two countries have a trade link through Iran, which is also a strategic partner for both. India’s perspective is probably as follows: India needs to work with Iran on their shared interests in Afghanistan. Both do not want Pakistani-sponsored extremism spilling over into their countries, an interest which they share with Russia (and with China). Furthermore, India must be fearful of China and Russia getting too close. Together, they would combine the world’s most prominent natural resources superpower with the world’s manufacturing superpower, and India would lose influence in Russia and in the world. So far, India has relied on Russia to maintain a sort of balance against China. Sacrificing the relationship with Russia would only ensure that China gets more Russian natural resources at a greater discount. And so, India now must move closer to Russia to ensure that its voice retains its importance in Moscow. Russia and India have had talks about trading in their national currencies. For now, however, they appear to be trading in the UAE Dirham, the euro, the yuan and other currencies, bypassing sanctions. They also now have a trade corridor through Iran that is much less vulnerable to Western air and naval power. India is increasing its purchases of Russian oil, going up from 25,000 bpd to 600,000 bpd over the last few months. Coal imports have also increased significantly. Since India needs both Iran and Russia for energy and for security, there is no chance that India will increase its compliance with sanctions. Rather, India will increase its efforts to assist both Iran and Russia to evade Western sanctions. The Anglo-American alliance has lost India, and the loss seems irreversible.  

Iran’s gains

Iran, for its part, is keen to deepen its partnership with Russia. Russia and Iran are partnered in Syria, and to a lesser extent Lebanon and Iraq, where the two countries share an interest in containing Turkish and American influence. There has been a deep recent history of mistrust between the two countries – Russia needlessly delayed the opening of a nuclear reactor in Iran and allows Israel to continue attacking Iranian targets in Syria. But now that Russia is a pariah that is even more tightly sanctioned than Iran, the two countries will grow closer. Iran needs Russian help to contain Turkey, which they both distrust due to its position in NATO and due to their historic competition with it, though Russia probably prefers to play the two countries against each other. Iran needs Russian grains for allied countries like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, where Iran has a preeminent role, sometimes alongside Russia. Iran needs Russian military technology, though apparently Russia needs Iranian assistance with UAVs. Russia and Iran are naturally competitors, but for now they have no choice but to stand together to increase their trade and security cooperation. There is a range of fields of cooperation, in energy, food products and consumer goods manufacturing where the countries can be rather complementary, despite their competition in energy export markets. The two countries are now attempting trade in their national currencies, and want to boost their trade from an annual USD4 billion to USD8 billion. This is a small amount, but is important nonetheless, and the transit trade can accelerate its growth significantly. With the strength of the Western response to Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, Russia will almost certainly intensify military and economic cooperation with Iran in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, with a view to pushing out American influence. Recall that in 2016, Russia temporarily deployed nuclear-capable strategic bombers in Iran for the first time, allowing it to cover the airspace of Persian Gulf Arab states all the way to Bab al-Mandab. By working with Iran, Russia may well end up with strategic bombers deployed on both ends of the Middle East, in Syria and in Iran.

Turkey’s lack of options

Magnifying Anglo-American humiliation is this: during the Great Game, Britain did its best to keep the sick man of Europe – the Ottoman Empire – on life support for as long as possible. Britain understood, correctly, that Turkish weakness would translate into Russian gains, just as Russian weakness could easily translate into Turkish gains. Now, however, Turkey is competing with Iran over the good graces of Russia. Turkey, like India, China and many other countries, is also seeking ways to continue trading with Russia using either national currencies or non-dollar currencies, as Turkey has done with Iran. It would be absurd to not assume that Turkey will increasingly ignore Western sanctions in favour of deeper ties with its rival Asian powers. Turkish warehouses are reportedly full of Western goods that will be sent to Russia. And Turkish businesses are eager to take advantage of Europe and Russia’s continued dependencies by playing middlemen.

Despite their historic rivalries and numerous localised conflicts, extending from Libya to Syria to Ukraine, there are economic and political reasons for Turkey to grow closer to Russia. Economically, Turkey’s current account problems and imploding currency mean that it cannot risk antagonising its two main gas suppliers, Iran and Russia, even as Turkey seeks to develop its own domestic offshore natural gas production. Indeed, during President Erdogan’s August visit to Russia, he and Putin agreed on deepening economic cooperation and on boosting trade to USD 100 billion. This is not the first time this objective has been declared, but it is clear that Turkey now needs to reduce its current account deficit by expanding its trade with Russia and using national currencies more, allowing Turkey to offer Russia consumer goods such as washing machines, furniture and clothing in exchange for abundant and cheap Russian natural gas. Furthermore, Turkey, Iran and the UAE are discussing the possibility of building a supply line from the UAE to Bandar Abbas in Iran to Mersin in Turkey. This would bypass the Suez Canal, and place goods from Iran, or the UAE, or India, at the gates of the Black Sea – a major security boost to Russia and a revenue boost to Turkey. Moreover, there is no reason for this transport corridor not to extend to Izmir or to a Black Sea port. Naturally, this route would compete with that via Kazakhstan and via Azerbaijan. But this means that Russia has multiple routes to India, and that the International North South Transport Corridor is even more viable. Anglo-American policymakers ought to realise that this is of far greater importance than the lost cause of Ukraine.

Politically, since President Barack Obama adopted the disastrous policy of supporting the PKK’s offshoot in Syria against Islamic State, Turkey has found itself increasingly dependent on Russian and Iranian cooperation to secure its territory against what it perceives as the existential threat posed by that Marxist, nationalist, separatist movement. Turkey became convinced that the West, led by America, does not care in the least about its views. More substantially, rival Asian powers like China, Russia or Iran are threats to Turkey’s interests. The West’s messianic zeal for its Current Year values (LGBT, globalism, obedience to American sanctions and trade rules, anti-terrorism finance laws, procedural liberalism, permitting the Western perspective to dominate the domestic press, etc..) makes it an existential threat to Turkey. The adoption of Current Year values would deprive Turkey of any ability to define, maintain and develop its own values, and so of any ability to develop and pursue its own strategies and interests. If Turkey were to do the West’s bidding, legalise gay marriage, let its regulators obey those of Washington, DC, end its support for Islamic causes, allow nondescript technocrats to run its government affairs, have media that would only parrot the New York Times, and subscribe to the West’s current approach of apologising for everything the West’s ancestors ever did, Turkey may well become like Sweden. But Turkey is rather proud to be Turkey, and rightly so. It has no intention of becoming Finland, Sweden, or any other faceless, irrelevant, obedient Western country. The West, in its arrogance, cannot understand why other countries do not want to emulate it in every respect. Russia has no illusions about creating facsimilie copies of itself in other parts of the world. Turkey would rather deal with a Russia that accepts it for what it is - even as it competes with it - than with an America that wants to remake Anatolia into California.

Russia’s perspective

Chinese Russian cooperation is beyond the scope of this piece. It suffices to mention that China is desperate for Russian resources, naturally would want more of them shipped overland to evade American naval and air power and is willing to creatively bypass Western sanctions without jeopardising its interests in the West. Rightly or wrongly, China now believes that it was the West that put Russia in a position where it had no choice but to use its military to secure its interests, and that the West is pursuing a similar gameplan to provoke China into invading Taiwan. As such, China’s interest is in developing deeper ties with Russia, not in minor skirmishes over territories in Central Asia that they can both benefit from, so long as Western interests are kept at bay.

Where does this leave Russia? All the major Asian powers – with the exception of Japan and South Korea – are trying their best to deepen their trade relations with it. Central Asian countries are trapped in a Chinese – Russian vise, and while they may try to play one side against the other, any hint of supporting the West to destabilise one of the anti-Western powers can be met with swift punishment. Moreover, Russia is free to play off Iran against Turkey in the Middle East. Both of them need Russia, but Russia is not dependent on either of them. Furthermore, Russia has good relations with other Middle Eastern powers, from Algeria to Libya to Egypt to Saudi Arabia to the UAE. All this means that Russia is free to develop markets in the Middle East, Asia and Africa without any serious fear of military threats from rival Asian powers. This leaves Russia free to concentrate its military efforts in a single front against the West. Considering the sheer expanse of Russia’s borders and its vast strategic depth, this is quite an advantageous position. It permits Russia to develop capabilities and economic power within its vast frontiers, and to concentrate its military power against just one relatively small front. US and European sanctions against Russia have backfired spectacularly. Rather than isolating Russia, they managed to build a single economic bloc in Asia that is keen to separate itself from Western influence. Over the course of the Obama, Trump and Biden presidencies, the United States and its allies have managed to turn all of Russia’s serious nearby rivals into partners and even allies. This is truly spectacular incompetence. Russia has never had it better.