An Alliance of Interests? Russia and Israel in Obama's New World

As the advent of the Obama Administration brings back the "multipolar" in international relations, some of its most enthusiastic backers are in Moscow. During the Bush years, President Vladimir Putin publicly criticized Washington's unilateralism. Sometimes the challenge was rhetorical to the "new bombs" of the US. Sometimes it was much more:  when the Bush Administration tried to isolate Russia from NATO’s "impact zone" in Eastern Europe by proposing a missile umbrella in the Czech Republic and Poland, Putin raised the threat of a nuclear attack if Poland accepted a US missile interceptor base on its soil.

The intensity of attention to the "change" in Barack Obama’s rhetoric, especially toward the Israeli-Palestine/Arab problem, has contributed to this transformation. While Washington disowns the policies of the Bush era and puts pressure on Israel for sufficient concessions to start negotiations with Arab states, France has opened its first military base in the gulf region since the 1960s. And Russia becomes one of the first beneficiaries of the "soft power" of the US.

After Russia agreed last year not to sell S-300 missiles to Iran in 2008 and halted the sale of advanced MIG-31 fighter jets to Syria last month, Israel expedited the production of unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia. This was more than a bit of military equipment: as Israel manoeuvres agianst the Arab Peace Initiative, Tel Aviv is seeking a new relationship with Moscow. The Foreign Minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, visited with President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin and declared that he would expand and deepen the strategic ties between two countries, albeit without any intention of replacing the US. "We are expanding in additional directions, including Russia, South America, central Asia and India, but our ties to America come first," asserted a senior official in Lieberman's office.

So the Netanyahu Administration is trying to use Kremlin as leverage against the pressure of the Obama Administration, using Russia's manoeuvring vis-a-vis the US to its advantage. Still, Israeli officials might want to remember that the multipolar works in more than one direction: Moscow has just welcomed Palestinian Authority representatives as part of its interest in a Middle Eastern peace process. If Russia finds common ground with Washington on issues from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus to Central Asia, will Tel Aviv again find itself isolated in this Very New World?