Iran-Russia-Turkiye Triangle: A Challenge for the U.S. Position in the Middle East.

• Author: Czarkowska, Ewa
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

The Middle East holds a unique position in contemporary international relations. Its geopolitical location at the junction of three continents, with access to crucial communication routes, puts it in the spotlight for global powers. The uniqueness of the Middle East unquestionably strengthens its resource potential, which is not without significance for energy-consuming, global economies.

The history of the empires' feuds in the Middle East has a thousand-year tradition. Naturally, rivalry has also become an inherent feature of contemporary international relations. The region poses a challenge to the interests of the main players in the international arena who shape a specific balance of power through their involvement in the area based on their potential and constantly changing possibilities of action. Each of the power centers, through implementing the principles of its foreign policy and security strategy, strives to maximize its power and limit the activity of its rivals. States are forced to act and build their potential primarily due to the anarchic nature of international relations and uncertainty as to the intentions of other entities. Willingness to withstand the chaos of international relations, distrust, and seeking out security guarantees lays the basis of strategic thinking about the process of shaping their power and position. According to Mearsheimer's theory of offensive realism, the ultimate goal is to obtain and maintain their full dominance in the structure of the international system, which means being at the top of the hierarchy of the aforementioned relations. (1)

The core of the post-Cold War order was the U.S.' dominant position in the region, which allowed the American administration to be given some freedom in building relations with Middle Eastern allies and partners, as well as a lot of room for maneuvering toward regional rivals of the U.S. Thus, the Middle East has become one of the American areas of influence in the global order. The skillful combination of soft and hard power as two complementary instruments of U.S. foreign and security policy spoke in favor of the existence of such a hegemonic order in the 1990s. According to the hegemonic stability theory, the international system is most likely to remain stable when one of the states becomes a hegemon. (2) As a matter of fact, the first post-Cold War decade seems to have confirmed this assumption.

The 21st century has brought a significant modification in the perception of the American role in the world. The global American-centric balance of power is being successfully challenged by players such as China or Russia, simultaneously, transferring the competition to the regional level, where they effectively pursue their business by questioning the existing status quo. In applying a proactive policy in the region, they are supported by tactical or strategic alliances with influential middle-level powers, with which they often share common interests or the will to withstand American hegemony and the revision of the existing world order.

The main assertion that triggered the reconfiguration of the balance of power at the global and regional levels was the fact that the U.S. was unable to create an effective instrument for managing international order at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, basing its hegemony on hard power and the idea of "universal" Western values. This approach was too narrow and short-sighted in the context of a complicated and chaotic international environment. The U.S. global strategy lacks stabilizing instruments and pro-development stimulators that would significantly increase the effectiveness and dynamics of the American world leadership. Thus, the hegemon, along with several other factors, began to play a destabilizing role in the international order. (3) Moreover, there was no analysis of the impact of cultural and civilizational conditions on relations with the regions where Americans wanted to maintain a dominant role. This was of particular importance in the case of such conflicting and diverse regions as the Middle East, where subsequent military interventions (for example in Iraq) (4) only "wound" a spiral of radicalism. That led to the situation where the lack of an individual approach led to the spread of anti-American sentiments. This began to reduce the effectiveness of the U.S. Middle East strategy, which changed the geopolitics of the region (5) and gave many actors, who are not satisfied with the existing status quo, a broader perspective on their strategic goals.

Under the conditions of a hegemonic order, it is extremely difficult to guarantee benefits to entities other than the U.S., which has not only been noticed by its rivals but also by allies. This is one of the fundamental premises that made several countries question the legitimacy of the existence of an order based on the exclusive domination of one central force. Hence, countries such as Russia, Turkiye, and Iran have begun to create conditions that would guarantee them the possibility of effective implementation of particular interests in the region, with a new redistribution of power on top of that. Their strategy is based on ensuring their security and stability, the possibility of developing economic projects and strengthening their prestigious position as key regional players. This collides with the interests of the U.S. in the Middle East.

This article focuses on the conflict in Syria related to the so-called Arab Spring, (6) which became a derivative of the changes taking place in the balance of power in the Middle East. The Arab Spring had a destructive effect on the system of allied ties of the U.S. in the Middle East. It created favorable conditions and opportunities for active policy for players inside and outside the region, thereby strengthening their position internationally. The internationalization of the war in Syria interrupted decades of the unquestioned domination of the U.S., and most importantly, allowed new players to impose their narrative in the Middle East. It appeared that despite the giant advantage of the American superpower, using the element of surprise with relatively limited military instruments, Iran and Russia are able, by joining forces, to achieve their strategic goals. Therefore, they are capable of creating conditions for a relative stabilization based not only on military instruments but above all else, on political and diplomatic instruments in the cooperation with Turkiye, thus contradicting the non-alternative American model of managing relations in the Middle East.

It is assumed that the war in Syria not only served as a stimulus for the formation of the Russia-Iran-Turkiye triangle but also significantly influenced the further evolution of the balance of power in the region. This new setup in relations seems to pose a challenge to the U.S.' Middle East strategy. This, in turn, translates into the real possibility of forging relations with these countries, hence forcing Washington to search for a new, more effective, and systemic modus operandi.

Middle East in American Policy

The conscious evolution of American policy concerning the Middle East began to take conscious and evolutionary shape during the first half of the 20th century, becoming a permanent element of American foreign and security policy and a manifestation of the U.S. growth to the role of an influential and powerful player in the international arena. The apogee of this trend was achieved when the U.S. attained superpower status, granting it the capacity to independently manage the regional order in the Middle East during the transition from the 20th to the 21st century.

It should be emphasized that the region had gradually gained strategic importance for the security interests of the U.S. Starting in the 19th century, American objectives in the region eventually led to a new version of the U.S. Middle Eastern policy. In the 21st century, the dynamics of shaping the U.S. Middle East strategy coincided with the process of transformation of the international order and the change in the position of the U.S. itself in the world as well as limited expansion of the influence of their prominent adversaries and allies.

In the initial phase of the process of shaping this policy, manifestations of strategic thinking about the importance and role of the region in the world could not yet be seen. However, the strategic documents of the post-Second World War period and contemporary U.S. national security strategies betoken the growing level of strategic culture of the American administration and the broad view of Washington's elites on the influence of the Middle East relations not only on regional but also the global policy of the U.S.

The Middle East, as a part of the international strategy of the U.S., gained particular importance in the mid-1940s. It was generally related to the process of transformation of the world order and new challenges for the U.S. global strategy. The underlying determinant of the American strategy in the Middle East was to maintain a dominant position in the region and to maximize interests defined as power. (7) At an early stage of the Cold War, the U.S. decided to provide military and economic support to the Turkish Republic (the Truman Doctrine) to prevent the Soviet Union from extending its influence. Undoubtedly, the U.S. would not be able to achieve such influence in the Middle East region if the British were not present there. The disintegration of the British Empire after Second World War created a vacuum of power. Maintaining the U.S. dominant position in the Middle East was served by the doctrine of containment, which was based on supporting countries threatened by international communism with packages of military and economic aid. As a result, the U.S. managed to create a system of relations based on a clientelist model, whose participants enjoyed numerous...