Cold War II and the Mediterranean Basin

The repercussions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will not stop only on the European continent, but will also extend to many places in the world.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a result of the so-called “Star Wars”, imposed by US President Donald Reagan in the eighties, which is an expensive arms race, the Soviets could not keep up. Everyone thought this meant the end of the Cold War. What allowed at the beginning of the twenty-first century, in a Russian economic and social openness, to Europe and America, but also to the rest of the world, creating a kind of benefactor class, which seized the Soviet heritage and invested it outside Russia, especially in Western countries.

The West has lived with this situation, which is comfortable for it. Silencing the Russian opposition, the development of the Russian political system, towards Putin's monopoly in power, and his failure to allow real possibilities for change, controlling all aspects of the state, including the judiciary and the media. All this was considered by the West as an acceptable situation. As some scholars have claimed, the Russians, and the Slavic race more broadly, are not ready to accept democracy (as is now said about Arabs and Muslims), and have never known it in their history.

The Russian Federation, the official heir to the Soviet Union (but without its economic and human capabilities) managed to enter a little, the regions of the world that were previously, orbiting the Soviets. From this logic, we saw the return of the Russians to the Mediterranean.

America did not set any obstacles to this new Russian deployment, given the lack of strategic importance for this region now, especially after the repercussions of the New York attacks in 2001 ended. A consumer country into the world's largest producer of oil and gas. Protecting Israel's strategic security is no longer necessary, as this country has managed to impose its hegemony on a large number of Arab countries and regimes, which it no longer considers an enemy, if not an ally. These reasons allowed, as we see, the return of the Russians to Syria and the support of the Baathist regime. The destruction of Syria and the killing and displacement of its people were not considered by America as a sufficient reason to change its policies in the region, especially with a clear agreement between Israel and Russia.

The end of interest in the Middle East, as a strategic region for America, and the shift of that interest to China and Southeast Asia, is what led, for example, to President Obama's retreat in 2013 from punishing the Syrian regime militarily.

What the Western camp did not notice is the possibility of returning to the days of the Cold War, especially with the transition of most of the countries of the former Soviet Union towards democratic regimes, which completely contradict the form of the Moscow regime.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in this crude form, and an attempt to end the independence of a European country, one of the former states of the Soviet Union, which gained its independence by the sweat of its brow, despite Moscow’s multiple attempts to prevent this; From poisoning its first president to occupying parts of Ukraine in 2014, under ethnic pretexts. This completely awakened the Western genie from his rosy dreams, and brought him back to the possibility of comprehensive and destructive war, on the European arena, with the Russian threat of nuclear war.

From this point of view, we see that the Russian presence in the Mediterranean, which was accepted and silent about it, because it did not constitute a disturbance to the Western powers, has now become part of the new hot cold war.

The first manifestations of this is Turkey’s return to the bosom of the West, its closure of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus passage, in front of Russian ships, and the provision of drones to it by Ukraine, which did not do anything of the sort to support the Syrian people, but rather developed its relations with Russia and bought from them SS missile platforms. 400 despite the opposition of America. This time, it only took one phone call from President Biden for Turkey to re-enter the alliance with the West, positioning itself as Russia's potential enemy, and a target for its weapons in a state of all-out war, as was the case during the first Cold War. In return, Turkey is expected to restore US-European support for its crumbling economy. This is what President Erdogan is looking for, in an attempt to restore his eroded popularity. And what President Biden said, when he was a presidential candidate, that Erdogan should be removed from power, became news.

This new position of Turkey may allow the Syrian people and their living forces, if they take advantage of the opportunity, to improve their positions in the face of the Russian forces, after the interest in the Syrian war declined in favor of the war in Ukraine.

Are there repercussions on the Palestinian cause? We do not think so. The Palestinian leadership is confused and does not even have a clear national project. Israel, as usual, will adapt to the new situation no matter what, and will be with the stronger party, despite its current tendency to support the Russian position or be neutral, due to the large Russian community, which exceeds two million Israelis of Russian origin.

We also see, with the same concept, the readiness of the West and America to end the Iranian nuclear file. But that will not happen, except from the perspective of besieging Moscow. Any lifting of sanctions on Iran will currently only aim to isolate Russia, and not relieve pressure on one of its allies in the region.

Sudan, in turn, which at the time of President al-Bashir had the support of the Russian mercenary Wagner groups, reportedly provided large quantities of gold to the Russian treasury (Hamdati’s recent trips to Moscow), to protect it from sanctions. This country may also find itself again, in the circle of Western attention. America, despite its pretense to the contrary, did not support the Sudanese democratic change, leaving room for the military to seize power, with the support of its close ally Israel. The support of these soldiers, especially Hamditi, for the Russians, by opening gold mines to them, will not remain an internal Sudanese matter, but will, I think, fall into the circle of American Western sanctions, and there will be no room for the military and their Israeli allies, except to join the boycott in the face of the danger of the American administration’s support for the democratic transition. peanuts again.

The Russian-Algerian military rapprochement, and their old and new alliances, most recently in Mali, and economic and scientific cooperation and many other fields for many years, especially after the cancellation of the Russian debt on Algeria in 2006, amounting to 4.7 million dollars, in exchange for many deals, including the establishment of a nuclear power plant to produce electricity, was We are waiting to see the light between 2025-2030. The similarity between the two regimes in their military nature, and the growing danger to them from the ongoing transformations at the social level. All this did not mean much to the US administration, even the entry of the Russian army into Ukraine.

There are many regions and countries, in the Mediterranean region and Africa, where the Russians are present, without American disturbance, such as Central Africa and Mali.

The American Western response to the Russian invasion will gradually move to all these areas. We lived through the first Cold War, and we know that its fuel was always from the world's poor and not from the world's rich. The number of victims of the Cold War, between the Soviet Union and the West, is estimated at more than thirty million, all of them, of course, in poor countries. Are we on the verge of a new cold war, and a return to the series of massacres against the peoples of the “Third World”?