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This course evaluates Russia’s strategy and foreign relations in the Middle East since 1945. In lectures and seminars, students will examine Russia’s shifting aims and interests in the region and compare Russian foreign policy in different domestic and systemic environments. The first part of the course examines how the Soviet Union’s competition with the United States shaped the Middle East. It then considers how the collapse of the USSR triggered a near decades-long absence from the region. The latter part of the course evaluates Russia’s ‘return’ to the Middle East and considers how Moscow pursues its interests in the context of intense regional instability, waning US influence, and the threat of transnational Islamist groups. Students will examine historical and contemporary themes in Russian foreign policy and explore the complex mix of factors that combine to influence it in a pivotal part of the world. The course provides students with a solid grounding in theories on the domestic and international dimensions of Russian strategy in the Middle East, and sufficient empirical knowledge to evaluate arguments associated with different analytical approaches. Our aim is to consider what drives Russian strategy in the Middle East, taking in concerns about state cohesion within Russia, to considerations of identity, security, trade, geo-economics, and the management of regional conflicts.

1. Sowing the seeds of crisis: superpower competition in the early Cold War
2. Soviet policy and the Arab-Israeli conflict 1948-73
3. Soviet alliances in the Middle East 1952-1991
4. Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
5. Russian policy after the collapse of the USSR
6. From cooperation to conflict: Putin and the War on Terror 2001-2008
7. Russia and the ‘axis of resistance’
8. The Russia, Turkey, Israel triangle: the limits of cooperation
9. Russia and the GCC: energy diplomacy and the fight against Islamic extremism
10. Conclusion: Evaluating Russia’s return to the Middle East