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📌 OPENING – THE ETERNAL QUESTION For more than seven decades, one question has haunted Western policymakers, Middle Eastern leaders, and international relations scholars alike: Why is Russia so consistently present in the Middle East? Not just during the Cold War, when the USSR competed with the United States for influence. Not just during the 1990s, when a chaotic and impoverished Russia had retreated from global affairs. And certainly not just after 2015, when Russia launched its military intervention in Syria. No — Russia's presence in the Middle East has been continuous from the 1940s to the present day. Through revolutions, wars, peace processes, and regional transformations, Moscow has maintained a seat at the Middle Eastern table, even when it could barely afford the chair. This is the eleventh article in Cakranegara News' 15-part series #RUSSIANFOOTPRINT. We have examined Russia's military footprint (Article 8), its diplomatic strategy (Article 9), its vision for g...

📌 OPENING – THE MAP IS BEING REWRITTEN Every major war in history has redrawn the global power map. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) ended with the rise of France and the decline of Spain. The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) ended with British global dominance. World War I (1914-1918) destroyed four empires and created the modern Middle East. World War II (1939-1945) established the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers. The question facing the world in 2026 is: What will the current Middle East conflict redraw? Not the end of the Cold War in 1991. Not the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Not the 2008 financial crisis. The cascading crises of the 2020s — the Gaza war, the Red Sea shipping crisis, the Iran-Israel shadow war, the Lebanon-Israel clashes — have the potential to reshape global power in ways that most analysts are only beginning to understand. And Russia, as we have documented throughout this series, is positioning itself to be a primary beneficiary of that reshaping. Thi...