U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

36–424PDF WASHINGTON : 2019

CHINESE AND RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN THE 

MIDDLE EAST 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

THE MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA, AND 

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 9, 2019 

Serial No. 116–37 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs 

( 

Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov, 

or http://www.govinfo.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

AMI BERA, California 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York 

TED LIEU, California 

SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania 

DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota 

ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota 

COLIN ALLRED, Texas 

ANDY LEVIN, Michigan 

ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia 

CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania 

TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey 

DAVID TRONE, Maryland 

JIM COSTA, California 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas, Ranking 

Member 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

LEE ZELDIN, New York 

JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin 

ANN WAGNER, Missouri 

BRIAN MAST, Florida 

FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida 

BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

JOHN CURTIS, Utah 

KEN BUCK, Colorado 

RON WRIGHT, Texas 

GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania 

TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee 

GREG PENCE, Indiana 

STEVE WATKINS, Kansas 

MIKE GUEST, Mississippi 

JASON STEINBAUM, Staff Director 

BRENDAN SHIELDS, Republican Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA, AND INTERNATIONAL

TERRORISM

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida, Chairman 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

TED LIEU, California 

COLIN ALLRED, Texas 

TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey 

DAVID TRONE, Maryland 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina, Ranking 

Member 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

LEE ZELDIN, New York 

BRIAN MAST, Florida 

BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania 

STEVE WATKINS, Kansas 

CASEY KUSTIN, Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

WITNESSES 

Alterman, Dr. Jon B., Senior Vice President, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in 

Global Security and Geostrategy, Director of the Middle East Program, 

Center for Strategic and International Studies ................................................. 8 

Exum, Dr. Andrew, Executive, Hakluyt & Company, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy ............................................... 20 

Wormuth, Honorable Christine, Director, International Security and Defense 

Policy Center, Senior Fellow, Rand Corporation, Former Under Secretary 

of Defense for Policy ............................................................................................. 31 

Borshchevskaya, Ms. Anna, Senior Fellow, Washington Institute for Near 

East Policy ............................................................................................................ 43 

APPENDIX 

Hearing Notice ......................................................................................................... 66 

Hearing Minutes ...................................................................................................... 67 

Hearing Attendance ................................................................................................. 68 

(1) 

CHINESE AND RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN THE 

MIDDLE EAST 

Thursday, May 9, 2019 

House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa, and 

International Terrorism 

Committee on Foreign Affairs 

Washington, DC 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:11 p.m., in room 

2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Theodore E. Deutch 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. DEUTCH. All right. This hearing will come to order. 

Welcome, everyone. The subcommittee is meeting today to hear 

testimony on Chinese and Russian influence in the Middle East. I 

thank our witnesses for appearing here today. I will now recognize 

myself for the purpose of making an opening statement, and then 

will turn it over to the ranking member to do the same. 

Thanks so much to our witnesses for testifying today and for 

helping us examine patterns of Russian and Chinese influence in 

the Middle East and North Africa. In the fall of 2015, Russia 

launched a targeted military intervention in Syria to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad and ensure access to military bases on the 

Mediterranean Sea. 

Moscow has used this foothold to assert its interests throughout 

the region, to expand its political and military and economic influence, to reclaim its status as a great power, and to offer itself as 

an authoritarian alternative to the United States. 

In recent years, Moscow conducted military exercises with Egypt and sold Cairo more than $2 billion worth of aircraft, cooperated 

with Saudi Arabia to stabilize global oil prices, expanded ties with 

Khalifa Haftar in Libya, engaged in discussions to sell the S–400 

Missile Defense System to Qatar, and strengthened relations with 

both Iran and with Israel. 

China has also expanded its influence in the Middle East and 

North Africa in recent years, although in a different way. China’s 

engagement has been primarily economic rather than military or 

political. 

Since 1995, the region has been China’s No. 1 source of imported 

petroleum. China overtook the United States as the largest net importer of crude oil from the Middle East in 2013. By 2018, roughly 

44 percent of China’s crude oil imports came from nine Middle 

Eastern countries. 

Every major regional actor, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and 

Iran, has expressed interest in various projects of China’s Belt and 

Road Initiative. If history teaches us anything, China is likely to 
2 

increase its political engagement and expand its military footprint 

to secure these economic interests. 

Indeed, in 2017, Iran and China held a joint naval exercise in the 

Persian Gulf, and just last month Egypt hosted the Chinese and 

Russian navies in a training exercise. 

China began operating its first overseas military base located in 

Djibouti in 2017, providing it greater naval access to the Red Sea, 

Gulf of Aden, and Arabian Sea. 

The expanding regional roles of both Russia and China are of 

particular importance in light of the Trump administration’s national security strategy that prioritizes great power competition. 

Under this paradigm, rivalry with both China and Russia will become the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy, yet we continue to see unprincipled China policy and deference to Russia. 

The administration’s announced withdrawal from Syria was a 

gift to Putin at a time when clear-eyed American leadership is 

what is clearly needed. The Middle East and North Africa may become an arena of strategic competition to an extent not seen since 

the early years of the cold war. 

I hope our witnesses can draw upon their experience and share 

their insight to help us understand Moscow and Beijing strategies 

in the region, where our interests overlap or diverge, and how the 

United States should approach Russia and China’s roles in the 

Middle East and North Africa. 

And with that, I will turn it over to the ranking member, Mr. 

Wilson, for his opening statement. 

Mr. WILSON. Chairman Deutch, thank you for holding this important hearing. China and Russia’s increasing presence in the 

Middle East underscores the necessity of American leadership in 

the region. Beijing and Moscow are engaged on all levels in the 

Middle East and North Africa, political, military, economic, and beyond. And they are planning for the long haul, raising serious 

questions for U.S. interest and policy in the region. 

As we delve into this discussion, we must also bear in mind that 

China and Russia’s engagement in the Middle East is not only 

meant to increase their clout and influence in the region, but to decrease America’s influence. Indeed, China and Russia are eager to 

take advantage of fissures between the U.S. and our traditional allies. They seek to portray themselves to our regional allies as viable alternatives to the U.S. while deepening their involvement in 

the region at our expense. 

Under Chinese President Xi’s leadership, China has expanded its 

engagement in the region dramatically. Beijing has dedicated considerable focus on the Middle East as part of the controversial Belt 

and Road Initiative. China has invested in nearly every country in 

the region, including in Israeli ports and railways and the expansion of the Suez Canal in Egypt. 

Even more concerning are China’s technology initiatives in the 

region. While the United States has voiced concern about Huawei, 

ZTE, and other technology firms, our friends in the Middle East 

seem happy to integrate Chinese initiatives in their technology sectors. In 2019 alone, Bahrain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE 

have already engaged with China on telecom and 5G infrastructure. 
3 

Although China’s activity in the region has historically focused 

on economics, under President Xi, Beijing has also increased its 

military footprint, as Beijing deepens military ties with traditional 

U.S. allies in the region, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the 

United States must make it clear to our partners that collaboration 

with China comes at a significant real-world consequence. 

Late last year, the U.S. Navy announced it would reconsider port 

calls to Haifa, Israel, once the Shanghai International Port Group, 

a company in which the Chinese government has a majority stake, 

takes over the civilian port in 2021. Like China, Russia has been 

strengthening military and diplomatic ties with our traditional 

Middle Eastern allies for years now, seeking to submit its role as 

a regional power broker. 

Since Russia’s 2015 intervention in the Syrian civil war, and support of the Assad regime, Moscow has also built strong economic 

ties with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, sold billions of dollars of arms 

to the UAE, and cultivated close ties to President Sisi of Egypt. 

Russia’s Middle East strategy has been to cultivate those ties 

with all actors, both U.S. friends and posts, in service of its ultimate goal of dominating the region and undermining U.S. interest. 

Moscow has depended on its relationships in recent years with 

Iran, Hezbollah, Turkey, Israel, as well as the rival Palestinian and 

Libyan factions. 

And as Russia’s role in the region continues to grow, actors in 

the region will feel less inclined to heed to U.S. interest, like respect for rule of law, democratic institutions, and human rights. 

While Russia and China appear to be real viable alternatives to the 

U.S., whether it be military, politically, or economically, the region 

will move toward authoritarianism and away from democracy. 

I hope our expert witnesses today can address these crucial 

issues. How can the United States continue to advocate for our 

democratic values in the Middle East without pushing our friends 

and partners into the arms of Russia and China? 

There is simply no alternative to U.S. leadership. We must redouble our efforts to deepen ties to the region and caution our allies that full-scale engagement with Russia or China is not in their 

interest. 

The Middle East faces many challenges already, but if we fail to 

face the increasing Chinese and Russian influence in the region, 

things will only get worse for the people of the Middle East and 

for the United States and its interest for freedom and democracy. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. DEUTCH. I thank the ranking member. I will now recognize 

members of the subcommittee who wish to be recognized for a 1- 

minute opening statement. Mr. Cicilline, you are recognized. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this important hearing. And, of course, thank you to our witnesses for being 

here today. 

As it has in so many parts of the world, in the Middle East, the 

Trump administration has forfeited American leadership in an ongoing series of diplomatic and strategic blunders that have set back 

our standing in the region, not to mention the world. 

The administration pulled out of the Iran deal with no replacement, leaving an emboldened Iran that indicates it will return to 
4 

its nuclear program. The administration’s Syria policy is virtually 

non-existent. And Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration has embraced a government that has had a journalist hacked to deal. 

And Yemen, the United States is supporting a conflict that has 

led to unspeakable human suffering and inflamed tensions in the 

region. The list of failures goes on and on. 

The lack of a clear U.S. strategy and diplomatic engagement in 

the region has created a vacuum—a vacuum China and Russia are 

already exploiting. This is making the region less stable. It is 

emboldening human rights offenders who take the administration’s 

ambivalence toward human rights as a green light to crack down 

on civil society, further discriminate against women and LGBTQ 

individuals, and silence free speech. 

Today, I hope we can discuss the risk the American security, as 

well as the risk to human rights, posed by a rising Russia and 

China in the Middle East. 

I look forward to examining what Congress can do to support 

human rights activists in the region and to ensure the administration promotes American interests as well as our values. In the absence of a strategic vision by the administration, Congress must 

step up on behalf of the American people and set forth a path in 

the Middle East. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman, again for calling this very important hearing, and I yield back. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Cicilline. Seeing no other requests 

for opening statements, we will move on. Without objection, all 

members may have 5 days to submit statements, questions, and extraneous materials for the record subject to the length limitations 

in the rules. 

It is now my pleasure to introduce our witnesses. Dr. Jon 

Alterman is senior vice president, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in 

Global Security and Geostrategy, and is director of the Middle East 

Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

He previously served in multiple roles at the United States Department of State, as an expert advisor to the Iraq Study Group, 

and before entering government, he was a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Washington institute for Near East Policy. 

In addition to his policy work, he teaches Middle Eastern studies 

at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies 

and the George Washington University. 

Next, I will turn to my colleague from Texas, Mr. Allred, to introduce his constituent. 

Mr. ALLRED. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am excited to introduce Dr. Andrew Exum, a constituent of mine from Dallas. Dr. 

Exum is an executive at Hakluyt & Company, a global management consultancy. Before that, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy, from 2015 until 2017. 

And previously, he served active duty in Afghanistan and Iraq 

where he led a light infantry and ranger platoons, and later served 

as a civilian in the Department of Defense on a fellowship from the 

Council on Foreign Relations. 

Dr. Exum, thank you so much for coming, sir. We have some 

friends in common who have spoken highly of you. I am sure every-
5 

thing they said is not true, but we are happy to have you here. And 

thank you for sharing your expertise with us. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Allred. It is worth pointing out, as 

the member representing South Florida, that many, many of the 

witnesses who appear before our committee 1 day will ultimately 

reside in my district as well. 

Next, I would—it is my honor to introduce Under Secretary 

Christine Wormuth. Ms. Wormuth is the director of the RAND 

International Security and Defense Policy Center and is a frequent 

writer and speaker on foreign policy and national security and 

homeland security issues. 

Prior to joining RAND, she served as Under Secretary of Defense 

for Policy at the United States Department of Defense from 2014 

to 2016. She previously served in multiple roles at the Pentagon, 

including Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, 

and Forces, and senior director for defense at the National Security 

Council. And she was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic 

and International Studies. 

Welcome, Ms. Wormuth. 

Finally, Ms. Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at the 

Washington Institute focusing on Russia’s policy toward the Middle 

East, a Ph.D. candidate at the George Mason University, and a fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy. 

She was previously with the Atlantic Council and the Peterson 

Institute for International Economics, a former analyst for a U.S. 

military contractor in Afghanistan. She has also served as communications director at the American Islamic Congress. Welcome, Ms. 

Borshchevskaya. 

Also, Dr. Exum, I would also extend my welcome to you as well. 

Thanks to all of you for being here today. Let me remind our witnesses to limit your testimony to 5 minutes. Without objection, 

your prepared written statements will be made part of the hearing 

record. 

Again, we thank you so much for being here today. And, Dr. 

Alterman, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF JON B. ALTERMAN, PH.D., SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI CHAIR IN GLOBAL SECURITY 

AND GEOSTRATEGY, DIRECTOR OF THE MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL 

STUDIES 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, it is an 

honor for me to appear once again before this subcommittee. It is 

important to grasp that China’s approach to the Middle East is 

both deliberate and limited. My understanding of Chinese foreign 

policy is that alongside the overarching desire to restore China to 

its rightful primacy among world powers is the profound sense of 

China’s vulnerability and insecurity. China has no missionary zeal 

to persuade the world of the virtues of Chinese civilization. 

The Chinese government’s goal is to secure itself, best done in a 

world driven by the bilateral relations of States. China, a country 

with no allies, is much stronger in a bilateral world. The United 
6 

States, a country with dozens of allies, is much weaker in a bilateral world. 

China feels especially vulnerable in the Middle East. It is reliant 

on the Middle East for oil, dependent on its sea lanes, and unable 

to change the fact that the United States is the preponderant foreign power in the region. 

In my judgment, China has no intention of displacing the United 

States from the Middle East, confronting the United States in the 

region, or engaging in a rivalry with the United States there, and 

it sees no reason to do so. It feels that stabilizing the region is beyond its reach, and doing so would likely do more to antagonize potential partners than advance stability. Instead, China is happy to 

have the United States incur costs in the region while China derives benefits. 

In the Middle East, China benefits from high hopes and low expectations. China is a newcomer to the scene with relatively little 

history but a domestic economic track record that is enviable by almost any measure. In some ways, China is in the place that the 

United States was after the first World War, a dimly understood 

global power holding out the promise of a better future untainted 

by an imperialist history. 

China also promises not to disrupt social values in societies undergoing profound change. That is, China promises access to the 

Chinese economic miracle while expressing none of the Western 

concerns about fostering systems that produce resilient societies. 

The China model has become even more attractive to Middle Eastern governments after the Arab uprisings of 2011, which reminded 

governments of the perils of more open political space. 

Further, concern that growing U.S. energy self-sufficiency will 

draw the United States away from the Middle East calls for these 

countries to put in place a hedge. 

You could argue that China is devising a new mode of imperialism whereby Imperialism 1.0 was imperialism, or Europeanstyle Imperialism; Imperialism 2.0 was the U.S.-led rules-based 

international order; and Imperialism 3.0, or you might call it Mercantilism 2.0, is a set of wholly interest-based government-to-government ties that allow the rapid exploitation of economic opportunities on what is, at least initially, a consensual basis. 

China represents a challenge for Western governments that seek 

to push governments to fight corruption, pursue technical excellence, and encourage environmental stewardship. China advertises 

that it provides a quick shortcut to resources. 

Of course, China is not relying on economics alone to advance its 

interests. China also deploys traditional State craft to advance its 

interests and confound its adversaries. As I described in my written testimony, U.S. policy toward Iran is a many splendored gift 

for China. 

China is also pursuing close ties with four other Middle Eastern 

countries—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Israel. Each offers 

something different. And despite differences among all of them, 

China maintains close ties with all of them. 

China’s regional strategy is elegant in its simplicity, and it seeks 

engagement based almost entirely on economic cooperation. The 

United States, by contrast, is engaged broadly and deeply around 
7 

the world, seeking to foster the sort of long-term changes that help 

generate economic growth and political liberalization in South 

Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, and elsewhere. 

The sting in the U.S. model is it has not led to similar development everywhere. The Middle East, Latin America, and Africa are 

full of examples where U.S. development efforts failed to meet their 

goals. China is promising a different approach and a different set 

of results. 

We do not know yet how well this all will work. China has a 

light military footprint around the world, and its expeditionary capacity is limited. That means China may have difficulty securing 

its interests—and protecting its large overseas population, which 

numbers as many as 600,000 in the Middle East alone. 

China may find that being a global power with global interest 

carries high global costs as well. In addition, a more checkered 

track record may take the bloom off the image of Chinese investment, and governments and populations may come to feel coerced 

into accepting economic agreements that favored Chinese interests 

over host country interests. 

What neighbors interpret as Chinese aggression tends to draw 

neighbors closer to each other and seek closer relations with the 

United States. In addition, the whole Chinese economic model may 

collapse under its own weight. But from a U.S. perspective, we 

need to be mindful that the Chinese model may pose a formidable 

challenge. As I see it, China sees us pursuing an expensive and obsolete model of global influence. They do not want to defeat us. 

They want to marginalize us. 

To me, the biggest danger we face in the Middle East is assuming our adversaries will confront us in the ways we are most prepared to be challenged. Facing insecurity, we double down on 

troops on materiel. Confronted with hostility, we respond with 

force. For decades, our strategy has been hegemony, which is becoming increasingly expensive to sustain. We do not really have an 

economic strategy. China seems to harbor no hegemonic ambitions 

in the Middle East and finds the doors thrown open to its influence. 

It seems to me that we have to rethink our approach to the region, not do as we have done for 50 years. We have to—try to lead 

the world to a better future rather than reinforce the status quo. 

And, sir, I suggest that we need to continue to make the world a 

better place now. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Alterman follows:] 
8 

CSIS I 

Statement before the 

House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, 

North Africa, and International Terrorism 

A Testimony by: 

Jon B. Alterman 

Senior Vice President, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security 

and Geostrategy, and Director, Middle East Program 

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 

May9,2019 

2172 Rayburn House Office Building 

16ns 'RHOO:E ISLAND AVt;:NUE NW I 'tEL. {lol) :0.$.1,0200 

WASHINGtoN, OC 2()036 FAX (20~] 775.3199 
9 

Alterman: Written Testimony, JIFAC MENA Subcommittee 05/09/20 J 9 2 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, it is an honor for me to appear once again before this 

subcommittee. this time to discuss China's engagement in the Middle East and its implications 

for U.S. interests. 

It's important to remember that, 20 years ago, every government in the Middle East was either 

friendly to the United States government or seeking to become more so. While the United States 

was not exactly triumphant, it was unquestionably dominant. A great deal has happened in the 

last twenty years, and the United States is now struggling to determine what its position in the 

region should be, while Russia and China carefully advance their interests. 

As we consider conditions now, we should recall that, 20 years ago, China was completely 

peripheral to the region. It had shallow diplomatic relations and only a few national interests. 

Decades as the fading sponsor of revolutionary movements, and as the supplier of low-cost, lowquality weapons, marginalized China from the broader trends of economic reform and 

peacebuilding that were salient at the time. China's status as a growing importer of Middle 

Eastern oil mattered in the 1990s, but China was starting from a low base. China only became a 

net oil importer in 1993, and while about half of its imported oil came from the Middle East in 

1999, the United States imported eleven times the amount of crude oil China did. Even Canada 

imp01icd more oil, and its population was only 2.5 percent that of China. 

China's economy was growing swiftly, though, and the United States was distracted. While the 

United States reeled after the 9/ll attacks, prosecuted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 

undertook ambitious efforts to promote moderation and reform in the Middle East, China got 

down to business. It expanded its economic ties throughout the region, and deepened its 

diplomatic ties, too. By 20 I 0, China was not merely the world's fastest growing major economy 

(in 2000, China's GDP in current dollars was $1.2 trillion, and by 20 I 0 it had quintupled to $6.1 

trillion). As it grew, China also became the principal driver of oil demand growth around the 

world. In 2000 China imported $13.7 billion worth of crude oil; by 20 I 0 that number had risen to 

$127 billion. 

Not surprisingly, China's Middle East ties have grown alongside growth in its overall economy 

and its oil demand. In 2000, Chinese-Saudi bilateral trade totaled $3 billion, dominated by crude 

oil. By 20 l 0 it was $41.6 billion. While the pace of trade growth has slowed, it continues to grow 

by double digits in most years, and China has advanced plans with several regional states to 

double trade within a decade. While the plans sound ambitious, they have precedent China 

established the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in 2004, and thirteen years later ChinaArab trade had quadrupled. 

What is important to grasp about China's approach to the Middle East is how deliberate it is, and 

how limited it is. My understanding of Chinese foreign policy is that alongside the overarching 

desire to restore China to its rightful primacy of place among world powers is a profound sense 

of China's vulnerability and insecurity. Tn the words ofSulmaan Khan, who recently completed a 

book on China's grand strategy, China's modern leaders have all seen China ''as a brittle entity, 
10 

Alterman: Written Testimony, HFAC MENA Subcommittee 05109/2019 

in a world that was fundamentally dangerous. Their main task was to protect it." China has no 

missionary zeal to persuade the world of the virtues of Chinese civilization, nor any desire to 

operate in a world oflike-minded states. The Chinese government's goal is to foster a world 

driven by the bilateral relations of states. Such a world creates tremendous advantages for China, 

in part because it is the larger economy and more populous power in any relationship except one 

with the United States. The Chinese government has no formal allies, while alliances have been a 

foundation of U.S security policy for three-quarters of a century. 

China's presence in the Middle East seems reluctant. For a quarter century, Chinese leaders have 

been looking to reduce the Middle East fraction of its oil impotis, but the Middle East is where 

the oil is, and China has few options. The country still buys almost half its imported crude oil 

from the region, despite a recent spike in Russian imports that have displaced Saudi Arabia as 

China's leading supplier. China's zeal to embrace electric vehicles is in part a response to oil 

dependence, as is China's embrace of rencwables. It is hard for the math to add up, though. 

China's appetite for oil is large, its oil deposits are limited, and it Jacks the geology for a tracking 

revolution. China will need oil for decades to come, and much of that oil will need to come from 

the Middle East. 

Much of China's global trade transits the Middle East as well. An estimated 60 percent of 

China's European and African trade passes through the UAE, for example, and much of China's 

European and Mediterranean trade sails through the Suez Canal, creating a potential chokepoint 

for Chinese goods. The region's chokepoints-the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab ai-Mandeb, and 

the Suez Canal-are China's chokepoints. 

China has benefitted tremendously trom articulating a "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI) that is 

sufficiently concrete as to persuade Middle Easterners that it will be transformative, but (like all 

skillful acts of politics and marketing) sufficiently vague for a diverse array of them to imagine 

playing a key role in its execution. Rich and poor states alike are judging that China's future in 

the region is both large and bright, and China will bring prosperity after a 75-year pax americana 

has brought conflict. Much less remarked on is that China has actually engaged in relatively few 

BRJ-related projects in the Middle East, and that China is coming under increasing scrutiny for 

embracing ill-considered development projects abroad that do more for China than the host 

governments. 

In the Middle East, as in much of the world, China is trying to use economics as its calling card. 

China has militarized the South China Sea, opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 

2017, and continues to pour resources into the development of Gwadar Port in Pakistan in a way 

that puzzles businesspeople who see little economic justification for it. Despite this, I see China 

as being very reluctant to use the military tools that Great Powers have deployed tor centuries. In 

the Middle East, China's goal is to embed itself more deeply in the economics of the region 

without provoking a response from the United States or its allies. China's attraction to regional 

governments is offering a more "ala carte'' kind of engagement, devoid of the notions of 
11 

Alterman: Written Testimony, HFAC MENA Subcommittee 05/09/2019 4 

Western states that economic growth must necessarily be accompanied by a set of changed social 

and political norms. 

For all of China's growing interest in the Middle EasL the country continues to sec the region as 

a place where the United States has the preponderance of power. The U.S. Fifth Fleet dominates 

the Persian Gulf, and the Sixth Fleet watches over the Mediterranean. The United States has 

more than 20,000 troops in the region, with bases in every GCC country except Saudi Arabia, as 

well as in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. Not only does it have aNA TO ally in Turkey, but it has 

declared seven Middle Eastern states '·major non-NATO allies," tying them closer to the United 

States. 

In my judgment, China has no intention of displacing the United States from the Middle East, 

confronting the United States in the region, or engaging in a rivalry with the United States there. 

In part, China feels ill-prepared to engage in a connict with the United States in a region far from 

China. But equally importantly, China sees no need to. It feels that stabilizing the region is 

beyond its reach and doing so would likely do more to antagonize potential partners than 

advance stability. Such tasks are better left to the United States. 

Instead, China is happy to have the United States incur costs in the region while China derives 

benefits. China's narrower security interest is ensuring that instability in the Middle East does 

not blow back on China. For Middle Eastern countries, China benefits from high hopes and low 

expectations. China is a newcomer to the scene, with relatively little history in the region but a 

domestic economic track record that is enviable by almost any measure. In some ways, China is 

in the place that the United States was after the First World War, a dimly understood global 

power holding out the promise of a better future untainted by an imperialist history. 

China also promises not to disrupt social values in societies undergoing profound change. That 

is, China promises access to the Chinese economic miracle while expressing none of the Western 

concerns about fostering systems that produce resilient societies. The China model-robust 

economic growth under an authoritarian political framework-has become even more attractive 

to Middle Eastern governments after the Arab uprisings of2011, which reminded governments 

of the peri Is that more open political space can pose to governments Jacking the support of their 

populations. While regional governments often seem to seek U.S. hegemony as protection 

against external foes, a growing focus on the threat of internal disorder, and a strong conviction 

that U.S. recipes for openness threaten chaos, makes alternatives to the U.S. more attractive. 

Further, concern that growing U.S. energy self-sufficiency will draw the United States away 

from the Middle East calls for a hedge. 

Embedded in the Chinese strategy to promote economic ties is an effort to embed Chinese 

technology in infrastructure. Modern computing relics on complex code being layered over 

complex code, rendering large blocks of code a sort of black hole whose contents are not 

understood, even by programmers themselves. This is especially true in the field of artificial 

intelligence, a premise of which is that it is the computer that directs an activity rather than a 
12 

Alterman: Written Testimony, I If AC MENA Subcommittee 05/09/2019 

programmer. Immense arrays of code, whether applied to 50 technology, self-driving cars, 

computer chips, or any of a wide range of technologies open the door both to surveillance and to 

the installation of"kill switches'' that can cripple devices at will. Since the Chinese government 

and Chinese industry are, by law, intertwined, the spread of Chinese technology also spreads 

Chinese security capacity into the heart of potential adversaries without a single soldier being 

deployed or a shot being fired. 

One might argue that China is devising a new mode of imperialism, whereby Imperialism 1.0 

was European imperialism, and Imperialism 2.0 was the U.S.-Ied rules-based international order. 

Imperialism 3.0 (or perhaps, Mercantilism 2.0), is a set of wholly interest-based, government-togovernment ties that allow the rapid exploitation of economic opportunities on what is, at least 

initially, a consensual basis. Chinese state-owned enterprises, Chinese construction firms, and 

Chinese technology flow in, creating an engagement that may turn into dependency. China 

certainly represents a challenge for Western governments that seck to use "whole of 

government" solutions to fight corruption, pursue technical excellence, and encourage 

environmental stewardship. China advertises that it provides a shortcut to resources. 

Of course, China is not relying on economics alone to advance its interests. China also deploys 

traditional statecraft to advance its interests and confound its adversaries. It is useful, in that 

regard, to consider China's approach to Iran. For Chinese strategists, not only is Iran's current 

international position acceptable, but the current U.S. strategy toward Iran is a gift. China (along 

with Russia) was willing to go along with Obama-era sanctions on Iran and agree to the JCPOA, 

but the Trump administration's strategy much more closely serves Chinese interests. From a 

Chinese perspective, maintaining ties with Iran is a vital strategic imperative, for the following 

reasons: 

1) Iran is a hedge against a cutoff in oil sales because its hostility to the United States makes 

it unlikely to join a U.S.-led effort to embargo China in the case of heightened tension. 

All of the other Middle Eastern producers have close U.S. ties. 

2) Tensions with Iran help ensure that the United States cannot fully focus its military 

attention on the western Pacific. If the United States puts two carrier strike groups off the 

coast of Iran, and it can only have three on station at any given time, that means that the 

United States only has one it can dedicate to China. 

3) Tensions over Iran's activities disrupt U.S. ties with its allies, diminishing U.S. global 

leadership and creating the more bilaterally-driven world that China seeks. A fractured 

Western alliance is much less threatening to China than a united one. 

4) Close ties to Iran drive Saudi Arabia to seek even closer ties to China. That leads the 

Kingdom to offer China high volumes of discounted oil, drives bilateral investment, and 

creates opportunities for Chinese construction firms in the Kingdom. 

5) Iran represents an investment opportunity for China. As a distressed asset, China sees 

tremendous opportunities in Iran, with prime geographic location, its educated and 

relatively large population, and relatively diversified economy. China faces little 

competition investing in Iran. 
13 

Altennan: Written Testimony, IIFAC MENA Subcommittee 05/09/2019 6 

6) Iran is by far the weaker party in this bilateral relationship. China represents more than 30 

percent of Iran's import and export markets, but Iran represents less than I percent of 

China's. Iran clearly needs China, but China has alternatives to Iran. 

What is especially notable is how effective China has been in developing its ties with Iran 

without disrupting its other ties to Chinese partners in the Middle East. China seems to have 

mastered the art of deriving benefits from its relations with Iran without paying heavy costs. 

As I see it, China has four principal regional partners besides Iran. Importantly, President Xi has 

visited three of them in the last five years, signaling the importance that China attaches to each 

relationship. 

The first is Saudi Arabia, which is China's largest trading partner in West Asia and the 

wealthiest country in the region. China, in turn, is Saudi Arabia's largest trading partner and 

largest oil customer. Chinese construction firms have been playing a growing role developing 

Saudi infrastructure; meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been especially eager to build refineries and 

petrochemical production facilities in China that arc specially tailored to use Saudi grades of 

crude oil. 

President Xi visited Saudi Arabia in January 20 !6, and King Salman made a rare trip to China in 

March 2017. His son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, traveled to Beijing in February 

20 !9, when he was still persona non grata in much of the world after the October 2018 murder of 

Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. The Crown Prince reportedly signed economic agreements totaling 

$28 billion and broadcast that Saudi-Chinese trade had shot up 32 percent in the last year alone. 

Saudi Arabia seems to be developing China as a hedge against a decline in Western oil 

consumption, as a well as a hedge against Western discomfort with authoritarianism within Saudi 

Arabia. In addition, wooing the Saudis allows China to play Saudi Arabia and Iran off against 

one another. 

China's Arabian Peninsula ties extend beyond Saudi Arabia. China is also the United Arab 

Emirates' largest trading partner, and Dubai Port is a vital global shipping and logistics hub for 

Chinese goods. More than 200,000 Chinese nationals live in the UAE, which is emerging as a 

sort of entrepot for Chinese traders who want to be closer to overseas markets. 

While the UAE has been aligning more closely with the United States for decades, the leadership 

clearly sees such an orientation as being wholly compatible with closer ties to China as well. The 

UAE sees a leading role for itself as a consequence of the Belt and Road Initiative, building out 

on what is already a robust trading relationship. 

In July 20 !8, China and the UAE used the occasion of President Xi's visit to the UAE to 

announce that they had upgraded their 20 !2 "strategic pmtnership" to a "comprehensive strategic 

pmtnership," outlining cooperation in nine fields including politics, trade and economics, 
14 

Alterman: Written Testimony, 1-lFAC MENA Subcommittee 05/09/2019 7 

technology, energy, renewable energy, and security. The two countries set a goal of doubling 

bilateral trade by 2022, and the UAE recently allowed Chinese visitors visa-free entry. 

In the last five years, as China has grown increasingly concerned with transit through the Suez 

Canal, there has been significant growth in Chinese involvement in Egypt. Chinese firms are 

deeply engaged in constructing Egypt's new administrative capital in the desert outside of Cairo, 

and they are developing a Red Sea port and industrial zone in Ain Sukhna. During a September 

2018 visit to Beijing, President Sisi repmiedly signed $18 billion worth of deals with China, 

covering rail, real estate, refining, and energy projects. In fact, President Sisi has made at least 

six trips to Beijing since taking office in2014, compared to just two trips to Washington. 

Despite this, trade figures between Egypt and China are dwarfed by China's trade with other 

major regional partners. In addition, China struggles to find goods to buy from Egypt. Oranges 

are a key export, and China has been working for a decade to boost Chinese tourism in Egypt as 

a way to reduce trade imbalances. Chinese companies repmiedly cooled on Egyptian investments 

about a year ago, convinced that the Egyptians were intent on ensuring that profits only accrued 

to the Egyptian side. Those concerns appear to have been assuaged, and the larger strategic 

reality- that the Egyptian leadership is clearly courting China (as it is also courting Russia)-

has become the dominant theme. This is seemingly as a hedge against Western countries turning 

their back on the country. 

The last key country is Israel. About a decade ago, a delegation from Israel came to Washington 

and asked experts here how Israel could remain strategically important to China after the United 

States put a definitive end to cooperation on military technology that had U.S. roots. Israel seems 

to have solved that equation, developing deep commercial relationships in advanced technology 

and government-to-government cooperation in the security and counteiierrorism fields. 

It is remarkable just how quickly these ties have developed. According to Thompson Reuters, 

Chinese investment in Israel increased tenfold between 2016 and 2017, totaling more than $16 

billion. Chinese firms are deeply engaged in building Israeli infrastructure, building tunnels for 

light rail, expanding poti facilities in Ashdod and Haifa and striking agreements to operate the 

ports for 25 years. 

In recent months Israelis have been discussing the implications of greater Chinese involvement 

in Israel. According to Foreign Policy, Israel's National Security Council was expected to 

release a report to the Israeli government in March 2019 that outlined steps Israel should take to 

protect its national security as it welcomes international investment. Reportedly, the main target 

was China. China's footprint in Israel could not only give China insight into matters regarding 

Israeli security, but could also provide pathways to surveil U.S. naval operations in Haifa Port 

and provide access to technologies being developed by Israel or that play a role in U.S. defense 

systems. 
15 

Alten11an: Written Testimony, HFAC MENA Subcommittee 05/09/2019 

China's advantage in all of this is the government seems to know what it is trying to do, and what 

it is not trying to do. China has a strategy that is elegant in its simplicity, seeking ways to 

encourage governments open the door wide to Chinese engagement. The United States, by 

contrast, is engaged broadly and deeply around the world, seeking to foster the sort of long-term 

changes that helped generate economic growth and political liberalization in South Korea, Japan, 

Taiwan, Germany, and elsewhere. The sting in the U.S. model is that it has not Jed to similar 

development everywhere. The Middle East, Latin America, and Africa are full of examples 

where U.S. development efforts failed to meet their goals. China is promising a different 

approach, and a different set of results. 

What we don't know yet is how well this will all work. As noted above, China is building 

military facilities abroad to protect Chinese trade routes, but the country's footprint remains 

light, and its efforts to build a blue-water Navy are decades from completion. China may not 

only be unable to secure its trade routes; it may also find itself unable to deter or to coerce states 

into defending Chinese security interests. The Chinese base in Djibouti is relatively smallperhaps housing 400 personnel-and it may be more effective to keep track of U.S. forces in 

nearby U.S. Camp Lemonnier and monitoring the passage of ships through the Bab ai-Mandeb 

than in projecting Chinese force in times of peril. 

In addition, with millions of Chinese workers overseas-perhaps 600,000 in the Middle East 

alone-protecting those workers is a growing challenge. China did relatively well evacuating 

30,000 workers from a collapsing Libya in 2011, but protecting those workers from every 

eventuality in a growing array of countries will be an increasing burden. 

China may find, as the United States did, that being a global power with global interests carries 

high global costs, as well. The discipline of non-intervention in other states may be harder to 

maintain when interests become deeper and broader, and when economic tools prove inadequate 

to secure those interests. In addition, a more checkered track record may take the bloom off the 

image of Chinese investment, and governments and populations may come to feel coerced into 

accepting economic agreements that favor Chinese interests over host country interests. China, 

after all, is a behemoth in bilateral tics with almost every country in the world. What neighbors 

interpret as Chinese aggression tends to draw neighbors closer to each other and seek closer 

relations with the United States. 

In addition, the whole Chinese model may collapse under its own weight. As the Belt and Road 

Initiative has grown in complexity it has encountered complications, and the Asian Infrastructure 

Investment Bank remains a relatively small operation after opening with high hopes three years 

ago. China is increasingly sensitive to charges that it is creating debt traps for its borrowers, 

despoiling the environment, and contributing to political corruption. 

But from a U.S. perspective, we need to be mindful that the Chinese model may pose a 

formidable challenge. To me, this is all a little bit personal. I grew up in Poughkeepsie, New 

York, a city that in the 1960's and 1970's was dominated by the world's largest computer 
16 

Alterman: Written Testimony, HFAC MENA Subcommittee 05/09/2019 9 

manufacturer at the time, IBM. IBM mostly made mainframes and typewriters, and beginning in 

1981, it manufactured its first personal computer. Because of antitrust concerns, IBM contracted 

out the disk operating system for its new personal computers to a small company called 

Microsoft, and the chips to a California outfit called Intel. IBM made most of the hardware, 

which accounted for most of the cost of the new computers. 

But IBM had its model wrong. Microsoil spent just a few pennies manufacturing floppy disks 

with DOS on them--or sometimes just sold a license-and charged many dollars for the right to 

install it. Microsoft understood that the real money to be made in the computer world was in the 

world of intellectual property, where investment costs were relatively high but the marginal cost 

of production approached zero. Microsoft became a software behemoth. IBM got tired of trying 

to extract profits from expensive manufacturing processes and exited the personal computer 

business less than 15 years later. 

IBM popularized personal computers, but its business model of manufacturing costly office 

machines was rendered obsolete. Cheap manufacturers like Gateway and Dell undercut them on 

price. Google and Facebook created free services that booked billions in annual profits from 

selling information about the users. Amazon created a retail business model whereby 

merchandising takes a back seat to logistics. IBM dramatically reduced its footprint in 

Poughkeepsie, and the company has largely walked away from manufacturing computers 

altogether, instead positioning itself as a solution provider to large organizations. 

We can all think of organizations that are like IBM in 1985, completely dominant in their field 

but facing systemic challenges because that dominance is of diminishing value. In the 1980s, 

Sears dominated the catalog business, Kodak dominated film, and Xerox dominated 

photocopying. Sometimes dominance becomes too expensive to maintain, but more often it 

seems that paradigms shift to make the entire enterprise less valuable. 

China is, to my mind, seeking to exploit an emerging paradigm shift. It does not hope to be the 

Commodore or Kaypro or Compaq computer, taking on a deep-pocketed behemoth with what it 

hopes is a better idea for a personal computer. Instead, China is seeking opportunities to create 

new a new model whereby it does not confront its adversaries head-on nor do expensive things 

that serve other nation's interests. Instead, China is focused exploiting opportunities that others 

ignore, carving out profitable activities where others see obstacles, and building on a base that 

others have created and sustained. 

To me, the biggest danger we face in the Middle East is assuming that our adversaries will 

confront us in the ways we are most prepared to be challenged. Facing insecurity, we double 

down on troops and materiel. Confronted with hostility, we respond with force. For decades, our 

strategy has been hegemony, which is becoming increasingly expensive to sustain. China seems 

to harbor no hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East and finds the doors thrown open to its 

influence. The United States is blamed for what goes wrong while getting little credit for what 
17 

Alterman: Written Testimony, HfAC MENA Subcommittee 05109120 !9 I 0 

goes right. China seems to be seeking ways to compete without becoming a rival, and its early 

results seem positive. 

China's challenge is not that of a peer that is seeking to displace us in the Middle East. Instead, it 

is of an upstart that is seeking to render our entire model obsolete. China's challenge needs to be 

taken as a reminder we must be more deliberate about what we need to do in the Middle East. It 

is a reminder that we need to explore new models of relations, rather than merely doubling down 

on what we have done for last 50 years. And it is a reminder that our goal must be not merely to 

reinforce the status quo, but to lead the world to a better future. It is what we have sought to do 

for much of our history. We must continue to do so, and we must continue to find success. 
18 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Dr. Alterman. 

Dr. Exum, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF ANDREW EXUM, PH.D., EXECUTIVE, HAKLUYT 

& COMPANY, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF 

DEFENSE FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY 

Dr. EXUM. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member, thank you 

so much just for giving me the opportunity to come here to speak 

to you today. It is a privilege to represent the great State of Texas 

and the 32d congressional District, which is ably represented by 

Colin Allred. Thank you so much for that warm introduction. 

If it is OK with you, I am just going to summarize my prepared 

remarks before the committee. 

As some of you know, from 2015 to 2017, I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy. I do not have 

any type of background in Russia. I do not speak Russian. I have 

never even been to Russia. But in the summer of 2015, we assessed, as a department and as a government, that the Assad regime in Syria was nearly something close to collapse. 

And thanks to the benign guidance of Christine Wormuth, we assembled a kind of tiger team within our office to go over scenarios 

that we called catastrophic success. In other words, what would it 

look like if the Assad regime collapsed, you know, overnight or collapsed very rapidly in a way that would in some ways be welcome 

but in other ways would seriously endanger U.S. interests? 

Now, that is what we saw from a five-sided concrete box in 

Northern Virginia. I imagine that the Russians and the Iranians 

saw something that was much more real and much more imminent 

from their perspective, and that is what I believe led the Russians 

to double down in Syria in the fall of 2015 and to surge a lot of 

troops there. 

Their stated motivations for going into Syria did not line up, 

unsurprisingly, with their revealed motivations. stated, they said it 

was all about counter terrorism. We assessed that their revealed 

motivations for going into Syria at the time ranged from, yes, 

counter terrorism was part of the reason why they were there, but 

mainly they were there to prop up their allies. 

Tactically, they are dependent on the warm water ports in 

Tartus and their presence. That allows them to project power into 

the eastern Mediterranean. 

We also assessed that kind of strategically this was about the 

Russians saying enough, especially after U.N. Security Council 

Resolution 1973 and the way that was used to overthrow the regime in Libya. 

Russia, which has always feared and has greatly resented the 

color revolutions and the Arab revolutions, the Arab Spring, which 

they saw the United States and its Western partners as being behind, this was a way for them to draw a line in the sand and say 

that is not going to happen anymore. 

They also used it as an opportunity to build their own coalitions. 

Part of this was to say, yes, America, you have, you know, a 48- 

nation coalition, but we, Russia, we also have a military coalition, 

and you need to look at us as a peer, as somebody that is worthy 

of being taken seriously. 
19 

And then, second, and perhaps most importantly, this was in 

some ways Russia’s entre back into the international community 

after the isolation which accompanied the invasion of Crimea. 

The decision about whether to talk to the Russians about Syria 

was a controversial one within the administration. I, and many 

members of the Department of Defense, were not in favor of this. 

From my perspective, I viewed Russia as arguably being the least 

important member of their coalition—that coalition which included 

Hezbollah, Iran, the Assad regime. 

And even if we were able to reach some sort of accommodation 

with the Russians, I did not think they would be able to deliver on 

it. By contrast, we could deliver our coalition. 

Second, we believed that they would use these negotiations as a 

way to buy time and space for them to pursue their true military 

objectives. Again, they said this was about counter terrorism. But 

in point of fact, we all knew where the terrorists were. The Jabhat 

al-Nusra was in the northwest of Syria. We had the Islamic State 

in the east. Russia concentrated its military power in recapturing 

those key urban areas, such as Aleppo and Damascus, that the regime valued. They were 100 percent aligned with the regime’s overall goals. 

However, in the negotiations, I will confess that we found the 

Russians to be relatively scrupulous. It is a quirk of Russian bureaucracy that they will actually lie to one another. So you could 

be talking to a Russian general or intelligence officer or diplomat 

who will be presenting in good faith what they believe to be the 

case when you know it is not the case. 

And this leads to the second point, which is I also think they use 

these negotiations, and we were very conscious of those at the time, 

to not only find out what we knew about Syria but find out how 

we knew what we knew about Syria, because they were very interested in the sources and methods that we have been able to develop, quite frankly, over the cold war. 

In the end, I have to say that, you know, although we in 2016 

somewhat chuckled when we saw the Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier, belching across the Mediterranean en route to Syria. 

The Russians were successful in Syria, and the way they have used 

that success and the success of their coalition has essentially been 

to tell our traditional partners in the region the United States is 

a fair weather ally; we are with you fair or foul weather. We are 

an all-weather ally, and Syria is the proof. 

And, you know, I remember when I left the Army and went to 

graduate school and was studying the Middle East, when we talked 

about the Russian presence in the Middle East, we talked about it 

as a historical artifact. That is no longer the case today. 

It was not the case when I returned in 2015, but Russia is here 

to stay. And for many of our traditional partners—the Israelis, the 

Saudis, the Egyptians—dealing with Russia as a member and as 

a presence in the region is, quite simply, not optional. 

I am happy to take your questions on more about the negotiations or about how we view the Russians, but I will do so during 

Q&A. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Exum follows:] 
20 

ANDREW EXUM 

EXECUTIVE, HAKLUYT & COMPANY 

HOUSE COMMITTEE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

"CHINESE AND RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST" 

9MAY2019 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wilson, I bring you greetings from the great state of Texas, and 

specifically from the 32nct congressional district, which is ably represented by Colin Allred. Thank 

you for the opportunity to testify before your committee today. My name is Andrew Exum, and 

from May of 2015 until January of 2017, I served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense 

for Middle East Policy. I had previously served in the Pentagon's Middle East policy shop from 

2012 until 2013, and I began my career as an Army officer, leading both light infantry and 

special operations units deployed to the Middle East. 

For over half a century, U.S. interests in the Middle East have remained remarkably consistent, 

no matter who has happened to be living in the White House at any given time. The security of 

the state of Israel and preserving market access to the hydrocarbon resources in and around 

the Arabian Peninsula have been our top two stated priorities in the period following the world 

wars. Since the September 11th attacks in 2001, meanwhile, we have also placed a priority on 

counterproliferation and countering terrorism. That's what animates us today, and that is why 

we continue to spend so much time and resources- roughly 59,000 troops, by the time I left 

the Pentagon- in the region. 

The subject of my remarks meanwhile, is what animates Russia in the region. I am not, I must 

admit up front, a specialist on Russia. I do not speak Russian, and I have never even been to 

Russia. I have spent most of my professional life fighting in, working on, or otherwise studying 

the Middle East, and all of my own graduate study pertains to the politics, languages, and 

history of the region. But for much of 2016, the U.S. government engaged in a lengthy series of 

negotiations with the Russian military and intelligence services over the fate of Syria, and for 
21 

better or for worse, and excepting for a period of time in which I had other priorities (namely 

the birth of my second son), I was the Pentagon's primary representative at these talks. So my 

view on Russia in the Middle East is informed by those interactions with my Russian 

counterparts, and that perhaps gives me a unique but by no means sufficient perspective on 

Russia's designs in the region. 

You might be questioning the wisdom of talking to Russia about Syria in the first place, and if 

you are, you would have found good company within certain departments and agencies in the 

U.S. government during the Obama Administration. Engaging in talks with Russia over Syria was 

not a universally popular thing to do at the time, was the subject of intense debate among both 

career professionals and political appointees such as myself, and it's fair to say that my own 

department was not completely supportive of the talks but- when directed by the presidentsupported them to our greatest ability. It's probably worth winding the clock back, then, to 

explain how and why we began talking to the Russians. 

It all started in the summer of 2015, when my office- under the direction of my immensely 

capable Syria director, Dr. leigh Nolan, and with the support of my boss at the time, Christine 

Wormuth- began coordinating interagency planning for a scenario in Syria we deemed 

"catastrophic success." After years in which the Assad Regime had struggled to defeat a 

persistent insurgency and in which the Islamic State had assumed control of most of eastern 

Syria and had begun to also threaten Syria's main cities in the West, we worried that the Assad 

Regime might finally collapse- and do so quickly, in a way that would endanger U.S. interests, 

to include the security ofthe state of Israel. 

It's fair to conclude that if we, sitting as we were in a five-sided concrete box in Washington, 

were worrying the Assad Regime might suddenly collapse, the Russians and Iranians- sitting 

much closer to the situation- were likewise worried. And that fear is what, I believe, led the 

Russian military to forcefully intervene in Syria in the early fall of 2015. The Russians had long 

supported the Assad Regime, and it valued the facility at Tartus which provides a warm water 
22 

port to Russia's Black Sea Fleet and allows Russia to project military power into the 

Mediterranean. Russia- along with Hizballah, and Iran- was now surging military resources 

into Syria in order to beat back rebel advances. 

Russia framed its intervention as a counterterrorism operation and invited others to join Russia 

as it claimed to beat back the forces of Isla mist extremism. Russia desperately sought, 

significantly, to enlist traditional U.S. partners and allies like Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan in its 

efforts. This, we assessed, was Russia attempting to find its back into the international 

community following the isolation that accompanied the invasion of Crimea. It was Russia's way 

of saying to us, "You have your coalition, yes, but we have one as well. We are equal to you and 

deserve to be treated as a peer." 

We also assessed at the time that Russia's intervention in Syria was a response to UN Security 

Council Resolution 1973 and the way in which the United States and its NATO allies used that 

resolution in 2011 to bring about regime change in Libya. This was Russia's way of saying 

"enough." The idea that the international community can band together and replace a regime is 

an idea that frankly scares Putin's Russia- especially following the Arab Spring and the socalled "color revolutions" in the first decade of this century, which are both viewed in Russia as 

having been encouraged if not engineered by the West, and specifically by the United States. 

Russia's surge in Syria coincided with U.S. and coalition military success against the Islamic 

State. Over the course of 2015, we had figured out that a combination of coalition air power 

and motivated proxies on the ground was more than sufficient, when applied from multiple 

directions at the same time, to roll back the Islamic State's territorial gains. Our own military 

gains put us in close proximity to the Russian military and its partners, and we quickly 

determined that we needed to establish channels to prevent any conflicts between our two 

forces. At the Pentagon, my immediate supervisor at the time, Elissa Slatkin (who is now a 

member of this House from Michigan), led those efforts along with our uniformed military 
23 

counterparts, who included the newly confirmed commander of U.S. Central Command, Frank 

McKenzie. 

A diverse group within the administration, including both diplomats and some uniformed 

military officers, wanted to go farther, and given the daily horrors we were witnessing in Syria, 

they asked whether or not we should engage with Russia on ways we might be able to bring the 

conflict to a close. I did not feel at the time, and I do not feel now, that was a wise course of 

action: Russia was operating in a coalition with the Assad Regime, Iran, and Hizballah, and 

among the four of them, Russia was arguably the least influential member of its coalition. I was 

not sure that Russia, even if it reached an accord with us, could bring along its coalition 

partners. (This was in contrast to our own position, where we could very much speak for the 

other nations in our coalition.) 

It was also clear that Russia, although it professed to be engaged in a fight against terrorism, 

was very much concentrating its military efforts on destroying what remained of the secular 

and moderate Isla mist opposition to the Assad Regime. We all knew where the reallslamist 

extremists were in early 2016: eastern Syria, primarily, and those parts of northwest Syria 

where the Nusra Front was particularly strong. Russia, by contrast, was focused on winning 

back those large urban areas like Aleppo and Damascus that were the home to more moderate 

opposition groups. (This was all the more striking to us since it was understood even at the time 

that many of those active in both the Nusra Front and the Islamic State were Russian-speakers 

from either Russia or other states in the former Soviet Union.) 

It was a smart strategy, in some ways: If the Assad Regime and its allies could kill off any secular 

or moderate opposition, the world would be left with a binary choice between the Regime and 

groups like the Nusra Front and the Islamic State. Russia, to my observation, was fully 

supportive ofthis strategy. 
24 

Nonetheless, we gamely met with our Russian counterparts for months of negotiations over the 

course of 2016. My colleagues in the Office of the Secretary and in the Joint Staff attended each 

round of the negotiations to both advise our colleagues from the rest of the government and to 

ensure that no step we proposed violated the very prudent restrictions the Congress had put on 

military coordination with Russia following the invasion of Crimea. 

Over the past several years, I had seen Russia play a larger and larger role in the Middle East. As 

a graduate student studying the region in the first decade of this century, Russia's role in the 

region was something I read about in history books. By the time I returned to the Pentagon, by 

contrast, Russia was playing a more aggressive role in the region, courting our traditional allies 

with promises of unrestricted arms sales- our own arms sales to the region, governed in part 

by the Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2008, cannot endanger Israel's qualitative military edgeand fewer moral concerns than we might voice. I was particularly worried about Russia's 

courtship of the Sisi government in Egypt as well as its relationships with our Gulf partners, with 

whom we share much intelligence and hardware. (I did not have responsibility for North Africa 

beyond Egypt, but in Algeria and Libya too, we also saw a more engaged Russia.) 

Across the negotiating table, meanwhile, we found the Russians to be professional and 

relatively scrupulous. (It's a quirk of Russian bureaucracy that parts of it often lie to other parts, 

so it's quite possible to have a conversation with a Russian who is defending, in good faith, 

actions taken by a military command without knowing the actual truth about what that military 

command did or did not do.) At the same time, though, we were very aware that those on the 

other side of the table were often intelligence officers- members of the GRU, or Main 

Intelligence Directorate- who were as interested in knowing what we knew, and knowing how 

we knew what we knew, as they were in negotiating toward a mutually agreeable political end. 

We thus spent a lot of time being careful about what we said so as to protect sources and 

methods, and the Russians spent a lot of time pressing us for more information- an effort to 

no doubt compromise those same sources and methods. At one point, we were even pressed 

by our leadership to create a means to jointly target suspected terrorist cells with the Russians, 
25 

which gave everyone in my own leadership serious heartburn, and for good reason: The idea 

that certain intelligence might be classified "SECRET II REL RUSSIA" was like something out of a 

bizarre alternate universe for those of us who, like me, still remember sheltering under our 

school desks during atomic bomb drills in the 1980s. 

We also suspected that the Russians were using the negotiations as a stalling tactic to buy time 

for its coalition to complete its military operations to re-take Aleppo and other key terrain. We 

labored, along with our Arab and European partners, to establish temporary ceasefires to allow 

for the evacuation of non-combatants and the delivery of humanitarian aid to those living 

under siege. Russia and its partners would agree to those ceasefires when they were militarily 

convenient, and when they themselves needed time to rest and refit before launching another 

major assault. The Russians correctly assessed that we and our partners were negotiating in 

good faith, and they also correctly assessed that we had strong enough relationships with 

elements of the Syrian opposition that would allow us to bring them along on any agreement. 

They also correctly assessed that some within the administration, and some of our international 

partners, so badly wanted to maintain a diplomatic channel that we would likely overlook many 

violations of ceasefire agreements so long as the Russians continued to return to the 

negotiating table. 

Strategically, I think the Russians were looking for something similar to what they were looking 

for tactically, which is to say they were looking for access: Access to the region, access to our 

partners, and access to us. Russia wanted to be taken seriously by us and by our traditional 

partners, and here again I have to give them some credit: We all laughed when Russia's only 

aircraft carrier, the Kuznetsov, belched its way across the Mediterranean in late 2016, but 

overall, one has to conclude that by operating with limited resources but no holds barred, 

Russia has been successful in Syria. The Assad Regime won the war. Russia may have been 

captive to the whims of its coalition partners at times, but Russia and its coalition partners also 

won, so Russia can share in that victory. We cared about our own priorities, and as a 

consequence, we both helped secure Israel and defeated the Islamic State. Russia, meanwhile, 
26 

cared about protecting its tactical interests and then, once those were secured, announcing 

itself as a new power to be reckoned with in the region writ large. 

The United States spent the years between 2003 and 2016 demonstrating our tactical and 

technological excellence in the region but also demonstrating our strategic inability to secure 

our interests at a reasonable cost. Russia spent the years between 2015 and 2017 

demonstrating its own technological advances to the region but also its ability to secure its 

interests at a reasonable cost if using the most ruthless of means. It's little wonder, then, why 

U.S. partners such as Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia now feel the need to also have close ties to 

Moscow. Russia's message to these traditional U.S. partners is, essentially, "The United States 

cannot be counted upon to back you in weather both fair and foul. We can, and Syria is the 

proof." 

Today, then, we arguably feel Russia's presence in the region more acutely than we have since 

the 1970s. Although today's global epicenter of the oil and gas sector is as much five hours west 

of me in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico as it is in the Persian Gulf, Russia's 

relationship with OPEC is the most important relationship from the perspective of oil 

production. Our president complains on Twitter about the price of oil, but to the degree that 

anyone can actually sets the price, it's Russia and OPEC. 

But this might lead us to a final question: How much should we care, really? In part due to the 

resurgence of our own energy sector, in part due to the astronomical cost of the wars in Iraq 

and Afghanistan, and in part due to the increasing politicization of our relationships with Saudi 

Arabia and Israel, more and more Americans- with this president, perhaps, among thembelieve we no longer have enduring interests in the Middle East beyond preventing terrorists to 

strike the homeland. 
27 

I myself can make a strong our argument that our traditional interests remain our interests 

going forward. But I cannot make an argument that we have secured those interests at a cost 

that I can defend to friends and family back home in Tennessee and Texas. 

Russia doesn't have that problem. And that's the source of its own strength in the region going 

forward. 
28 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you very much, Dr. Exum. 

Ms. Wormuth, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTINE WORMUTH, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY CENTER, SENIOR FELLOW, RAND CORPORATION, FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY 

Ms. WORMUTH. Good afternoon, Chairman Deutch, Ranking 

Member Wilson, members of the committee. Thank you so much for 

offering me the opportunity to be a part of this excellent series of 

hearings. I really commend you for the light that you are shining 

globally on the role of Russia and China. 

China and Russia’s increased engagement in the Middle East in 

recent years underscores that the United States is in a new era of 

strategic competition, one that is taking place at a time when many 

Americans are understandably fatigued with the role of the United 

States as leader and world’s policeman. 

So I wanted to offer a few thoughts as a bigger frame maybe to 

talk about what is at stake at this competition and what are the 

players competing for. For the United States, I think our goal is 

to ensure our continuing prosperity and security in an increasingly 

complicated and contested world. 

Russia, on the other hand, a country with a very strong military 

but a deteriorating economic picture, seeks to preserve its status as 

a great power for as long as it can. China, on the other hand, 

fueled by its tremendous economic strength, is pursuing a longterm strategy aimed at restoring what it sees as its rightful and 

traditional historic place as a world power. 

To prevail in the competition, Russia is basically trying to disrupt the international order, reestablish what it sees as its rightful 

sphere of influence, and to weaken the cohesion of our trans-Atlantic relationship with Europe. China sees the United States as trying to contain its rise and wants to both reestablish its primacy in 

Asia relative to us and also adapt the international order to better 

accommodate its preferences and objectives. 

Looking at Russia and the Middle East specifically, it sees its 

presence there as a way to highlight its status as a great power 

at a time when America’s influence in the region is seen as waning. 

Moscow’s strategy, as my colleagues have said, rests on maintaining good relationships with all of the countries in the region and 

really focusing on maximizing its opportunities while minimizing 

its potential for losses. 

Moscow is deeply concerned about the potential for the spread of 

Islamic extremism to Russia, and in Moscow’s view, the Arab 

Spring, as well as our interventions in the region, have destabilized 

it significantly. Russia presents itself, in contrast to the United 

States, as a reliable partner that will not lecture about human 

rights or societal freedoms but is very interested in trade, investment, and energy with the countries there. 

Sustaining its transactional approach to the relationships in the 

region is getting harder, though, for Russia. While Syria did not 

turn out to be the quagmire that former President Obama and others predicted, Russia’s military involvement there is in its fourth 

year and there is no diplomatic resolution in sight to the conflict. 
29 

While Russia’s involvement in Syria could be seen as at least 

partially successful, it does not appear to have the economic power 

or the appetite, I would argue, for robust expeditionary military operations that would enable it to pursue a more comprehensive approach to the region. 

For China, the Middle East is probably the most important region of the world outside of Asia. China seeks recognition from the 

countries there of its status as a rising power and sees its relationships as an opportunity to balance U.S. influence. 

They appear to be pursuing a strategy grounded in Beijing’s policy of non-interference abroad, also, like Russia, emphasizing positive relationships with everyone there while avoiding becoming entangled in the region’s many conflicts. 

The engine of China’s deepening involving in Middle East is its 

continuous need for energy and its access to economic markets. 

Countries in the region welcome China’s investment, but 5 years 

into the Belt and Road Initiative, there are some emerging signs 

of concern, whether it is about debt sustainability or environmental 

impacts or others. 

While China is an economic heavyweight in the Middle East, it 

is much more a lightweight, frankly, militarily, with really only the 

small military base in Djibouti that the chairman mentioned. 

So before saying a little bit about what this means for U.S. and 

the Middle East specifically, I would like to emphasize that the 

United States needs an overarching vision for success in the strategic competition. We need to develop a comprehensive strategy 

that leverages all of the instruments of our power, whether it is 

economic, diplomatic, military, or cultural. 

Discussions of our competition with Russia and China have really emphasized the military dimension, and that is important. But 

equally, if not more important, is the economic piece. It is figuring 

out how are we going to reinvest in our economic health and our 

educational system, so we can continue to be a world leader in 

technology and innovation. 

Similarly, we need to develop a more comprehensive approach 

with our allies and partners to just thinking about how we are 

going to compete with Russia and China, and we need different approaches. Those competitions are not the same. 

The current administration’s preference for bilateral approaches 

fails to take advantage, I would argue, of one of our biggest 

strengths. I would agree that Russia and China, while they want 

to demonstrate their status as a great power in the Middle East, 

they do not want to displace us entirely. 

We need to emphasize consistency in our approach, emphasize 

that we are not leading. We need to pay attention to the BRI 

projects and address concerns we may have to those projects that 

may have implications for our presence in the region. 

And, finally, I would argue we need to avoid overreach if we are 

going to compete successfully. Almost 20 years of our military operations, many of them in the Middle East, have led to not only the 

deaths of thousands of American military personnel, but they have 

also eroded our standing in the world, and, frankly, created opportunities for Russia and China to make gains at our expense. 
30 

So as we think about any future decisions for use of force in the 

Middle East, I think we need to learn from our experiences in Iraq 

and Libya and Afghanistan and think had about our vital national 

interests. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Wormuth follows:] 
31 

Russia and China in the Middle East 

Implications for the United States in an Era of Strategic 

Competition 

Christine Wormuth 

CT-511 

Testimony presented before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Middle East, North Africa and International Terrorism on 

May9, 2019 
32 

For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CTSII.html 

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33 

Russia and China in the Middle East: Implications for the United States in an Era of Strategic 

Competition 

Testimony of Christine Wormuth' 

The RAND Corporation2 

Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs 

Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and International Terrorism 

United States House of Representatives 

May 9, 2019 

Chairman Deutch, Ranking Member Wilson, and members of the committee, thank you 

for the opportunity to share my observations on Russian and Chinese activity in the 

Middle East and what it means for the United States and our allies and partners in the 

region. 

A New Era of Strategic Competition 

Both China and Russia have significantly increased their engagement in the Middle East in 

recent years. This involvement spans multiple dimensions, including trade and investment, the 

energy sector, military cooperation, and diplomatic activity. China's profile in the Middle East 

has increased substantially in the last ten years, and Russia returned dramatically to the region in 

2015, when it deployed military personnel to Syria to prop up the Assad regime. Increased 

Chinese and Russian engagement in the region underscores that the United States is in a new era 

of strategic competition. This competition is playing out not just in Europe and Asia, hut also in 

Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, and it is happening at a time when many Americans 

are understandably fatigued with the role of the United States as the world's leader and 

policeman. 

What is at stake in this era of strategic competition and what are the players competing for? 

Put simply, the United States' goal is to ensure our continuing economic prosperity and security 

1 The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are the author's alone and should not be interpreted as 

representing those of the RAND Corporation or any of the sponsors of its research. 

' ~ The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make 

communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, 

nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. 
34 

in an increasingly complicated and contested world. Russia, a country with a strong military but 

deteriorating economic prospects, seeks to preserve its status as a great power for as long as it 

can. China, fueled by its tremendous economic strength, is pursuing a long-term strategy aimed 

at restoring what it sees as its rightful and traditional historic position as a world power. 

To prevail in this competition, Russia seeks to disrupt the international order led by the 

United States and Western democracies, reestablish what it sees as its rightful sphere of 

influence in the former countries of the Soviet Union, and weaken the relationship between 

Europe and the United States. China sees the United States as attempting to contain its rise to 

power and wants to both reestablish its primacy in Asia relative to the United States and adapt 

the international order to better accommodate its preferences and goals. To compete successfully, 

the United States needs to have a vibrant, productive economy, to continue to protect and adapt 

the international order that has enabled our success as well as that of others, and to operate in 

coalition with our allies and friends. 

This strategic competition is playing out on the world stage, but the Middle East is an 

important regional theater. It is particularly important for both Russia and China, given its 

strategic location and vast energy resources. Understanding Russian and Chinese goals in the 

region and how they are pursuing these goals can help inform how the United States should 

approach their presence in the Middle East and our own policy choices in the region. 

Russia in the Middle East 

ln201 5, Russia returned to the Middle East with its intervention in the Syrian civil war, 

deploying military personnel outside what Moscow considers its "near abroad" for the first time 

since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia sees engagement with the Middle East as a way to 

reestablish itself as a great power on the world stage at a time when U.S. influence in the region 

is seen to be waning. Like Beijing's plans, Moscow's Middle East strategy relies on maintaining 

good relations with all countries in the region and focuses on maximizing opportunities in the 

region with a minimum of commitment or potential for losses? 

Diplomacy and Economics 

Well before deploying military personnel to Syria, Russia was increasing its engagement in 

the Middle East. ln a region where personal relationships matter greatly, President Vladmir Putin 

invested considerable time visiting countries in the Middle East, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, 

the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and Iran. Russia cases this engagement 

by emphasizing its belief in state sovereignty, as well as its opposition to external interference 

and internal popular uprisings. Moscow is also deeply concerned about the potential for the 

spread of Islamic extremism and terrorism to Russia and its neighboring states. In Moscow's 

view, the events of the Arab Spring, as well as the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya, have 

destabilized the region significantly. 

3 James Sladden, Becca Wasser, Ben C'onnable, and Sarah Grand-Clement, Russian Strategy in the A4iddle East, 

Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, PE-236-RC, 2017, p. I 0. 

2 
35 

Russia presents itself, in contrast to the United States, as a reliable partner for the region that 

will not lecture about human rights or societal freedoms but will help with trade, investment, and 

energy diplomacy. Together, Russia and the Middle East have more than 60 percent of the 

world's proven oil and gas reserves, and they produce 50 percent of the world's oil and almost 

40 percent of its natural gas.4 When Russia and the countries of the Middle East cooperate to 

pursue common interests, there are significant implications for global oil and gas markets. Russia 

and Saudi Arabia have been the primary drivers behind the Organization of the Petroleum 

Exporting Countries (OPEC)+ I arrangement that has effectively set a floor under oil prices. 

Russia is not only a primary exporter of oil and gas, it also exports significant nuclear 

technology to the Middle East, with deals to build nuclear power plants in Iran, Jordan, and 

Egypt and discussions underway with Saudi Arabia, which has an ambitious plan to build 16 

nuclear reactors by 2032. 

Russia's energy diplomacy has enabled it to weather a challenging period in recent years, but 

the longer-term outlook for Moscow is less certain. Working with OPEC countries to increase oil 

prices has helped Russia offset economic losses resulting from Western sanctions. It has also 

generated revenue for Middle Eastern countries; in turn, Middle Eastern countries have used 

some of this revenue to make major Russian weapons purchases and to invest in Russia through 

vehicles like the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Going forward, Russia and Middle Eatcrn 

countries' heavy dependence on oil and gas revenue will be challenged by a range of shifts in the 

energy market, including the potential for aggressive climate change policies aimed at phasing 

out fossil fuel use. 

Military Activity and Arms Sales 

Arms sales are also a central component of Russia's engagement in the Middle East. Fifty 

percent of Russian arms sales go to the Middle East, up from 36 percent in 2015.5 Russia's 

military involvement in Syria not only has enabled Moscow to field test a wide array of new 

weapons and delivery systems, but also has served as a highly visible advertisement for Russian 

equipment. Although U.S. military equipment is seen as the gold standard in the region, 

countries in the Middle East are often frustrated by the foreign policy conditions attached to U.S. 

anns sales and the slowness of the U.S. arms sale process, which includes a requirement to 

protect Israel's qualitative military edge. As a result, Middle Eastern leaders see Russia as a 

highly viable alternative source of armaments. ln 2014, Egypt signed a $3.5 billion deal with 

Russia, and Iraq became the second largest importer of Russian arms after India. Russia has also 

signed deals with the UAE, and both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are reportedly in discussion with 

Moscow to purchase the advanced S-400 anti-aircraft system.6 

4 Nicu Popescu and Stanislav Secrieru, Russia's Return 10 the Middle &lSI: Building Sandcastles? Bmssels: 

European Union Institute for Security Studies, Chaillot Paper No. 146, July 2018, p. 30. 

5 Popescu and Secrieru, 2018, pp. 38-39. 

6 "Russia Is Selling More Weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE," TRT World. February 22, 2019. 

3 
36 

Russia prides itself on being able to talk to and work with every country in the region, but 

sustaining its transactional approach to relationships in the region is growing more challenging, 

given the complexity of the landscape. 

Russia's diplomatic and military involvement with Iran poses challenges and contradictions, 

as Israel and most Arab states in the region view Tehran as the region's primary threat. While 

Syria did not turn out to be the "quagmire" for Russia that former President 13arack Obama and 

others predicted, Russia's military involvement there is in its fourth year, and there is no 

diplomatic resolution to the conflict in sight. Russia partnered with Iran to prop up Assad, protect 

its naval and air bases in Latakia and Tartus. and ensure its power projection into the 

Mediterranean and Middle East, but now Iran is encouraging Assad to resist concessions, a 

position at odds with Moscow. 

In recent years, the Russia-Israel relationship has grown much closer, illustrated by Russia's 

acceptance of Israeli strikes in Syria against llezbollah on more than one occasion. At the same 

time, Russia cooperates with I ran and Hezbollah on the ground, and it provided the advanced S300 antiaircraft system to both Iran and Syria, both moves that Israel strongly opposed. In the 

case of Yemen, Russia has sided with the Gulf states against Iran, with Moscow supporting the 

Gulf Cooperation Council position and calling for a negotiated resolution of the conflict. Russia 

is also largely aligned with Arab states in the region in its approach to Libya, with Moscow 

supp01iing General Khalifa 1-laftar. a secular militia leader and power broker supported by Egypt, 

Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. While Russia manages to work with most countries in the region, its 

approach is highly transactional, which may limit the degree of trust that Middle Eastern leaders 

are willing to invest in these relationships. 

At a time when Russia is under considerable pressure in Europe because of its actions in 

Ukraine, its attacks on individuals outside Russia, and its interference in elections in the United 

States and Europe, Moscow sees the Middle East as a region where it can demonstrate that it 

remains a great power. While Russia's involvement in Syria could be seen as partially 

successful, at least in the ncar term, it does not appear to have the economic power or appetite for 

expeditionary military operations that would enable it to pursue a more comprehensive, longterm approach to the region. 

China in the Middle East 

Outside of the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East is likely the most important region of the world 

for China.7 1n turn. Middle Eastern countries likely see Beijing as the most important world 

capital after Washington because of China's considerable economic power. Connecting China 

through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean and Europe, the Middle East is a strategic location 

for China, a critical source of much-needed energy resources, and an area of expanding 

economic ties. China wants the Middle East to recognize its status as a rising power and sees its 

growing relationships with countries there as an opportunity to balance U.S. influence. 

7 Andrew Scobell and Alireza Nader, China in the Middle East: 7hc WmJ' Dragon, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND 

Corporation, RR-1229-A, 2016, p. 73. 

4 
37 

Driven by its need for reliable access to the region's energy resources to fuel its growth at 

home, China appears to be pursuing a strategy in the Middle East that emphasizes maintaining 

positive relations with all countries in the region and avoiding becoming entangled in the 

region's various conflicts. However, this may become more difficult as China's economic 

presence will likely require ever-greater political involvement. Largely comfortable with the 

authoritarian governance styles of countries in the region, Beijing emphasizes its policy of 

noninterference in the affairs of other countries and does not put conditions on its development 

assistance. 

Energy and Economic Investment 

The engine of China's deepening involvement in the Middle East is its continuous need for 

energy and access to economic markets around the world. China imports half of its oil from the 

Middle East and North Africa and is the top oil customer of both Saudi Arabia and Iran. The 

International Atomic Energy Agency expects China to double its imports from the region by 

2035.8 

China's economic relationship with the Middle East gained a higher profile with the official 

launch of its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. At the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central 

Committee of Communist Party in China, Beijing designated the Middle East a "neighbor'' 

region, which indicates that the Middle East now falls into China's top priority geostrategic zone. 

Most of China's trade and investment in the region involves the Gulf countries, focusing on 

energy, infrastructure construction, investment in nuclear power, new energy sources, 

agriculture, and finance. Beijing's relationships with Saudi Arabia and Iran are particularly 

important, although maintaining productive relations with both of these two countries, who are 

bitter enemies, will likely become increasingly challenging. Iran is a central node in China's Belt 

and Road initiative in the Middle East, illustrated by the growing number of Chinese factories, 

road, rail, and port projects there. 

Egypt, Israel, and Jordan arc important to the Belt and Road effort. The majority of Chinese 

goods going to Europe pass through the Suez Canal, and Beijing is actively expanding the 

cooperative zone around the canal. Jordan joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 

2015, signing deals with China worth $7 billion. Jordan may become a staging point for future 

Chinese investment in Syria if security improves in the latter country. f'inally, Israel is pursuing 

a high-speed rail project with China that will connect Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean to Eilat on 

the Red Sea. 

Countries in the Middle East welcome China's economic investment, but five years into the 

Belt and Road Initiative, there are some emerging signs of concern. Echoing concerns heard in 

Asia, critics are pointing out that the Belt and Road projects often seem to bring greater benefits 

to China than to host countries. In addition to calling on China to hire local workers instead of 

Chinese workers, China's partners and outside observers are also raising questions about debt 

sustainability, environmental impact, corruption and China's overall motives. President Xi 

8 Nicholas Lyall, "Can China Remake its Image in the Middle East?" The Diplomat, March 4, 2019. 

5 
38 

Jinping's muted tone at the recent Belt and Road Forum in Beijing is an acknowledgement of 

these concerns and their potential to undermine China's narrative. 

Diplomacy and Military Activity 

China's diplomatic and military efforts in the Middle East largely serve its economic 

objectives, although Beijing increasingly welcomes its recognition as a global power and sees its 

relationships in the region as counters to U.S. influence. China highlights its principle of 

noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries in its Middle Eastern diplomacy. Wary 

of becoming involved in the region's many conflicts, China seeks to be a friend to all and an 

enemy to none, best exemplified by its significant relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Iran. 

China's ability to remain aloof from the region's conflicts and expand its economic engagement 

simultaneously is enabled by its freeriding on U.S. efforts to ensure security for the region. 

In addition to needing the region's energy resources and welcoming Middle Eastern 

acknowledgment of China as a rising power, China also wants to ensure its security, both inside 

China and along its periphery. The Uighurs, a minority Muslim population that resides largely in 

the western region of Xinjiang, are a particular domestic concern for Beijing. Beijing fears the 

spread ofradicallslamist ideology and looks with concern on reports of Chinese Uighursjoining 

the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Chinese diplomats have worked hard to ensure countries in 

the region avoid criticizing China publicly for its treatment of the Uighur population over the 

years and its establishment of what are now large-scale internment camps in Xinjiang. China 

fears that publicity would inflame an already discontented population and perhaps even inspire 

material support from within the Middle East for the Muslim Uighurs; its efforts to date have 

been largely successful. 

While China is an economic heavyweight in the Middle East, its military presence in the 

Middle East is considerably more modest. China established a small military base in Djibouti in 

2017, strategically located in the Horn of Africa, an important international shipping lane. China 

sent three naval vessels to participate in multilateral counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden 

in 2008, and it remains involved in counterpiracy efforts. Beijing sent 700 peacekeepers to the 

United Nations operation in Sudan in 2012. However, despite expressing concern about terrorism 

and emphasizing counterterrorism as an area of potential cooperation with the United States, 

China resisted calls to join the counter-Islamic State coalition, even through financial suppott 

alone. 

China is unlikely to substantially increase its military presence in the Middle East in the near 

term, but its growing economic profile has brought with it growing security responsibilities.9 

More than 550,000 Chinese now live and work in the Middle East. 1° China has evacuated its 

citizens from countries in the Middle East on multiple occasions in the last several years, 

although these efforts were organized by China's civilian government ministries. When the 

security situation in Libya deteriorated in 2011, Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) air and 

9 See discussion in Scobcll and Nader, 2016, pp. 18--19. 

10 Niu Xinchun, 4

'China's Interest in and Influence Over the Middle East," trans. Haibing Xing, Contemporary 

International Relations, Vol. 24, No. I, January/February 2014, p. 41-42. 

6 
39 

naval units, which happened to be in the area, played a limited role in evacuating 35,000 Chinese 

nationals. Notably, the PLA Navy played a central role in removing 600 Chinese nationals and 

almost 300 foreigners from Yemen in 2015. 11 

Fundamentally, China's strategy in the Middle East is driven by its economic interests. China 

is growing its commercial engagement with countries in the region but does not appear interested 

in substantially deepening its diplomatic or security activities there. Like Russia, China will 

continue to engage with all countries in the region, even as that becomes more challenging 

because of the complex landscape, but it will likely resist being drawn further into the many 

political and military conflicts in the region. 

Implications for the United States 

More important than the U.S. approach to any particular region is the need for the United 

States to have an overarching vision for how it can prevail in a period of strategic competition. In 

this new era of competition, the United States needs at least four key assets. First, we need to 

have a vibrant and productive economy, one in which we are leading in frontier technologies like 

artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology. Second, we need to remain a 

leader in the international order, so that we have a strong say in its institutions, rules, and norms, 

while also working to adapt this order to a changing world. Third, the United States needs to 

invest in its network of allies and partners, working in concert with them to maximize our 

strength and address common challenges. Fourth, we need to preserve our military strength to 

underwrite the other dimensions of our power. 

The United States needs to develop a comprehensive, coherent strategy to prevail in this 

competition that leverages all of the elements of national power-economic; diplomatic; 

military; and cultural, or "soft," power. Discussion of the competition with Russia and China to 

date has focused strongly on the military dimension . While this is important, it is equally, if not 

more, important for the United States to chart how we are going to reinvest in our own economy 

and educational system so that we continue to be a world leader in technology and innovation. 

Similarly, the United States needs to develop a more comprehensive and structured approach to 

working together with our allies and partners around the world to compete with Russia and 

China, whether this involves working together to combat Russian disinformation campaigns and 

election interference or working with partners to incentivize China to pursue its Belt and Road 

Initiative responsibly and transparently. The current administration's preference for bilateral 

approaches fails to take advantage of one of our greatest strengths. 

While both Russia and China want to demonstrate their status as great powers in the Middle 

East, neither Russia or China seems anxious to displace the United States from the region 

completely. The Middle East is a complicated place, and all three nations will struggle at times to 

navigate the landscape successfully. The United States should make clear it is not leaving the 

11 Andrew Scobell and Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, "The Flag Lags but Follows: The PLA and China's Great 

Leap Outward." in Philip C. Saunders, ArthurS. Ding, Andrew Scobcll, Andrew N.D. Yang, and Joel Wuthnow, 

eds., Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA; Assessing China's Militmy Reforms, Washington, D.C.: National Defense 

University Press, 2019, pp. 189-190. 

7 
40 

region and emphasize consistency in its approach, which may encourage leaders in the Middle 

East to reduce the amount of hedging they pursue with Moscow and Beijing. At a time when the 

United States should be complementing its defense cooperation with our allies and partners in 

the region with development assistance to help with much-needed economic development. 

stabilization, reconstruction and refugee challenges, dramatically reducing the State 

Department's budget for many Middle Eastern countries seems unwise. In the economic sphere, 

China's economic attractiveness has a momentum of its own, in the Middle East and beyond. 

Washington should monitor China's Belt and Road Initiative efforts in the region closely and be 

alett to infrastructure projects that may have negative security implications for U.S. presence in 

the region. More broadly, the United States should focus on working with allies and partners to 

incentivize China to operate within international norms for trade and investment, supporting it 

when it does and applying joint pressure when it does not. Some of our most important partners 

in this endeavor are in Europe, as this is the ultimate destination of China's trade routes. 12 

Finally, the United States needs to avoid overreach to be able to compete successfully in the 

future. Almost 20 years of military operations, many of them in the Middle East, have led to the 

deaths of thousands of American military personnel but have also drained our economy, 

undermined our ability to focus on pressing domestic needs, eroded our standing in the world 

and created opportunities for Russia and China to make gains at our expense. Learning from our 

experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere, the United States needs to focus tightly 

on its vital national interests in the Middle East and weigh any decisions about use of force fully 

and carefully. 

12 See James Dobbins, Howard J. Shatz and Ali Wynne, Russia is a Rogue Not a Peer; China is a Peer. 1\'ot a 

Rogue, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2018; an\f Douglas Lute and Nicholas Bums, NATO at Seventy: 

An Alliance in Crisis, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Kennedy School, February 2019. 

8 
41 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Ms. Wormuth. 

Ms. Borshchevskaya, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF ANNA BORSHCHEVSKAYA, SENIOR FELLOW, 

WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY 

Ms. BORSHCHEVSKAYA. Thank you. Chairman Deutch, Ranking 

Member Wilson, honorable members, thank you for the opportunity 

to testify today. 

In my written testimony, I have gone into detail about Russian 

President Vladimir Putin’s strategic objectives in the Middle East 

and North Africa, how those work against our own national security interest, and to that end, I touched very briefly on China. 

For the sake of brevity, let me summarize. Vladimir Putin ensured Russia’s long-term prominence in the Middle East and North 

Africa. Washington must now take Moscow into account in the region to a degree it has not had to for years. 

The Kremlin is primarily concerned with its own survival, which 

it views as intrinsically connected to its relationship with the 

United States, and, more broadly, the West. 

In a zero sum search for great power status, for Putin to win, the 

U.S. has to lose. And Putin needs victories, especially given the trajectory of Russia’s domestic politics. 

A long-term military presence on the Mediterranean appears to 

be a critical component of Moscow’s goal to deter the West. Thus, 

in Syria, from the very beginning, Moscow’s actions showed it 

sought to create—to methodically create an anti-access/area denial, 

so-called A2/AD layout, to deter the West. This position provides 

Moscow with greater leverage over NATO’s southern flank and creates a springboard for further activities. 

Moscow benefits from low level conflict in the region and has an 

interest in perpetuating it. This situation creates—necessitates 

Moscow’s presence, elevates its importance, creates opportunities to 

sell weapons to all sides, and gain leverage over all players to create dependence on the Kremlin. Thus, Moscow manages conflict 

but does not bring a genuine resolution. 

It is, thus, wishful thinking that Moscow, for example, will restrain Iran in the region. In this context, Moscow’s approach to the 

region is flexible to ensure position of a power broker. The Kremlin 

courts every major player in the region and increasingly they court 

Moscow. 

American allies from Egypt to Turkey, Israel, the GCC, and Morocco, to one degree or another, have come to see Putin as a necessary reality, a mediator who can talk to all sides, and offer a 

more reliable partner than the United States. 

Key areas of cooperation are political, military, economic, including energy, diplomatic, and soft power-focused. Not only does Turkey continue the discussion about the purchase of the S–400 from 

Russia, a purchase that appears to reflect reality rather than mere 

posturing, but Russia is also building Turkey’s nuclear power plant 

while Sputnik plays an important role in Russian information operations in the country. 

Moscow has managed to pull Egypt closer into its orbit through 

arms, nuclear energy, and economic deals. Russia also entered 

agreements with Morocco that include cooperation on nuclear en-
42 

ergy. Moscow projects power without incurring significant costs as 

it continues to improve Russia’s military capabilities, boost arms 

sales to the region, and develop economic ties in the energy and 

other sectors. Meanwhile, Washington’s overall commitment to the 

region remains ambiguous. 

To touch very briefly on China, Beijing’s involvement in the Middle East thus far has been primarily economic. The Russia-China 

dynamic is complex, but specifically in the Middle East Beijing has 

sided with Russia and also seemed happy to have Moscow take the 

lead in the region. 

China’s involvement holds major strategic implications for the 

Middle East, but so far Moscow has not—Beijing has not expressed 

a desire to be a power broker or a security provider there. 

I made a number of policy recommendations in my testimony, 

which I would like to summarize. First, compete for the region. 

What happens in the Middle East rarely stays in the Middle East. 

We increasingly talk of realignment toward great power competition, but in this context the overall retreat from the region that 

began under the Obama Administration continues. 

This situation makes it easier for our adversaries to step in, and, 

indeed, this is what Putin has done. 

Second, we need to craft a clear strategy of dealing with Russia. 

Sanctions alone are no substitute for policy. And to be sure, they 

are an important tool and we should keep utilizing it. But as part 

of a broader strategic vision that involves multiple tools. 

To that end, we also have to promote a clear narrative. Moscow 

has much appeal in the region. Putin’s world view that runs 

counter to democratic value resonates in the Middle East. The U.S. 

has yet to counter it effectively, especially in the context of our own 

internal polarization and self-doubt. 

Last, we have to remember that there are no quick and easy 

fixes. But with strategic and moral clarity, the U.S. can reclaim its 

leadership position and succeed in the unfolding great power competition. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Borshchevskaya follows:] 
43 

Moscow in the Middle East and North Africa 

Anna Borshchevskaya 

Senior Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy 

Testimony submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, 

North Africa, and International Terrorism 

May9,2019 

Chairman Deutch, Ranking Member Wilson, Honorable Members, thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding Russian influence in the Middle East and North Africa. I will address Moscow's overall strategic objectives and regional activities, describe how they hurt U.S. 

interests by sowing instability, and address what the United States could do to limit the Kremlin's influence. To end, I will touch very briefly on China. 

With a combination of aggression and diplomacy, Russian president Vladimir Putin has ensured 

Russia's long-term prominence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Washington must 

now take Moscow into account in the region to a degree it hasn't had to for years. 

Moscow's September 2015 military intervention in Syria was a game changer, but it's important 

to remember that, prior to the intervention, Putin had worked methodically and consistently for 

at least fifteen years to return Russia to the Middle East-a region that has historically mattered 

to Russian rulers. While he had achieved considerable influence by as early as 2010, the Syria 

intervention officially restored Russia's place as a critical regional player and helped position 

Putin as a regional powerbroker. 

Moscow courts every major player in the region. Access to the Mediterranean gives the Kremlin 

greater leverage over NATO's southern flank (a long-time Kremlin aspiration), and opportunities to push further into the region and south into Africa. Putin demonstrated a commitment to 

his partners, all the while expanding ties, formal and informal. In spite of its economic weaknesses, Moscow has staying power in the region. It projects power without incurring significant 

costs as it continues to improve Russia's military capabilities, boost arms sales to the region, and 

develop economic ties in energy and other sectors. Meanwhile, Washington's overall commitment to the region remains ambiguous. 

MOSCOW'S GOALS AND WHY THEY UNDERMINE U.S. INTERESTS 

The Kremlin, driven by anti-Americanism, is primarily concerned with its ovm survival, which it 

views as intrinsically connected to its relationship v.'ith the United States, and more broadly with 

the West, in its search for great power status. 

Putin has multiple goals in the Middle East, but fundamentally, his Syria intervention was about 

challenging the U.S.-Ied global order. Kremlin activities across the region share the same aim: to 
44 

undermine the United States and bolster Moscow's position in the region by deterring the West. 

Indeed, the Kremlin believes it is under attack from the West.' The Kremlin sees the hand of the 

West behind anti-regime protests such as the color revolutions, the Arab Spring, and protests 

within Russia itself. 

Moscow seeks to expand political, economic, and cultural ties in the region as it positions itself 

as a regional powerbroker and covets a position of its arms supplies of choice." Fundamentally, 

Moscow's approach is asymmetric. It understands it cannot match the West in resources and 

knows it doesn't have to. It aims to expend few resources and get high return for low investment, 

as it often resorts to indirect methods such as electronic warfare and use of private contractors 

for plausible deniability. 

BENEFITS FROM INSTABILITY 

For all of the Russian officials' talk about the need for stability in the Middle East, Moscow's efforts at peacemaking are aimed at projecting great power status, but not taking on the responsibility this role entails. Russia has no resources to invest in long-term stabilization, nor does it 

possess the ability to bring about genuine reconciliation between conflicting parties. But Moscow can live with low-level conflict in the region as it puts Moscow in a position of manager. It 

necessitates Moscow's presence, elevates its importance, and affords opportunities to gain leverage over all players and foster dependence to the Kremlin-but not to achieve a genuine resolution. This situation echoes frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space that Moscow created in the 

first place and has no interest to resolve. 

Arms sales have long been a critical component in the Russian foreign policy toolkit. To give 

some recent examples, at a meeting of the Commission for Military Technology Cooperation 

with Foreign States in July 2012, Putin said, "We see active military-technical cooperation 

as an effective instrument for advancing our national interests, both political and economic."3 In 

December 2013, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin said more bluntly that the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, which leads the country's arms sales abroad, is 

Russia's "second foreign policy agency."4 Arms sales tie with Moscow's interests in the Middle 

East and how Russia benefits from instability. Sergei Chemezov, chief of the powerful stateovmed industrial holding conglomerate, Rostec (under U.S. sanctions) said in February 2015, 

"As for the conflict situation in the Middle East, I do not conceal it, and everyone understands 

this, the more conflicts there are, the more they [clients] buy weapons from us."s 

Beyond arms sales, Syria is the most visible example of Moscow's overall destabilizing influence. 

By saving and empowering Syrian dictator Bashar ai-Assad, the Syrian conflict continued to take 

innocent lives and sew regional instability through terrorism and refugee t1ows that affected not 

only the Middle East and North Africa but also Europe. Iran continued to grow emboldened. 

• Stephen Blank, Moscow's Competitive Strategy, ,July 2018 https:/ fwww.lexingtoninstitutc.orgfwp-content/uploads/2018/07 /7.25.18-Moscows-Compctitive-Strategy.pdf 

'Indeed, for years, Moscow's arms sales have been second only to the United States, and in recent years, 

the MENA region has emerged as the second most important for Russian weaponry after Asia 

Anna Borshchevskaya, "The Tactical Side of Russia's Arms Sales to the Middle East," Jamestovm, December 20, 2018 https:/ fjamestown.orgjprogram/tactical-side-russias-arms-sales-middle-east/ 3 President of Russia, "Meeting of the Commission for Military Technology Cooperation with Foreign 

States," Kremlin.m, 2 July 2012, http:/ /en.kremlin.mfeventsfpresidentfnews/1S86s. 4 ('Poro3HH: <I>CBTC ceroAHR 5IBJHieTC51 BTOphiM BHeumenoJIHTH'IeCKHM ne~oMCTBOM," RlA Novosti, 11 December 2013, https:/ /ria.ru/defense_safety/20l31211/983472868.html s 'Tnasa "Pocrexa" coo6uv-ur o pocTe npo~a)f<: <l..JeM 6oJibllie KOH<f>JIHKTOB, TeM 60Jibllle y Hac rroKynmoT 

soopylKeHw~'" Newsru.com, Febmary 23, 2015 http://www.newsnhcQI!1}.11!'>~illL2~eb2015ichemezov.html. 
45 

Moreover, Syria brought Russia's partnership with Iran to unprecedented heights. Distrust undercuts their relationship, but mutual opposition to the United States in the region and the pursuit of trade keep Iran interested in working with Russia. The fact of the matter is that the latter 

two countries' governments have not been so close in the last 500 ycars.6 It is therefore wishful 

thinking that Moscow has any ability or desire to restrain Iran in any meaningful way. 

Meanwhile, Moscow's efforts in the Astana talks produced no tangible results with regard to 

achieving peace. Yet these efforts elevated Moscow's image as a powerbroker while marginalizing the Geneva peace talks and the genuine anti-Assad Syrian opposition. Recall that A%ad's regime has been responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in Syria and encouraged radicalization in the first place. 

Another example is Lebanon. Last July, Moscow launched an initiative with Lebanon to repatriate Syrian refugees. The agreement reportedly included facilitating conditions for their return to 

Syria, and a small token number began to return. However, reports suggest that Syrian authorities have been ignoring Russia's safety guarantees, even killing or detaining many returnees. As 

I have written with my colleague Hanin Ghaddar, the slow repatriation pace allows Russian officials to consolidate ties with Beirut, gain diplomatic leverage, and keep pressing for further involvement. Most importantly, a genuine resolution to the refugee issue is nowhere in sight. 7 

A possibility of war between Israel and Hezbollah has grown in recent years. Should that happen, Moscow would aim to position itself as the arbiter that prevents each side from doing too 

much damage to the other and, as Dmitry Adamsky wrote, possibly come out the winner. 8 It is 

doubtful that Moscow has any interest in such conflict escalation, but this situation shows how 

Moscow positioned itself to potentially benefit even when conflict can escalate beyond the 

Kremlin's comfort leveL 

In Libya, Moscow had always seemed to favor Haftar somewhat, but has built contacts with all 

major players on the ground.9 As tensions continue to escalate there, Moscow is well-positioned 

to play a mediator role, especially when the United States is absent, or appears to side with Russia. w The Kremlin has been careful and holds its cards close when it comes to its ultimate intentions in Libya, but Russia's presence in the country is real: it has a number of strategic interests 

there, such as energy and port access, and its track record is less than encouraging when it 

comes to genuine stabilization. 

A2AD STRATEGY AND WARM WATER PORTS 

The weaponry and equipment that Moscow brought into the Syrian theater from the very beginning signaled a clear intent for a long-term presence, while Russian operations suggested a 

strategy to deter the West and protect Assad and Russian assets, rather than consistently fight 

6 Michael Rubin, "Iran-Russia Relations," July 12016, Operational Environment Watch, 

http:/ fwww.aei.orgfpublication/iran-russia-relations/ 7 Anna Borshchevskaya and Hanin Ghaddar, "How to Read Lebanon's Acceptance of Russian Military 

Aid," The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, December 7, 2018 https:/ /www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/viewfhow-to-read-lebanons-acceptance-of-russian-military-aid 

8 Dmitry (Dima) Adam sky, "Russia and the Next Lebanon War," Foreign Affairs, https:/ /www.foreignaffairs.comfarticlesfisrael/2017-10-o6/russia-and-next-lebanon-war 

9 Anna Borshchevskaya, "After Syria, Putin's next move could be Libya," The Hill, February 13, 2017 

https:/ /thehill.com/hlogs/pundits-blog/international/319272-after-syria-libya-could-be-putins-next- move 

Anna Borshchevskaya, "Russia's Growing Influence in North Africa," Atlantic Community, February 26, 

2019 https:/ /atlantic-community.org/russias-growing-influence-in-north-africa/ 

wMichelle Nichols, "U.S., Russia say cannot support a U.N. call for Libya truce: diplomats," Reuters, 

April18, 2019 https:/ jwww.reuters.comfarticlejus-libya-sccurity-un/us-russia-say-canuot-support-a-uncall-for-libya-tmce-diplomats-idUSKCN1RU2ML 
46 

the Islamic State, as was Putin's proclaimed reason for going into Syria. 

Moscow's actions showed it sought to methodically create an antiaccess/area-denial (A2AD) layout. Thus, Moscow deployed advanced weaponry such as the Pantsir short-range air defense 

system and the Almaz-Antey S-400 high-altitude surface-to-air missile (SAM) system to the 

Khmeimim airbase and later to the northwestern city of Masyaf, along with the KRET KrasukhaS4 ground-based electronic warfare system. It has also deployed the K-300P Bastion P coastal 

defense missile and the 9K720 Iskander ballistic missile system. Moscow's control of Syrian airspace complicates the U.S. ability to maneuver and makes Israel's freedom of action dependent 

on the Kremlin. 

Moreover, a January 2017 agreement with Damascus expanded Russian naval facility in Tartus, 

allowed Russian ships access to Syrian ports and waters for at least the next 49 years, and gave 

Moscow rights to use the Khmcimim airbase indcfinitely.u A long-term military presence on the 

Mediterranean appears to be a critical component of Moscow's goal to deter the West and 

weaken NATO. Indeed, Crimea increasingly plays an important role in Moscow's plans for Syria, 

from building connections between their ports, to a wide range of commercial ties, including energy and phosphates.12 

As Russian military expert Roger McDermott writes, the Krasukha-S4 deployment also mattered 

with regard to field-testing the system in operational conditions.'3 Indeed, McDermott writes 

that, since 2009, Moscow has consistently invested in modernizing its electronic warfare capabilities, "ith the overall aim of asymmetrically challenging NATO on Russia's periphery "and 

maximiz[ing] its chances of success in any operation against NATO's eastern members." Moscow's most recent and controversial transfer-of the S-300 to the Syrian Arab Army'4-sent a 

political message: an assertion of Russia's regional dominance. The S-300 also fits within the 

overall A2AD strategy and potentially gives Moscow more leverage over the West and its allies. 

Russia's maritime and naval doctrines meanwhile set the goal of expanding Russian naval capacities from regional to global blue water.'s At best, these ideas are years away from becoming a 

reality but aspirations matter. More to the point, Moscow continues its long-sought port access 

(rather than investment in building new ports) in the MENA region on the Mediterranean beyond Syria where it now has a long-term presence, along with greater deployment capabilities in 

the Black Sea and the Caspian. 

To elate, Moscow has achieved partial success with its overall A2AD layout. The United States 

and its allies are still able to operate, bnt Moscow's presence complicates these operations. In 

addition, Moscow boosted Russia's arms sales by using Syria as a testing and advertising arena 

n Reuters, "Russia establishing permanent presence at its Syrian bases: RIA," December 26,2017 

https:/ /www.reuters.comjarticlefus-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-bases/russia-establishing-permanentpresencc-at-its-syrian-bases-ria-idUSKBN1EKoiiD 

"Ridvan Bari Urcosta, "Russian Proxy Diplomacy in Syria: Crimea and Sevastopol," Jamestown,April24, 

2019, https:/ /jamestown.orgfprogramfrussian-proxy-diplomacy-in-syria-crimea-and-sevastopol/ 

'"Roger N. McDermott, Russia's Electronic Warfare Capabilities to 2025: Challenging NATO in the Electromagnetic Spectrum (Estonia: International Center for Defense and Security, 2017), 

https:/ /icds.ee/wp-content/uploads/2018/ICDS_Report_Russias_Electronic_ Warfare_to_2025.pdf; 

Roger McDermott, "Russia's Network-Centric Warfare Capability: Tried and Tested in Syria," Eurasia 

Daily Monitor 15, no. 154 (October 30, 2018), https:/ /jamestown.org/program/russias-network-centricwarfare-capability-tried-and-tested-in-syria/. 

'4 Roger McDermott "Moscow's S-300 Double Bluff in Syria," Eurasia Daily Monitor 15, no. 142 (October 

10, 2018), https:/ /jamestown.org/programjmoscows-S-300-double-bluff-in-syria/. 

!5 YKa3 npe3HI\CHTa Poccwi1CKOi1 <llel\epa!j>Hl OT 20.07.2017 N2 327 "06 YTBCP)!(IIeHim OCHOB 

rocy/l,apcrneHHOH noJIHTHKH PoccuHcKoM <Pe;\epaQI-tH B o6naCTH noeHHO-MopcKoH ,n;esneJibHOCTH Ha 

nep>!OA .1\0 2030 ro,lla" http:/ /publication.pravo.gov.ru/DocumentjViewj000120170720001S?index=o&rangeSize=1 
47 

for its weaponry, and improved military capabilities by providing live combat training for its 

military. More to the point, Moscow's activities demonstrate consistent commitment to deter the 

West and project influence across the Mediterranean. Russia's long-term military presence in 

Syria puts it in a good position to collect intelligence on the U.S. coalition, Israel, and the rest of 

the region. Appetite comes with eating, and the Syria intervention created additional opportunities Moscow likely had not planned for from the beginning. Syria and Moscow's overall position 

created a springboard to project power into the rest of the region. 

INROADS BEYOND SYRIA 

Putin has developed pragmatic ties with every government and major opposition movement in 

the region-an approach that has proven more successful than the Soviet Union's ideological 

blinkering.16 Moreover, Putin offers a clear narrative that finds much resonance in the region 

dominated by rulers who tend to eschew democratic values. 

The region's leaders feel comfortable dealing with Putin, who appeals to their self-interest. They 

covet Russian weaponry and hedge their bets in the uncertainty of U.S. policy. Moscow doesn't 

ask Middle East leaders to improve the human rights situation in their countries. And Middle 

East officials do not wony about a Russian equivalent of a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or 

Leahy vetting on training and military purchases when dealing with Moscow. 

American allies in the region, from Egypt, Turkey, Israel, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 

and Morocco, to one degree or another, have come to see Putin as a necessary reality and a more 

reliable partner than the United States-a mediator who can talk to all sides. Many in the region 

have come to respect Putin, even if some did so begrudgingly. Key areas of cooperation are political, diplomatic, and soft power-focused. Other key areas are military, energy, and economic cooperation. 

Not only has the Kremlin courted eve1y major government and opposition movement in theregion, but increasingly, they conversely court the Kremlin. Senior regional leaders routinely pay 

their respects to Putin in Moscow. To give a few examples, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made more trips to Moscow than to Washington during both Obama's and Trump's 

presidencies. Israel has broadened its outreach to Russia, even as the Jewish state retains the 

United States as its number one ally. Israel has come to accept Russia on its doorstep as a necessary reality it can do little about. Netanyahu hoped that through engagement with Putin, Russia 

would ensure Israel's freedom of action, even as Russia held control of SyTian airspace. And indeed, Israel has been able to continue with airstrikes in Syria after Moscow entered the Syrian 

theater. Iran presents an existential threat to Israel, and many Israelis hope that through developing good relations with Putin, Moscow would curb Iranian ambitions. 

Saudi Arabian King Salman made a historic visit to Moscow in October 2017, which demonstrates Moscow's accepted prominence in the region. Riyadh too hopes that through engagement and investments in Russia it can distance Moscow from Iran. Overall, the region perceives 

Moscow as critical when it comes to a peace settlement in Syria. 

Turkey has long since come around to Putin's position on Assad, partly because of Erdogan's 

anti-Western sentiment but also out of fear of Kurdish nationalism. This latter concern, of 

course, is ironic given Moscow's long-standing ties to the Kurds that predate the Soviet Union 

'

6 Mark Katz, "Moscow and the Middle East: Repeat Performance?" Russia in Global Affairs, October 7, 

2012, http:// eng.globalaffairs.rujnum ber /Moscow-and -the-Middle-East-Repeat-Performance-15690 

0. Freedman, Robert. (2018). From Khrushchev and Brezhnev to Putin: Has Moscow's Policy in the Middle East Come Full Circle? Contemporary Review of the Middle East. s. 234779891876219. 

10.1177/2347798918762197· 
48 

but is illustrative of how many regional states give Russia a free pass on past Russian actions. 

In 2016 Morocco's King Mohammed VI came to Moscow for the first time since 2002. Rabat's 

policy may have been motivated by Moroccan frustration perceived sympathy from both the 

Obama and Trump administrations toward the Polisario Front's position with regard to both the 

human rights monitoring component of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara 

(MINURSO) as well as a lack of enthusiasm for Morocco's position on the Western Sahara. Ultimately, the Polisario Front's role as a Soviet Cold War proxy is an ironic twist but has not been 

an insurmountable obstacle in Moscow's outreach to Rabat. 

Arms and nuclear deals play an important role in Egypt's increasingly closer ties to Russia. Putin 

has managed to pull Cairo closer to its orbit through arms, nuclear energy, and economic deals. 

In September 2016, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu described Egypt as Russia's most 

important partner in North Africa.'? 

Moscow is also building Turkey's nuclear power plant. Erdogan's ongoing discussion about the 

purchase of S-400's from Moscow would have been unthinkable even a decade ago but increasingly appears to reflect reality rather than mere posturing. Should this sale go through, it would 

have major implications for U.S.-Turkey relations and Turkey's relationship with NATO. 

Morocco has grown closer to Russia in terms of Moscow's support for Morocco's nuclear energy. •8 In Iraq, Putin has made relatively few inroads since No uri ai-Maliki's premiership, but 

has had more success with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) through Rosneft's Spring 

2018 agreement to construct a gas pipeline to Turkey. In general, the perception of Russia as a 

more reliable ally than the United States permeates the thinking of many in Kurdistan. Moscow 

has also been solidifYing its role in OPEC. 

Economic outreach and soft power also play an important element in Moscow's regional activities. Russian tourists make a highly significant contribution to the Egyptian economy and the 

two countries now have signed an industrial free trade zone. Though its primary purpose is 

likely political, the economic dimension is worth mentioning. Erdogan also understands Putin's 

leverage in this regard: Russia can always turn the flow of Russian tourists on and off, which 

would be critical to Turkey's economy. Indeed, Turkey is falling deeper into Putin's sphere of influence, and the ongoing S-400 discussion is only part of the story, albeit an important one. The 

Gulf is increasing its investments in Russia, and more broadly, the financial aspect is a critical 

aspect of Moscow's approach to the Gu]f.19 

Moscow's large Sunni majority is also possibly related to Riyadh's outreach to Moscow, whose 

own Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has been a useful tool in courting the region and presenting Russia as a country that understands Muslims and Islam better than the United 

States."" His messaging appears to have resonance despite Russia's continued mistreatment of 

'7 "Defense Ministers of Russia and Egypt held the III session of the joint Russian -Egyptian military cooperation commission," September 5, 2016, http:/ feng.mil.ru/enfnews_pagefcountryjmore.htm?id=1209475l@egNews 

•S "Russia and Morocco sign agreements to inaugurate military and security cooperation," Middle East 

Monitor, October 12, 2017 https:f fwww.middleeastmonitor.com/20171012-russia-and-morocco-signagreements-to-inaugurate-military-and-security-cooperation/ 

"Morocco and Russia to Sign Nuclear Deal," The North Africa Post, Oetober 5, 2018. http:/ fnorthafricapost.com/25700-morocco-russia-to-sign-nuclcar-deal.html 

'9 Theodore Karasik, "Russia's Finaneial Tactics in the Middle East," Jamestown, December 20, 2017. 

https:/ fiamestown.org/programfrussias-financial-tactics-middle-east/ 20 Anna Borshchevskaya, "While Mo Salah Sleeps in Grozny," The Moscow Times, June 12, 2018 

https:/ jwww.themoscowlimes.comj2o18jo6j12/while-mo-salah-sleeps-in-grozny-op-ed-a61765 
49 

its Muslim minority. Russians sometimes point out that their country's officials, unlike American ones, make the Hajj. 

Lastly, Russian propaganda outlets in Arabic, mainly RT and Sputnik, play an important and often unnoticed role in the region as part of Russia's broader soft power efforts. RT and Sputnik 

also increasingly partner with local media outlets to enhance their legitimacy. 2 ' Moscow's efforts mainly target social media and the region's large youth bulge-and these efforts seem to be 

paying off. A most recent Arab Youth Survey found that 64 percent of young Arabs see Russia as 

an ally, while only 41 say the same about the U.S. Moreover, the perception of the U.S. as the enemy has nearly doubled since 2016. 22 

Many point to Russia's declining economy. Yet this decline can stumble on for years and will not 

prevent Russia from pursuing its objectives because the Kremlin is conscious of the dangers of 

overextending. Moreover, Russian weakness can necessitate Putin to pursue further aggression. 

The Russian military meanwhile has reformed since 2008; its improvements are real and significant. Nor have sanctions alone compelled Putin to change behavior. 

Moscow cannot replace the United States, but it is not seeking that role. It has no resources to 

that end, nor a desire to take on the responsibility. Russia does not need to replace the United 

States to do serious damage to U.S. interests; it is often enough to be present when the United 

States is absent or ambivalent. Putin's plans may not always pan themselves out, but until this 

situation changes, Moscow will continue to 'vield influence in the region to the detriment of its 

peace and stability, which can only undermine U.S. interests. 

CHINA 

China's involvement in the Middle East has been primarily economic so far, with a military and 

political component. China imports approximately half of its oil from the region, which is also 

major destination for Chinese investments. China's demand for the region's energy will only 

grow. Beijing has established a military base in Djibouti, is participating in Arabian Sea anti-piracy efforts, and by some account is interested in leveraging political and security advantages 

out of the major infrastructure projects it funds across the region as part of its ambitious Belt 

and Road Initiative. Indeed, last year, China promised the region $23 billion in a package of 

loans, aid, and development funding. China funded the Duqm port in Oman and invested in facilities that could provide Beijing v.~th leverage. For instance, the Shanghai International Port 

Group (SIPG), whose majority stake owner is the Chinese government, is set to construct and 

manage the civilian port in Haifa, Israel. Other Chinese companies have signed memorandums 

of understanding with Iran on railway construction and modernization. 

Moscow and Beijing are increasingly working together. These authoritarian regimes share a perceived threat to themselves from the U.S.-Ied global order and, in this context, call for a multipolar world. Putin and Chinese president Xi .Jinping have developed a close personal relationship. 

"II. Akin Unver, "Russia Has Won the Information War in Turkey," Foreign Policy, April21, 2019 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2o1o/o4/21/russia-has-won-the-information-war-in-turkey-rt-sputnik-putinerdogan-disinfonnation/ 

"Sputnik, UAE Official NewsAgencyWam Sign a Memorandum of Understanding," Sputnik, March 21, 

2019 

https://sputniknews.com/agency news/201903211073424082-sputnik-uae-news-agency-memorandum/ 

Anna Borshchevskaya and Catherine Cleveland, "Russia's Arabic Propaganda: What It Is, Why It Matters," Policy Note, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, December 2018 https:j jwww.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/viewjmssias-arabic-propaganda-what-it-is-why-it-matters 

"ASDA'A, Arab Youth Survey, A Call for Reform, The nth Annual ASDA'A Yourth Survey 2019, pp. 31 

and 33. https://www.arabvouthsurvey.com/pdf/downloadwhitepaper/download-whitepaper.pdf 
50 

As early as October 2015, days after Moscow's Syria intervention, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said, "Our cooperation and coordination [with China] in the international arena are 

one of the most important stabilizing factors in the world system. We regularly coordinate our 

approaches to various conflicts, whether it is in the Middle East, North Africa, or the Korean 

peninsula." 2 3 Three years later, Putin described the relationship as a "privileged strategic partnership.""" 

In the Middle East, China has sided with Russia politically on Syria and other issues, and also 

has appeared comfortable with Moscow taking the overall lead in this region. Beijing's economic 

sway holds major strategic implications for the Middle East, though China has yet to express a 

desire to be a powerbroker or a security provider there-aspects that in the Middle East, as Steven Cook observed, matter more than economic strength alone when it comes to great power 

status. 2s 

Beyond the Middle East, the Russia-China dynamic is more complex. Beijing appears less interested in Moscow's outright direct hostility to the United States. Despite the shared disdain for its 

global primacy, perhaps China benefits more than Russia from this situation. In addition, Moscow often has to adjust to China but not the other way around. And by some accounts, Russia is 

turning into a raw materials supplier to China and a 'junior partner'26-a long-held Russian fear. 

It is difficult to image Moscow happy in a junior partner role to anyone, yet it is also hard to imagine Putin, who prioritizes anti-Americanism, to move closer to the West to challenge China. 

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS 

As Washington increasingly realigns towards great power competition, it should embrace a 

strategy that includes the following: 

Compete for the Middle East. The current and previous U.S. administrations, unlike 

the Kremlin, have yet to engage in competition in the Middle East and Nmth Africa. 

However, this region is strategically vital. It straddles Europe, Asia, and Africa. What 

happens in the Middle East rarely stays in the Middle East. This region will continue to 

matter due to issues such as refugee flows and terrorism. Some may view engagement as 

a distraction from the broader great power competition, but allowing Russia to gain a 

deeper foothold in the Middle East will only hurt U.S. interests in this regard. Moscow's 

ambition may outweigh its resources, but Western resources diminish in importance 

when the West has little interest in utilizing them. The United States must demonstrate a 

credible and consistent commitment to the region, to both our allies and adversaries. 

Don't substitute sanctions for strategy. The U.S. National Security Council clearly 

names Russia (along with China) as top adversaries, but we have yet to craft a comprehensive strategy to counter Russia. Sanctions have caused pain but fundamentally have 

23 Embassy of the Russian Federation to the Republic of India, "Press release on Sergey La,~·ov's press 

conference follov.<ing Russia's Presidency of the UN Security Council," October 5, 2015 http://tusembindia.comjhomejforeign-policy-news/138-foreign-policy-news/7540-press-release-on-sergey-lavrov-spress-conference-following-russia-s-presidency-of-the-un-security-council 

2 4 "Hyn·m: CBH3H Poccm1 H KHTaH pa3BHBaiOTC.H nrre~taT;unou~HMH TeMnaMH,'' Regnum, November 15, 2018 

https://regnum.m/news/polit/2519794.html 

os Steven A. Cook, "The Middle East Doesn't Take China Seriously," Foreign Policy, September 13, 2018 

https: //foreign policy .com/ 2018/09 I 13/the-middle-east -doesnt-take-china-seriously I ' 6 Georgy Kunadze, "PocCHll KHTail: ropH30HTbl COTPY/1HH'!CCTBa," Echo Moskvy, April30, 2019. 

https: I /echo.msk.ru /blog/kunadze/2417225-echo/?fbclid-IwAR!lkUOE36hRzsBt FvRD2-P2V 4-

BWgtFPbPARJm3iN8ZAmCbLhNuCkaxhi 
51 

not compelled Putin to change his behavior in a way that is more aligned with U.S. interests. Sanctions are an important tool we should continue utilizing but primarily as part 

of a broader strategic vision, where sanctions are one of multiple tools. It is ironic that 

while we often cast Putin as a mere short-term opportunist, we have yet to craft our own 

strategy to counter his malign activities and are instead only reactive. 

Craft a clear narrative to counter the Kremlin. Moscow has much appeal in the 

region on multiple fronts. One reason for this is because it offers a clear, simple narrative 

that resonates in the region, and one that runs counter to democratic values. The United 

States has yet to counter it effectively, especially in the context of our own internal polarization and self-doubt. Indeed, the growing prominence of RT and Sputnik in the region 

highlights our own broader narrative problem. We should invest greater resources in 

countering the Kremlin narrative more effectively. 

Recognize there is no easy fix and settle in for the long haul. Putin has been committed from the beginning to undermine the United States overall and return Russia to 

the Middle East. He is playing the long game. He has been in power for nineteen years now 

and does not have to constrain himself to timelines of democratic leaders. Putin's Achilles 

heel is exposed when U.S. policymakers reclaim leadership v.'ith strategic and moral clarity. 
52 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Ms. Borshchevskaya. 

We will now move to member questions under the 5-minute rule. 

I am actually going to defer until later, and we will start with the 

ranking member, Mr. Wilson, and then alternate between the parties. Mr. Wilson, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And beginning with Dr. 

Alterman, has China’s treatment of the Uyghur population and 

stance on Syria negatively impacted public opinion in the Middle 

Eastern countries? I would like a view from each of you. Dr. 

Alterman? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Congressman, it is remarkable how little public 

comment there has been outside of Turkey, which has an ethnic tie 

to the Uyghur population. I think this is a consequence of the fact 

that governments in the Arab world generally have very tight control over the press. Governments have decided, for reasons of diplomatic interest and economic interest, they do not want to antagonize the Chinese. 

And they have been pointedly silent in many cases about the oppression of the Uyghurs and the collection of perhaps a million 

Uyghurs into what appear to be concentration camps. 

Mr. WILSON. And Dr. Exum? 

Dr. EXUM. I have nothing to add to that. I think that is exactly 

right. I think the most notable thing has been the silence of the 

large Arab States with respect to the interment of the Uyghur population. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. And Ms. Wormuth? 

Ms. WORMUTH. I would just add, I think I would absolutely agree 

with Dr. Alterman that because the government has such control, 

there is not a lot of public discussion of it, but I think to the extent 

that Arabs, if you will, on the street, Muslims on the street are 

aware of it, it is probably quite unpopular. 

It is also worth noting I think that the Chinese diplomats place 

a lot of emphasis in their interactions with officials in Middle Eastern countries basically saying do not criticize us publically. That is 

one of their diplomatic goals, and they have been, sadly, very successful to date. 

Mr. WILSON. And Ms. Borshchevskaya? 

Ms. BORSHCHEVSKAYA. Yes. I would agree with everything that 

was said. The silence on this issue in the region has really been 

quite remarkable, and I agree also that the Chinese diplomats indeed push this—press this issue over and over again. 

What is also interesting is it is rare that the Chinese—when in 

public, Chinese diplomats would talk about their own Muslim minorities as if it does not exist. 

Mr. WILSON. And, Ms. Borshchevskaya, you have referenced this 

about the development of nuclear facilities by Russia. What has 

been the level of involvement of Russian nuclear energy sector investments? And is there any—what is our ability—and I want each 

of you to answer this, too—for the United States to compete? 

Ms. BORSHCHEVSKAYA. Sure. So with Turkey, as far as I understand, the construction of a nuclear power plant has already started. With Egypt, there was an agreement signed several years ago, 

and there is plan to begin construction in about 2 years. And Rus-
53 

sia is helping Egypt finance the construction. They are essentially 

giving them a loan. 

With Morocco, the agreement is more tentative. There has simply 

been an agreement on nuclear cooperation. It is unclear where that 

is headed. But the fact—but the very fact that it is taking place 

is significant. 

Mr. WILSON. And back again—what can the United States do to 

compete? 

Ms. BORSHCHEVSKAYA. Well, I think, again, it goes back to 

being—for one—you know, to—Egypt, for example, Egypt used to 

be our partner on nuclear energy security. That is not the case anymore. I think, again, it goes back to our consistent presence in the 

region, demonstrating to the region that we are committed, that we 

are not leaving the Middle East. The major issue is that so many 

of our allies are hedging bets that they feel we are very much ambivalent in what we want to do. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. And Ms. Wormuth? 

Ms. WORMUTH. I think I would just add, one, the advantages of 

having U.S. companies provide nuclear cooperation, energy cooperation, for example, is that our technology comes with, you 

know, a very high level of sort of safety and regulatory standards. 

So I think that is on the positive side. 

I think, you know, the really big competition right now, as I understand it, is around Saudi Arabia’s desire to build a number of 

nuclear power plants. And I think the concern that I would put on 

the table there is that in signing a 123 Agreement, we really would 

like the Saudis to basically say, you know, we are interested in 

doing this, but we are not going to enrich uranium. 

And right now, as I understand it, Saudi Arabia has not been 

willing to include that kind of a provision in a potential 123 Agreement, which is particularly concerning in light of the fact that Mohammed bin Salman has indicated that if Iran gets a nuclear 

weapon, Saudi Arabia would want to build one as well. 

Mr. WILSON. Very insightful. Dr. Exum. 

Dr. EXUM. No, that is right. I actually think that U.S. firms are 

doing a pretty good job in terms of marketing themselves to the 

Saudis, and I think the administration has helped with that. But 

I think as the Honorable Ms. Wormuth noted, that there are sticking points that, frankly, the administration should hold firm on. 

We also have leverage. The Saudis are wanting to invest in our 

energy infrastructure going forward. I think that is largely a positive thing. The Saudis also want continued access to advanced 

weapon system. That is also in large part—that could be a potential chip for negotiations, but I would turn it to Jon for further 

thoughts. 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Congressman, we could drop standards and constraints, but I do not think we should. I think the reality is that 

then the Saudis or the Egyptians or somebody else may go to a 

supplier that does not impose those constraints. But I am not sure 

we should stand in the way of that, because the constraints are important. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you all very much. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. Cicilline, you are recognized. 
54 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Exum, Brett McGurk, the former U.S. Special Presidential 

Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, recently wrote, and 

I quote, ‘‘The United States must recognize that Russia is now the 

main power broker in Syria. Washington has no relations with Damascus or Turan, so we will have to work with Moscow to get anything done. Russia and the United States have some overlapping 

interest in Syria. Both want the country to retain its territorial integrity, deny safe haven to ISIS and al-Qaeda, and both have close 

ties with Israel.’’ 

Do you agree with that assessment? And, if not, why not? And 

if you do, kind of what is the best way forward in light of that observation? 

Dr. EXUM. Sure. Well, I mean, first off, let me just say a few 

words about Brett McGurk, who I think is one of the most significant U.S. diplomats over the past 20 years. I mean, the things that 

Brett has done in Syria and in Iraq, really, he has been a tremendous servant for the past three administrations. 

Brett and I disagree on this particular issue for the reasons that 

I think I just laid out. It is true that the Hezbollah and Iran and 

the Syrian regime do not necessarily want to speak to us. That 

does not mean necessarily that we should speak to the Russians. 

And, again, the sticking point that I would have is that while it 

might be tempting to believe that the Russians can deliver on cooperation in Syria, we did not see any of that evidence in 2015 and 

2016. Frankly, we saw the Russians and their coalition partners 

use the cease-fires that we were able to negotiate to rest, refit, and 

reprioritize for other military objectives in Syria. 

Frankly, I do believe that we do share some interests with the 

Russians and we do have some key interests in Syria; namely, 

countering terrorism, the security of the State of Israel, especially 

in southwestern Syria. However, I do not believe that Russia 

shares a broader interest with us going forward, and I would have 

serious reservations about what that cooperation would look like. 

During 2016, we floated the idea of joint targeting of terrorists 

with Russia, which caused a significant amount of heartburn in my 

building in particular, because the idea of sharing intelligence with 

the Russians—I mean, the idea of marking intelligence secret while 

Russia was just—it was almost impossible to even imagine. 

I believe Russia desires to know a lot about our sources and 

methods that we have spent decades developing. And with all due 

respect, and I hold Brett in the highest regard, especially for his 

service in Iraq, I would disagree with him strongly about the conclusions that he has reached. I just do not think that Russia can 

deliver, and I think they have a lot more to gain than we do. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you. Ms. Wormuth, I want to turn now to 

the Iranian influence in the region. We heard from Secretary 

Pompeo just about a year ago when he presented what he called 

a new Iran strategy, laying out 12 very basic requirements. And as 

best as I can tell, none of the conditions he set out has actually 

been achieved. And I am wondering whether the withdrawal from 

the Iran deal has done anything to limit Iranian influence in the 

region, and whether or not this maximum pressure policy is working at all, and frankly, and more particularly, what message that 
55 

has sent to Russia and China in the region. I know that is multilayered, but—— 

Ms. WORMUTH. Yes. Well, my own sense, you know, (a) I did not 

think it was in our national interest to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. I think in light of the circumstances that was the best 

deal we were going to get, and it did put off for many years the 

possibility of the Iranians getting nuclear weapons. 

That said, what I think has happened now is the conditions that 

Secretary Pompeo has laid out, (a) I do not think Iran has any intention of meeting. By withdrawing from the nuclear agreement, 

we, I think, have, you know, disappointed several of our European 

allies. And, frankly, that has become a bit of a wedge issue with 

them. 

And the circumstances that we are in now, I do not see a year 

into withdrawing from the nuclear arrangement that Iran has 

abated any of its malign behavior in the region. If anything, we 

seem to see that escalating. I think as they become more and more 

frustrated with the economic pressure they are under, they are 

lashing out more and more, and I think that is very concerning. 

So, you know, where we are right now, I think, again, as Dr. 

Alterman alluded to, our policy I think has actually been helpful 

to the Russians and the Chinese because it has created so many 

wedges for us and has not really done anything to address the instability. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you. And my final question—civil society 

and democracy activists in the Middle East face increased challenges from the suppression of opposition voices to censorship of 

the press to discriminatory laws and mistreatment of marginalized 

communities. 

And over many administrations, our country has stood up to balance our very strategic interest in the region with our need to 

stand up for important democratic values. 

The Trump administration has decided in many ways just to ignore democracy and human rights altogether and cozying up to 

governments such as Saudi Arabia, which jail women and hack 

journalists to death and silence free speech. 

And I am just wondering, with that kind of disregard for human 

rights, whether the emergence of Russia and China in the region— 

kind of how that impacts it. Dr. Alterman? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Congressman, I think a very important part of 

China’s Middle East strategy is to make the future safe for 

authoritarianism. We have had a different strategy for more than 

a half-century, but the Chinese strategy is to make the future safe 

for authoritarianism because that will help secure the current government of China. 

Mr. CICILLINE. May I just have one quick followup? 

Mr. DEUTCH. One quick followup. 

Mr. CICILLINE. I guess, how does the change in the kind of behavior of the current American President impact that strategy, if 

at al? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. I would hope that we would work through a multilateral framework to build alliances with governments that both 

have governments working with us in broad concert, and also make 

clear to governments that there are standards and issues and pres-
56 

sure that the U.S. will not compromise. And I think we will—we 

have friends in that. 

We should have friends, and people should want to be our friends 

because they understand the U.S. package is a better package, and 

the reality is that many governments, especially in the Middle 

East, believe the Chinese package is a better package for their future. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you. Mr. Mast, you are recognized. 

Mr. MAST. Thank you, Chairman. Dr. Exum, rangers lead the 

way. That is right. 

Listen, I love this committee. It saddens me when I hear just 

these irresponsible comparisons about the administration cozying 

up to Saudi Arabia. You know, numerous administrations going 

back forever have these relationships. Anybody could go out there 

and say, ‘‘President Obama, working a deal with Iran is cozying up 

with, you know, the greatest human rights abuser that has existed, 

you know, in this modern era.’’ And so it does sadden me to see 

that as part of this committee. I think it is wholly irresponsible. 

Beyond that, I would also say this. If any of my colleagues on 

this committee think that we should go out there and have further 

engagement in Syria, then I would encourage them to author an 

authorized use of military force in which you very specifically lay 

out exactly how many U.S. lives, U.S. limbs, U.S. treasure, anything else that you are willing to risk in advancement of anything 

that you see as a goal in Syria before you go out there and spout 

your responsible remarks. 

In that, I would like to move to the conversation of China a little 

bit and some of the comments that were made across the board. 

China is assessed by everybody to be a massive economic strength. 

It has been mentioned in nearly everybody’s comments. As we have 

hearings like this across the board in different subcommittees, everybody talks about China’s economic prowess. 

Dr. Alterman, you spoke a little bit about maybe the lack of desire for China to go out there and play that hegemonic stability 

role throughout the Middle East. No. 1, it costs them in treasure. 

No. 2, they have to go out there and pick winners and losers, and 

perhaps lose allies where otherwise they do not have to pick a 

friend or a foe or an ally or otherwise. 

So what I would love to hear you all comment on, really, is hearing your analysis in that paradoxical situation is, is it better or 

worse to let them or maybe force them into having to play a hegemonic role throughout the Middle East? Does it push them into a 

place that they do not want to be, which can be good for the United 

States of America? Or is it better that we continue to maintain that 

hegemonic role or spend our treasure in our life to maintain that 

hegemonic role in your opinions? 

You can start on whatever end you want. 

Ms. WORMUTH. I will take a swing at that, Congressman. I think 

we should—I think we should, frankly, try to have China take 

more responsibility and be more a part of the security discussion 

in the region. I mean, they have basically been free-riding off of 

U.S. security guarantees in the region for some time. 
57 

They are able to get the energy they need out of the Middle East 

because we have historically secured it and made sure that there 

are free flows of oil. 

Mr. MAST. Does that occur by asking nicely or by forcing them 

into a position where they have to maintain stability? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Well, I would say this. I do not think—my own 

view is we should not try to force them to participate in that. I do 

not think you could do that. And, again, in many areas, we do not 

necessarily share the same interest. 

That said, I do think we could continue to do—for example, 

under the Obama Administration, we did go to the Chinese and 

say, ‘‘Be a part of the anti-ISIS campaign.’’ You know, participate. 

You all tell us all the time you are worried about terrorism, you 

are worried about the spread of Islamic extremism, so come and 

work with us together, you know, to fight this common threat. 

They were not willing to do that at the time, but I think we 

should continue to ask them. Again, we also asked them to be a 

part of the response to ebola, which obviously was in Africa, not 

the Middle East. But, again, our message—I think the message of 

the United States to China should be, if you want to be a great 

power, you need to act like a great power and work on some of 

these common security challenges. 

Mr. MAST. Certainly, Dr. Alterman. 

Dr. ALTERMAN. You know, when we started shared awareness 

and deconfliction exercises off the coast of Somalia for counter piracy, the Chinese first said, ‘‘We do not want to have anything to 

do with it.’’ 

And then finally decided to start coming, and then we said, ‘‘OK. 

We have got the problem fixed. We are going to stop holding.’’ 

And the Chinese said, ‘‘Please keep holding them.’’ 

So the Chinese have been willing to engage a little more militarily. I am concerned that we and the Chinese are playing very 

different games, and we continue to invest very heavily in military 

presence, security ties, and we become hived off from the genuine 

national interest of the governments in place. 

I think in a way we have been carried too much by momentum. 

And as I say in the written statement, having grown up in Poughkeepsie, New York, a company—a town really nurtured by IBM. I 

am particularly aware that IBM kind of lost the computer market 

because they concentrated on the wrong piece of it, and they let 

other companies develop things that were much more remunerative. 

I think we have to rethink what our role in the Middle East is, 

what are our tools, and how do we make ourselves vital to governments. I think we have to rethink part of how we engage in the 

region. 

Mr. MAST. Absolutely. Thank you all for your comments and your 

testimoneys today. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Mast. Mr. Allred, you are recognized. 

Mr. ALLRED. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to our 

panel. I read your written statements and learned a lot, and I 

think this is a very important topic. I want to thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, for holding this. 
58 

As we are kind of tilting now to world power competition, I see 

the Middle East as just an extension of what we are seeing even 

in our own hemisphere, but certainly around the world. And so I 

want to, you know, talk about how we counter influence and how 

we can do that in a way that is consistent with our economic values 

as well, but also militarily. 

And so I want to begin with arms sales because, as you are 

aware, China and Russia are selling arms to our allies, and we 

have even seen some of our arms in Yemen, for example, ending 

up in the hands of al-Qaeda. And I am wondering if they are—if 

we have any concerns or if you have any concerns about China and 

Russia getting access to classified information or to any of our military systems and better understandings of that and how and what 

the Congress can do in mitigating the risk to U.S. military equipment to try and prevent that. 

Ms. Wormuth, do you want to take it first? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Sure. Happy to do that. I think what we see with 

Chinese and Russian arms sales, more probably Russia than 

China, of course it is a source of revenue for them. But what I saw 

happen over the last few years is as the countries in the Middle 

East become less confident of whether the United States is going 

to be there become frustrated, frankly, sometimes with the conditions that we put on our arms sales, which we do so in most cases 

for very good reasons. 

They have essentially engaged in hedging behavior and sort of 

they look particularly at Russia as an alternative. You know, when 

Egypt got really fed up with us for not telling them things because 

of the conditions that Congress, among others, put on those sales, 

they turned to Moscow. And I think that will keep happening I 

think unless we do a better job of making it clear that we are staying in the region and that we are reliable. 

They may not like everything that we have to say to them, but 

I think right now countries are not really sure exactly what our approach is. 

I do think we want to be concerned any time we are engaging 

with arms sales in putting in protections to make sure that the 

technology is not leaking or being proliferated. And there are a lot 

of mechanisms already in place. But I think to the extent that Congress can emphasize the importance of those conditions in the various sales that the administration may be contemplating, those are 

very important. 

Mr. ALLRED. And so just to followup really quickly on that, because you touched a little bit on the restrictions that we put in 

place and the things we ask of our allies. On this committee, we 

have been talking about—a lot about our kind of withdrawal from 

global leadership on human rights and standing up for those, especially in this region. 

Do you think it is possible to maintain that commitment and to 

be—to, you know, carry that goal while also continuing to partner 

in the way that we have on arms and others by perhaps, as you 

were saying, making sure they understand that we are here to 

stay, we are going to be part of this expressing some sort of overall 

strategy? 
59 

Ms. WORMUTH. I think it is important that we continue to have 

human rights and basic freedoms be an important part of our foreign policy, frankly, and I think that should be part of our conversation with countries in the region. 

So while, frankly, when I was in government, it was sometimes 

a struggle as we were trying to work through decisions about 

whether to go forward with sales, given constraints that Congress 

had levied on us, those are important things I think to weigh. 

And I would encourage Congress to think about—I do think you 

want to give the executive branch some wiggle room to make judgments about what the right balance is between the human rights 

conditions and others things, or democratization things, and sales, 

because sales are an important part of our relationship, but I think 

having some conditions in place, it is good to have those guardrails 

for the executive branch. 

Mr. ALLRED. Yes. Dr. Exum? 

Dr. EXUM. Yes. If I could just add one thing. I mean, I think over 

the past 30 years we have had this theory of the case that if we 

buildup Gulf—especially host nation security capacity, then we will 

be able to remove some of those 35,000, roughly, U.S. troops that 

are in the Gulf, I think 59,000 region in the alone, so it is a huge 

investment in our case. 

The challenge—to my mind, the strategic challenge is if you 

buildup that host nation security capacity, they might actually use 

it. That has been the case in Yemen, right? Our end use monitoring 

regimes are pretty darn good if the weapons are in garrison. If they 

are deployed in an expeditionary fashion, it gets tougher to keep 

track of exactly where all of those weapons are going. 

I would echo everything that Ms. Wormuth said. I think that the 

Senate has done a good job in forcing a binary choice on Turkey 

with respect to the F–35 and the S–400. Another area that I would 

put on your radar is that the restrictions that we have, some of 

them for very good reasons, on unmanned aircraft and UAVs, 

means that they are bringing in Chinese or Russian UAVs, often 

with Chinese or Russian engineers in close proximity to advanced 

U.S. weapon systems. 

That is something that I think the Congress can take a hard look 

at to make sure that the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of State are keeping appropriate distance between those 

weapon systems and foreign nationals. 

Mr. ALLRED. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you. Mr. Trone, you are recognized. 

Mr. TRONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. China, they built their 

first overseas military base in Djibouti. How effective do you think 

this base is in projecting power in the Arabian Sea and the Red 

Sea? Who wants to take a stab? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Congressman, I do not think they can really 

project power, but it certainly helps their surveillance. They partly 

are watching us because we are right next door. But they care an 

awful lot about shipping through the Red Sea, through Bab-elMandeb off the coast of Yemen, and then up through the Suez 

Canal. And this is their first overseas base, of course. It is a big 

thing to say. 
60 

And it is largely about just keeping track of the shipping. I do 

not think it is really a force projection so much as it is to understand the flow, to do surveillance, to be present, more than to actually be able to act. The Chinese are still a little bit scarred that 

they had to suddenly evacuate 30,000 people out of Libya when 

Gaddafi fell. They had never done anything like that before. They 

are not going to be able to do that out of their base in Djibouti, 

but it begins to represent a spreading out for the Chinese navy. 

Mr. TRONE. So if this is the first, which it is, where do you think 

they are going to build a second, or will they be building a second? 

And what are they trying to accomplish, just more listening surveillance? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. They are certainly investing in a port in Pakistan 

called Gwadar that has a sort of Chinese industrial zone behind it. 

I do not know anybody who thinks that base makes—or that port 

makes sense economically, given how much the Chinese are putting 

into it. There is a Chinese-Pakistan economic corridor that is part 

of their strategy. 

One of the problems the Chinese have is they expand westward 

and down through Pakistan. It partly takes them to the Uyghur 

populations that we were talking about earlier with Congressman 

Wilson, which is a security problem, but also brings you into some 

nasty areas of Pakistan. 

Certainly, one of the things that the Chinese strategists have expressed concern to me about is, as you go west through the Uyghur 

areas and down through Pakistan, you may be setting up a highway for radicalists to come into China instead of get goods out of 

China. So how well that is all going to work in practice is unclear, 

but certainly the Gwadar port is something that people—I wrote a 

book with—co-wrote a book with a specialist on China more than 

10 years ago. He was paying a lot of attention to Gwadar. 

Gwadar is still in the early stages, so it is not moving that fast. 

But it is certainly something that draws a lot of attention. 

Mr. TRONE. So if we looked at the container operations they set 

up in Abu Dhabi—in addition, and we know Athens they have done 

a port—the port in Athens, they have done two ports in Israel. I 

mean, is this all part of—it seems like at the entry points everywhere they are grabbing the ports. Is this infrastructure part of 

Belt and Road still surveillance is your best guess as where they 

are going with all of this? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Well, they are certainly interested in trade. The 

report gives an opportunity to talk about win-win. What amazes 

me about the Belt and Road, frankly, is how little money they have 

put into the Middle East and how much benefit they have gotten 

out of the Middle East, because everybody projects their country to 

be the central node for the Belt and Road in the region. 

So the Iranians I think are getting a lot of investment and are 

very enthusiastic about it, and that is something I talk about in my 

testimony, that this is sort of the way China thinks about Iran. 

But the Egyptians are very enthusiastic. The Emiratis are very 

enthusiastic. The Saudis are enthusiastic. The Qataris are enthusiastic. Everybody seems to think that Belt and Road is going to put 

them front and center with a rising power in the world. 
61 

And I think, frankly, the United States has not had a counter to 

it. We tie people up in regulations. It all seems tedious. This—— 

Mr. TRONE. Let’s just over the technology a second with Huawei. 

We talked—you may have talked about that already before. I 

missed it. But, I mean, with Huawei, they are taking over the communications gear, they are low bidding it to get in and get down— 

and I am a business guy—to buy into the market. What dangers 

do you see in our intelligence in loss of data privacy? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. I think some of my other colleagues might talk 

better—it is a profound issue and gives them profound insight 

should they choose to use it. 

Ms. WORMUTH. I think, Congressman, I would just add, the concern I think that we have to have front and center with Huawei 

is the fact that it is essentially a State—it is not a State-owned 

Chinese company, but it is probably a State-directed Chinese company. And, hence, you know, anything like that that—you know, if 

they have a global presence, if you will, on posture into the 5G network, for example, they are going to have—the Chinese government is going to have access to that as a result of the fact that 

Huawei is a State-directed company. 

And I think that is the reason we have to be so concerned about 

that. I would encourage the administration to really start thinking 

in a comprehensive way about how do we talk to our allies and 

partners around the world, whether it is in Europe, in Asia, in the 

Middle East, to help level-set everyone to what the threat is, so 

that we can have a more coordinated—— 

Mr. TRONE. So you believe it compromises our data that is being 

transmitted through the 5G eventually. 

Ms. WORMUTH. I am no IT expert, but I would be very concerned 

about it based on what I know. 

Mr. TRONE. Thank you. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thanks very much. Thanks again to the witnesses. 

I want to just go back to Russia and comments that were made 

earlier. Russia is an all-weather ally, a reliable partner that will 

not leave. And, Ms. Borshchevskaya, you talked about Iran. We 

can’t expect them to affect Iran. 

I want to talk about Russia and Iran. What do we make of where 

the relationship is going? We know of Russia’s relationship with 

Israel and the agreement that they seem to have reached where 

Israel is about to do what it needs to do to protect itself. But what 

should we expect of Russia? Can we expect Russia to play any role 

in helping long term with Iranian presence, Iranian malign activities, or when you say they do not lecture, should we just expect the 

relationship between Russia and Iran to grow stronger? Yes. 

Ms. BORSHCHEVSKAYA. Sure. So first, you know, there is oftentimes—oftentimes when a conversation starts about Russia and 

Iran, there is an emphasis on the history between these two countries, and the history is one of largely animosity. The problem is 

that that is increasing—that has not been relevant in the last several years, and certainly Syria, in particular, brought the RussiaIran partnership to new heights. 

And, frankly, if you look at what Russia did in Syria, one reason 

why they have been so successful in Syria is because they have relied on Iran to do all of the heavy lifting. 
62 

So, you know, back when the intervention started, many had 

thought that this would be another Afghanistan for Russia. The 

reason why it was not is because Iran did the hard work. 

And, you know, Russia is interested in trade with Iran. 

Hezbollah has learned from Russia. They have operated side by 

side. There have been reports of Hezbollah using a Russian flag as 

a cover to avoid getting hit by Israel. Hezbollah have traveled to 

Moscow. Putin had invited them to Moscow. So the Russian-Iran 

partnership, really it is unprecedented in the grand scope of the 

history of these two countries in 500 years. 

Now, at the same time, Russia certainly has good relations with 

Israel, and that is important for the Kremlin as well. They have 

been able to—the Kremlin has been able to balance these relationships. And as you said, they have reached an agreement. Israel has 

been able to conduct its strikes, but at the same time Russia, by 

its very presence, by its nature of presence in Syria, is able to collect intelligence on Israel, not just on the U.S. and the U.S. coalition but also on Israel. 

And certainly, you know, the fact of the matter is, Israel’s freedom of action is dependent on Russia. Yes, they have given it, but 

they are dependent, and I think that is the point. So—— 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Ms. Borshchevskaya. 

Ms. Wormuth, let me just go to you on this. Is there—longer 

term, should we expect this relationship to grow? 

Ms. WORMUTH. I am not sure that it is going to grow. It strikes 

me that the Russia-Iran relationship is complicated. You know, in 

the short term, Iran has been an expedient partner to Russia and 

Syria for all of the reasons that Ms. Borshchevskaya explained. But 

now you see a situation where I think Russia is trying to get Assad 

to perhaps make some concessions, but Iran is actively whispering 

in his ear to hold firm and not make concessions, because they 

want to stay there. 

So there are tensions there that I think to me do not necessarily 

mean that that relationship will continue, much less get much, 

much stronger. 

Mr. DEUTCH. So then what do we do, Dr. Exum? 

Dr. EXUM. Well, actually, the one thing we haven’t talked 

about—and it surprises me—we haven’t talked about oil and we 

haven’t talked about—— 

Mr. DEUTCH. I was getting there, but go ahead, please. 

Dr. EXUM [continuing]. Russia’s relationship with OPEC in particular. Saudi Arabia has absolutely pressured Russia to distance 

itself from Iran and has thus far been unsuccessful. But the relationship between OPEC and Saudi Arabia and Russia, that is a relationship that has grown deeper over the past 2, 3 years. 

I think if you were to poll, you know, analysts of the oil markets 

and—you know, 2 years ago and ask them if they thought that the 

near-term agreement between Russia and OPEC would have endured as long as it had, I think they would have been a bit surprised, but it has, and that is a relationship that is increasingly important. 

I think that the Saudis can be an important voice in terms of balancing Russia’s relationship with Iran. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Yes. Dr. Alterman? 
63 

Dr. ALTERMAN. And, frankly, the Saudis are looking to show a 

tip toward Russia and China as a way to get us to back off. One 

of the things I heard from some Saudis in recent weeks was that 

Mohammed bin Salman especially is interested in demonstrating to 

the United States that he has other options if the United States 

is going to continue to talk about human rights and other kinds of 

things. 

And he is interested in showing that he can go toward Moscow 

or Beijing. He does not have to rely on Washington. 

Mr. DEUTCH. And Moscow may not lecture in the region, but for 

the Saudis, if their relationship with Iran is there are no strings 

attached, that is going to start to affect the relationship between 

Saudi and Russia. 

Let me just, Dr. Alterman, stick with you. On the issue of oil, 

the administration has ended all waivers for purchases of Iranian 

oil, including China. Do you expect China is going to stop buying 

all oil—all of the oil it buys from Iran? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. I think there are a couple of things that are going 

to happen. First, the Chinese are going to smuggle some oil. They 

are probably going to smuggle a little more oil. Exactly how much 

we will know about, I am not sure. 

I think the Chinese also will pursue efforts to find workarounds 

to our sanctions. It seems to me that every time we use sanctions 

we run the same risk that hospitals develop and having penicillinresistant germs and everything else. If you keep using it, people 

will find ways to get around it, and I worry that we may be in 

the—— 

Mr. DEUTCH. So how is it going to do it this time? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Excuse me? 

Mr. DEUTCH. How is it going to do it this time, get around the 

sanctions? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Well, there are ways to do things with swaps. I 

think the Russians, as I understand it, could do things with swaps 

and be selling more Urals blend oil than they are actually producing. You could set up some small things, not enough to get Iran 

up to its normal level of sales. But I think that the world is exploring ways to work around American sanctions. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Just one other question quickly. In recent years, 

Chinese has rallied cooperation in the tech sector. In 2016, Chinese 

investment in Israeli high tech, VC, approached $1 billion. Does 

their growing involvement—China’s growing involvement in 

Israel’s high-tech industry raise security concerns, and should it, 

and is there enough attention being paid to that? 

Dr. ALTERMAN. It does. The Israelis are paying more attention to 

it. There was a reform in Foreign Policy a couple of months ago 

saying that the Israeli National Security Council prepared a report 

about foreign investment, which was really about Chinese investment in Israel. 

I am going over there in a couple of weeks and will be talking 

to people specifically about this issue. And, frankly, I have been 

surprised at the level I have been able to set up meetings to talk 

about this issue. 

Mr. DEUTCH. All right. Terrific. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Mast had an additional question or two. 
64 

Mr. MAST. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was worried after 

13 minutes we stopped alternating sides here. So thank you for the 

time. 

Mr. DEUTCH. We just wanted to get through all of the questions. 

Mr. MAST. Yes. As would I. Thank you. 

I would like to go back to Iran and Russia. I got to speak earlier 

about China and Russia. Would love to hear from each of you, in 

your opinion, did the Iran deal, the JCPOA, did it bring the United 

States and Iran closer together, or did it bring Russia and Iran 

closer together through the parameters of the joint comprehensive 

plan of action? 

Ms. WORMUTH. I will take a swing at that again. I think one of 

the things I think that the Iran nuclear deal did with the United 

States and Iran is it did open a channel of communications at very 

senior levels that I think had some utility. 

And I do not think we necessarily have the same channels at the 

same levels right now. So, for example, you know, where it had 

some utility was I am sure you will recall, Congressman Mast, 

when our sailors found themselves in Iranian waters and were 

taken prisoner essentially. That situation was resolved, I believe, 

more quickly than it probably would have been because there was 

dialog. 

Beyond that, I am not sure—you know, I would not argue that 

it brought the United States and Iran closer. I think, you know, 

many of us who worked in government at the time did not have 

a lot of illusions about the possibility that, you know, peace and 

happiness is going to break out. 

Mr. MAST. Did it bring Russia and Iran closer together? 

Ms. WORMUTH. My own sense is what brought Russia and Iran 

closer together was, frankly, the cooperation in Syria more, really, 

than JCPOA itself. That is my personal assessment. 

Mr. MAST. Dr. Exum? Dr. Alterman? 

Dr. EXUM. Yes. I am doing this with some trepidation because 

there are very few people I respect more than Christine. But I 

think that the JCPOA was fine as far as addressing Iran’s nuclear 

issue. But there were some outsized hopes within the last administration that it would open the door for a broader dialog with Iran, 

and I think those hopes were unfounded. 

We saw plenty of evidence that the Iranians were happy to talk 

to us about nuclear issues and about the JCPOA and about enforcement, any issues around that. But Syria is the best example 

of Iran not wanting to speak about issues that did not have to do 

with the JCPOA. 

I would agree with Ms. Wormuth that I do not see it really affecting the Iranian-Russian relationship. I think Syria was what 

cemented that. But I think the JCPOA, which I also supported and 

which I think was fine for addressing one of the three threats Iran 

posed—the other being its asymmetric activities and its conventional weapons buildup—it is fine for those purposes, but it did not 

lead toward any greater thaw in the relationship. And I just think 

we have to be honest about that. 

Dr. ALTERMAN. Congressman, I, frankly, think we are going to 

have hostile relations with Iran for the rest of my professional career. I do not think the JCPOA would have changed that. But I 
65 

think what it did is it got us on the side with all of the economies 

of the world that matter, with a number of allies to pressure the 

Iranians, and the fact is the Russians and the Chinese were with 

us holding the Iranians to account. 

What it seems to me it partly explains Russia and Iran coming 

together is they both have an interest in splitting us off from our 

allies. And one of the things I really worry about is that we are 

much more isolated in the world in carrying out policy. 

When the administration had their meeting in Poland, it highlighted not the world’s revulsion at excesses of the Iranian government, but the fact is the U.S. was adopting a policy that its allies 

did not, that our policy through the JCPOA is shared by four countries in the world and all of our allies are on the other side. 

And that is what I really worry about in the region is for so 

many of these hard problems it feels to me like we are taking them 

on by ourselves, and that is exactly what opens the door to the 

Russians and the Chinese doing better. 

Where we are most powerful is when we speak for 100 countries 

at once. There is no country in the world besides the United States 

that can gather 100 countries behind it, and we are not trying to 

gather 100 countries behind us. 

Mr. MAST. Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. 

Ms. BORSHCHEVSKAYA. Yes. If I could just—if I could just add a 

comment. I agree that it was really Syria that mattered more for 

bringing Russia and Iran together. With regard to the JCPOA, you 

know, Russian officials complained for years that tough sanctions 

hurt the Russian-Iran trade. They really wanted trade. 

And with the agreement, several important things happened. 

The Kremlin had touted this as their diplomatic victory. In fact, 

they have Tweeted, you know, that this was Russian diplomacy. 

Russian diplomacy was so important in helping achieve the 

JCPOA. 

What they had also done is they sold the S–300 to Iran immediately after the deal. That was an important element. 

What is also interesting is that they certainly—you know, and 

the Russia-Iran dynamic is very complex. It is a very complex relationship. They were worried about the Iranian nuclear program, 

but also at the same time they sort of downplayed its seriousness. 

So there was a very complex dynamic going on. And, yes, I just 

want to highlight the sale of the S–300 after the JCPOA. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Great. Thanks. I want to thank the witnesses for 

being here today, and the members who have been here to ask 

questions. Thanks for your testimony. 

Members of the subcommittee may have some additional questions for you, and we ask our witnesses to please respond to those 

questions in writing. I would ask my colleagues that any witness 

questions for the hearing be submitted to the subcommittee clerk 

within 5 business days. 

And with that, without objection, the subcommittee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:31 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
66 

APPENDIX 

SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING NOTICE 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

WASHINGTON, DC 20515-6128 

Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa, and International Terrorism 

Ted Deutch (D-FL), Chairman 

May 9. 2019 

TO: MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

You are respectfully requested to attend an OPEN hearing of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, to be held 

by the Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa. and International Terrorism in Room 2172 of the Rayburn 

House Oftice Building (and available live on the Committee website at https://foreignatfairs.housc.uov/): 

DATE: 

TIME: 

SUBJECT: 

WITNESSES: 

Thursday. May 9, 2019 

1:30 p.m. 

Chinese and Russian Influence in the Middle East 

Jon B. Alterman, Ph.D. 

Senior Vice President 

Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Gcostrategy 

Director of the Middle East Program 

Center for Strategic and International Studies 

Andrew Exum. Ph.D. 

Executive 

Hakluyt & Company 

(Former Deputy Assistant Secretary c1( Dejimsefor Middle East Policy) 

The Honorable Christine Wormuth 

Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center 

Senior Fellow 

RAND Corporation 

(hmner Under Secretary of D4ense.for Policy) 

Ms. Anna Borshchevskaya 

Senior Fellow 

Washington Institute for Near East Policy 

By Direction of the Chairman 
67 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

MINUTES OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON Mitldle East, North Africa, mullntentttflmutl Terrotlsm HEARING 

Dny __ 1_1I_II_I's_d.caL~' __ Dnte 05/09119 2172 

Starting Time 2:11 PM Ending Time __,1:~'i_[PM 

Recesses (__to __ )( __ to __ )( __ to ___ )( ___ to ____ J( __ to __ )(__to __ ) 

Cfwinmm Theodore E~ Deutch 

Clteck all of tile following that app{1•: 

Open Session 0 Executive @sed) Session D Televised llJ 

TITLE OF HEARING: 

Chinese ami Russian Influence in the Middle East 

SUBCOMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: 

See Attacltetl 

Electronically RecordS!L(tnpcd) 0 

Stenographic Record lLJ 

NON--SUBCOMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: (Mark with an* if the)' are not members <?(lid/ committee) 

N/A 

HEARING WITNI~SSES: S;unc as meeting notice attached? Yes fZJ NoD 

(lf "no", please fist below and include title, agency, department, or organization) 

STATEMENTS FOU THE HECORD: (List all)' stateme11ts submittedfor the record.) 

TIME SCHEDULED TO RH:ONV"NE ----

or 

TIME ADJOURNED __ 3:_3_l_P_M_ 
68 

Æ 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING 

SU8COMAII7TEE ON THE MIDDLE EASJ; NORTJ/ AI'IIICA, ANl! lNTERNATIO.\'AL TERRORISM 

FRlCSEM AfHMBER FRESEST MLMBER 

X Thcod~re E. Deutch, FL ··- X Joe Wilson, SC 

Gerald E. Connolly, VA X Steve Chabot, OH 

X David Cicilline, Rl Adam Kinzinger,IL 

X Ted Lieu, CA X Lee Zeldin. NY 

X Colin Allred, TX X Brian J. Mast, FL 

Tom Malinowski, NJ Brian K. Fitzpatrick, PA 

X David Trone, MA X Guy Reschen~1aler, PA 

Brad Sherman, CA X Steve Watkins. KS