RT translated and republished a recent article by Valdai Club Programme Director Timofey Bordachev about “Why the Mecca alliance may work in Russia’s favor”. His argument is that the Islamic NATO “complicates American strategy, encourages regional independence and places further limits on Washington’s ability to impose a single political order across the Middle East.” He also considers the bloc to be inherently weak due to having no hegemon therein nor a shared enemy.
What Bordachev overlooks is that the Islamic NATO is tied to the US since Turkiye is a NATO ally while Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are “Major Non-NATO Allies”. To his credit, he observed that “None of these countries possesses either the strength or the determination to end US hegemony in the Middle East”, but the conspicuous lack of the aforesaid observation downplays this bloc’s role. It enables the US to “Lead From Behind” in West Asia as it “Pivots (back) to (East) Asia” for more robustly containing China.
He also acknowledged that “Each member of the new grouping could create difficulties for Moscow independently, whether in the South Caucasus, Central Asia or the wider Muslim world, but there’s little chance that they will coordinate a sustained attack on Russian interests.” Bordachev is correct that each of those three could challenge Russia along its southern front, but he’s once again downplaying these threats, for which he was already constructively critiqued earlier this year here, here, and here.
In brief, the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) serves the unstated dual purpose of a NATO military logistics corridor along Russia’s southern front where Turkiye is challenging Russia through its increasingly militarized “Organization of Turkic States” (OTS). As for May, “The Russian Triad Is Now On The Same Page Regarding Southern-Emanating Threats From NATO” after relevant assessments from the Presidential Administration, the Defense Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry.
President of the Russian International Affairs Council Dmitry Trenin and Russian expert Farhad Ibragimov still downplayed the challenge posed by Turkiye afterwards, however, for which they were responded to in the preceding hyperlinked analyses. Of pertinence, “Russia Hinted At Its Latent Threat Perception Of Pakistan” around the same time as the Triad shared its threat assessment of Turkiye, namely regarding its role in Afghanistan and how it could facilitate the US military’s return to the broader region.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also implicitly reaffirmed suspicions in mid-July that Pakistan allows arms and terrorists to flow into Afghanistan from across their border. Be that as it may, it’s only Turkiye and Pakistan that Russia is eyeing warily, not Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, the Saudis could hypothetically finance the two challenges that Turkiye and Pakistan pose to Russia’s interests along its southern periphery, and all three could more closely coordinate this through the Islamic NATO.
Returning to Bordachev, he concluded that “Russia doesn’t need the members of this new grouping to become friends or allies, it just needs them to occupy the attention and resources of its adversaries while Moscow remains concentrated on Ukraine.” The Islamic NATO doesn’t occupy the attention and resources of Russia’s US adversary, however, since its members are its literal allies. Their bloc is therefore poised to advance US interests vis-à-vis Russia, not impede them, but Bordachev is blissfully unaware.
