By Ambassador Abdulsalam Al-Mahdi Al-Raqi‘i
American grand strategy has long been informed by history. Among the major powers, the United States was perhaps the first to systematically study Russian history and to weave its lessons into a coherent geopolitical playbook. One key conclusion drawn from this study is that Russia performs well when fighting on a single front—particularly along its western borders—but becomes vulnerable when compelled to wage war on multiple fronts.
Historical precedents support this thesis. Russia successfully repelled Napoleon and Hitler when the threat came from the West, yet suffered humiliations when attacked from the East: the Tatars overwhelmed medieval Russia, and Japan defeated the czar’s forces in 1905. While other factors shaped these outcomes, the recurring weakness remains Russia’s difficulty in sustaining simultaneous campaigns.
American analysts cite the final decade of the Soviet Union as a modern illustration. In the 1980s, Moscow faced a grinding guerrilla war in Afghanistan—fought not by conventional armies but by insurgents armed with U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles—while simultaneously confronting civil resistance in Poland through the Solidarity movement. These twin crises sapped Soviet resources, hastened the Warsaw Pact’s unraveling, and catalyzed the ideological retreat that culminated in the USSR’s collapse.
The Foundations of U.S. Strategy
Russian planners are not ignorant of this historical vulnerability, nor do they lack counterstrategies. Yet what distinguishes American statecraft is its ability to anticipate Russian moves and embed traps within its own strategy—traps that convert Russian countermeasures into steps that inadvertently advance U.S. objectives.
The Military Dimension
1. Peripheral Wars to Drain Moscow
A principal American tactic has been to draw Russia into costly peripheral conflicts. The Ukraine crisis was the first major test. By encouraging Kyiv’s tilt toward the European Union and NATO, Washington provoked Russian fears of Western artillery at its doorstep. The ouster of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych triggered Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. In seeking to secure its strategic interests, Moscow fell into a war of attrition that the United States has quietly encouraged and prolonged through support for Kyiv and obstruction of premature peace deals such as the Minsk accords.
2. Syria as a Second Front
The Syrian conflict opened a second theater. Russia justified its intervention by citing the need to protect Orthodox Christians, preserve its Mediterranean naval base, and prevent jihadist spillover into the Caucasus. Yet these justifications masked a strategic dilemma. Facing the prospect of Turkish or Jordanian military action, Moscow chose direct engagement—securing its ally but further stretching its military and financial capacity.
3. A Potential Central Asian Flashpoint
A third, still latent, front looms in Central Asia and the Muslim-majority republics of the Russian Federation. The emergence of ISIS’s “Khorasan Province” and the presence of Uighur militants in Middle Eastern battlefields hint at a future insurgency that could destabilize both Russia and China. Anticipating this, Moscow has expanded joint exercises with Central Asian states and Beijing—measures that themselves consume resources and attention.
Russia and China are well aware of these dynamics, yet the breadth and subtlety of American strategy have left them strategically unsettled. Each Russian countermove appears to have been anticipated, absorbed, and repurposed to Washington’s advantage, leaving Moscow struggling to escape the very framework designed to contain it.
Future analyses will explore the economic and political dimensions of this American approach to Russia.
Ambassador Abdulsalam Al-Mahdi Al-Raqi‘i
