диссертация (Политические отношения России и Бахрейна в контексте трансформации региональной подсистемы Ближнего и Среднего Востока)

FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS INSTITUTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION“MOSCOW STATE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS(UNIVERSITY) OF THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIANFEDERATION”ManuscriptALTAMIMI Khaled Mohamed AliPOLITICAL RELATIONS OF RUSSIA AND BAHRAIN IN THE CONTEXT OFTHE TRANSFORMATION OF THE REGIONAL SUBSYSTEM OF THEMIDDLE EASTSpecialty: 23.00.04 – Political Problems of International Relations, Global and RegionalDevelopmentTHESISFor the Degree of the Candidate of Political ScienceAcademic Supervisor:Andrey A. BAYKOVPh.D. (Political Science)Assoc. Prof. of International AffairsMoscow2019ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ АВТОНОМНОЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ ВЫСШЕГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ«МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ИНСТИТУТМЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ (УНИВЕРСИТЕТ)МИНИСТЕРСТВА ИНОСТРАННЫХ ДЕЛ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ»На правах рукописиАЛЬ-ТАМИМИ Халед Мохамед АлиПОЛИТИЧЕСКИЕ ОТНОШЕНИЯ РОССИИ И БАХРЕЙНА ВКОНТЕКСТЕ ТРАНСФОРМАЦИИ РЕГИОНАЛЬНОЙ ПОДСИСТЕМЫБЛИЖНЕГО И СРЕДНЕГО ВОСТОКАСпециальность – 23.00.04 –политические проблемы международных отношений, глобального ирегионального развитияДиссертация на соискание ученой степеникандидата политических наукНаучный руководитель:кандидат политических наук, доцентБайков Андрей АнатольевичМОСКВА – 20192TABLE OF CONTENTSINTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................

4CHAPTER I CONCEPTUAL BASES OF REGIONAL SECURITY. KEYDEFINITIONS ................................................................................................................ 131.1. Correlation of the Concepts of “National Interest” and “National Security”in the Foreign Policy of Modern States ................................................................ 131.2. The Problem of "Security" in International Relations, its Content andTypes …………………………………………………………………………..191.3. Basic Approaches to the Study of the Phenomenon of Regionalization inthe Context of the Notion of "Regional Security" ................................................

31CHAPTER II ................................................................................................................... 38BASIC COMPONENTS AND MAIN PROCESSES IN REGIONAL SUBSYSTEMTHROUGH THE PRIZM OF THE PROBLEM OF SECURITY.................................. 382.1. Regional Dimension of Global Processes in the Context of ModernApproaches to the Study of International Relations ............................................. 382.2. Role and Place of Medium and Smaller Powers in the Processes of BuildingRegional Security Systems .................................................................................... 442.3. Constructing a Regional Security System in the Middle East in the Context ofNew Challenges and Threats.................................................................................

52CHAPTER III PROBLEMS OF REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EASTFROM 2003 AND UNTILL 2019 .................................................................................. 653.1. Approaches to Ensuring the Regional Security System in the Middle East .. 653.2. Council of Cooperation of the Arab States of the Arabian Gulf as a RegionalMilitary-Political Organization ............................................................................. 723.3. The Problems of Building a New System of Collective Security within theFramework of the Council of Cooperation of the Arab States of the Arabian Gulf...............................................................................................................................

81CHAPTER IV.................................................................................................................. 873RUSSIAN-BAHRAINI RELATIONS. MAIN AREAS OF BILATERALCOOPERATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE REGIONAL SECURITY PROJECT 874.1. Russian-Bahraini Relations in the Trade and Economic Sphere at the PresentStage ......................................................................................................................

874.2. Cooperation between Russia and Bahrain in the Provision of RegionalSecurity................................................................................................................ 1004.3. Main Directions of the Foreign Policy Course and Peculiarities of the InternalPolitical Situation of the Kingdom of Bahrain and their Influence on RussianBahraini Relations ............................................................................................... 107CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 111LIST OF SOURCES AND LITERATURE .................................................................. 1184INTRODUCTIONThe relevance of the research topic stems from the growing importance of theArabian Gulf sub-region in the international arena.In the context of subject-object relations in global politics, the Kingdom ofBahrain belongs to the category of smaller and medium-sized powers, which in manyrespects determines, and accounts for, the nature and direction of its foreign policyaspirations.

Thus, the traditional course for such countries to cooperate with moreinfluential players in the international arena provided Manama with a historicalexperience of international multi-vector cooperation.At present, the Russian Federation is "going through" the stage of returning to theMiddle East region, which is connected with building ties with local actors on afundamentally new level, and implies a strategic vision for the most pressing problemsof the region and its own place in it. At the same time, realization of aspirations of anykind and scale implies stronger ties with local actors.The economy is one of the central spheres of cooperation on the Russian-Bahrainiagenda. In today’s conditions, multicomponent economic development becomes animportant factor of sovereignty, since the backlog on this track provokes a gradual lossof political power. Moreover, in this context, the sphere of economy is a kind offramework for the formation of a new quality of bilateral relations, since both statesrealize that cooperation of states in areas of strategic importance at the level of jointdevelopment and even the supply of high-tech equipment inevitably implies a certainlevel of political dialogue and mutual understanding.Despite the fact that, at the time of writing, Russia did not occupy leadingpositions in Bahrain's financial, economic and trade external relations, the partiesenjoyed a fairly wide range of points of contact due to the different, and thereforecomplementary, structures of national economies.5At the same time, the thesis on working with the GCC countries through Bahrainseems especially relevant not only because of entering new financial markets inconditions of partial isolation of Russian banks from Western capital, but also becauseof the strengthening of the role of the Gulf states in the Middle East political process,the intensification of the issues of the Iranian-Saudi competition in the emergingregional security system.The interest of Manama in steadily developing relations with Moscow isexplained by Russia's growing role in the tectonic shifts unfolding in the Middle East.Solid long-term cooperation with the Kingdom of Bahrain is of strategic importance forboth sides, given the geographical location of the Kingdom and its traditional ties withthe region's axial players - Saudi Arabia and the United States.As the author concludes, and bears out convincingly by this study, both partieshave, potentially, a broad array of possibilities for establishing partnerships in variousspheres of the state's life, from trade and economic cooperation to the crisis settlement,and all that against the favourable backdrop of fundamentally non-dissonant views onkey problems.The contribution of this research project is determined by the lack of analyticalelaboration of this problematic, as well as, on a more applied side, by the need torekindle the interest of the Russian and Bahraini academic community ininterdisciplinary research combining features of applied regional studies and foreignpolicy analysis.

Despite the growing interest of domestic and international experts in theproblems of the Middle East region, there continues to be a gaping lacuna of topicalworks on the prospects and difficulties in developing Russia's relations with thecountries of the Arabian Gulf, in particular Bahrain. The reason for this is, admittedly,the historical context - the interests of the USSR, and the very specific geostrategicreasons why the Russian Federation, if we speak about the Middle East was focusedmainly on the Islamic Mashreq subregion (Syria, Iraq, Israel, the PalestinianAutonomy), whereas the US and Western countries have been and continue to be6orientated towards Saudi Arabia and the Arab Sunni monarchies of the CooperationCouncil of the Arab States of the Arabian Gulf.All of the above allows us to conclude we are likely to expect growing demand inthe near future from the relevant policy, consultancy and business entities for analyticalmaterials on the issues of foreign and domestic policy of the countries of the ArabianGulf.

Thus, this research is acquiring obvious practical significance.The subject matter of the dissertation is a complex of bilateral relations,consisting of military-political cooperation and associated economic cooperationbetween the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Russian Federation.The purview of the present study entails identification the specifics of thedevelopment of Russian-Bahraini at the present stage, the problems and prospects ofthese relations in the conditions of a tense political situation in the Middle East, tohighlight the main trajectories of the transformation of the the regional security system,of the redistribution of influence and spheres of interests among regional and extraregional actors and to account for this dynamic.

The main research question thusbeing: factors of which order of magnitude or level of analysis have a more pronouncedeffect on the Russian – Bahraini relations – global, regional/subregional or national.The chronological scope of the study covers the period from the moment of theformation of the international antiterrorist coalition in 2001 up until the present time.The choice of the chronological framework is linked to the fact that it was preciselyafter the tragic events of September 11, 2001, that a radical transformation of theapproaches of both regional proto-hegemons and world powers began to exertmeaningful impact on the security situation in the Middle East.The objective, or the principal goal, of this study is, by overviewing theavailable primary and secondary sources and literature, to present an up-to-date pictureof the political and economic relations between Russia and Bahrain and trace back itsroots and origins in the ongoing processes of the current formation of a regional securitysystem.7Achievement of the goal set in the study implies the fulfillment of thefollowing tasks:1) to analyze the approaches of Arab, Russian and foreign researchers to thedefinition and interpretation of the concept of “security” in all its diversity, taking intoaccount the specific relationship between the concepts of “national security” and“national interest”;2) to review the main approaches to the study of the regional dimension ofglobal processes through analysis of the concept of the "regional securitycomplex/subsystems” and the appraise role of smaller and medium-sized powers in thisprocess;3) to reveal the specifics of ensuring the security of the Middle East, payingspecial attention to the Cooperation Council of the Arab States of the Arabian Gulf, asthe core of the subregional security system;4) explore avenues of cooperation between Russia and Bahrain in the field ofregional security and economy, as well as to define the major points of foreign policyoverlap and divergence between the two countries and how it affects the collaborativeagenda of Moscow and Manama.The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is an interdisciplinaryapproach privileging applied analysis of foreign policy (as developed first and foremostby the representatives of the MGIMO school of applied foreign policy analysis) situatedwithin a larger and firmly established both in Russia and elsewhere framework of theregional studies tradition and structural realism as its metatheoretical inspiration.