Skip to main content

Putin takes on the Sunni Arabs and the target is the oil price

The Russian President has a pattern of incredibly reckless behaviour- the attacks on Georgia, Ukraine, the threats against NATO and all of the rest of it. Yet in a coup-de-main that exceeds almost all of his recent gambles, Putin seems to be set on avoiding the consequences of his Ukrainian misadventure. However, not for the first time, both Putin and the West may be misreading each other. The conventional wisdom amongst the Putinologists is that that the entry into the Syrian imbroglio is a successful attempt to breach the wall of isolation that has been imposed against him since his invasion of Ukraine. In this school of thought, the Russian support for Assad is largely a bluff, and is essentially an attempt to widen the negotiation by catching the West once again off guard.

However, unlike in Ukraine, Russia does have some short term and attainable goals in mind.

The fact is that the intervention in the Middle East is a serious attempt to challenge the United States and Saudi grip on the oil price. By creating a de facto alliance with Iran, Russia has responded to what they saw as Saudi aggression in keeping the oil price low. Russia now has the means as well as the will to destabilize all of the Sunni Monarchies in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia itself. 

This is not about Syria, it is about oil.

It is also a high stakes gamble that could end up causing a direct military confrontation between NATO and its Arab allies and Russia and its new Shia allies in Iran, Iraq and Syria. Now we see why Russia has been courting Egypt- for Egyptian neutrality will maintain the pressure on the Gulf and avoid Russian- but not Western- distractions in North Africa, especially Libya. In the Russian mind the potential instability in the absolutist monarchies is an opportunity to create a Russian-Iranian axis that will push up the price of crude and thus ease the stranglehold on the Russian economy.

Perhaps then he can either resume his work in Ukraine and finally defeat the Ukrainian Army, which has so far proven so resilient; or the failure to create actual reform in Kyiv will push the country back into the Russian orbit. Certainly the political class of Ukraine has yet to live up to the aspirations place upon it by the Maidan revolutionaries. 

So Putin intends to squeeze out the West entirely from Syria and then persuade the oil producers that a deal with Russia is now very much in their own interests- with the threat of revolution, if they do not comply with Russian wishes.

In all of this there is one small problem of course: Russia might face a disastrous defeat. Nevertheless Putin is prepared to roll the dice once more. The West should recognize the implacable nature of the regime in the Kremlin and be prepared, if necessary, to increase the pressure of sanctions.   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch