The inheritance of the rights and the international positions does not necessarily mean that the Russian Federation took anything from the ideology of the Soviet Union. Only the disgruntled would deny the fact that the Soviet foreign policy played a prominent role at the level of turning the page of the colonial phase during the fifties and sixties, and that it offered services which are still standing today. This is true, whether in terms of the High Dam in Egypt, the armament of the Arab armies, the direct engagement in battles alongside the Arab soldiers in the depletion war at the end of the sixties or the tens of thousands of scientific graduates from Soviet universities. Moreover, it offered diplomatic and political back up in the international forums, in support of the Arab position in the conflict against Israel and at the level of the developmental, liberation and education issues. But this does not eliminate the fact that these policies were adopted based on geostrategic calculations related to the Cold War and the international chess game, rather than on ideological bases or in accordance with the “friendship among all the peoples” that filled the hearts of the leaders of the “loyal friend,” as it used to be claimed by the Soviet propaganda at the time. These lines are not enough to assess the Soviet then Russian foreign policies, especially toward the Arab world. But what was noticeable was that the Russian Federation (and the People's Republic of China) stood against the draft resolution condemning the excessive use of violence against the peaceful protesters by the authorities in Syria. If one were to proceed with the interpretations for the Russian position until their tacky mercantile end, one would say that the price of the Russian veto did not exceed a few hundred million dollars, i.e. the price of the weapons sold by Moscow to Damascus, at a time when the talk about strategic considerations and fears forcing the Russian government to prevent the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad's regime seem to be unconvincing. Regardless of the celebrations of the “historic” Russian-Syrian victory at the Security Council – which is at the end of the day a victory against the Syrian citizens and the simplest sense of justice and fairness in the face of a mighty oppression machine – one could say that the Russian veto against the draft resolution which condemned the practices of the Syrian regime marks the other facet of the American veto against Palestine's request to join the United Nations as a full member state. What is tragic at the level of the Russian and American steps, is that both sides which always announced their rejection of hegemony and unilateral policies (i.e. Russia) and proclaimed themselves the defenders of human rights and freedoms (i.e. the United States), used their last diplomatic weapons to force the Syrian and Palestinian people to remain persecuted and occupied. As for the message which could be drawn from the Russian and American positions at the Security Council, it has multiple levels and facets, one of which being that the two international powers – despite the discrepancy affecting their importance and weight – do not really care about the aspirations of the people and their yearning for freedom, neither before nor after the Arab Spring. Their strategic calculations which feature a failing pattern of understanding the world and dividing power in it, aim at keeping the people and governments of the Third World, including the Arab world, under the hegemony of the superpowers, and at resorting to power and violence as the only language understood by a wild and harmful world. Once again, Russia, China and the United States are wasting an opportunity to listen to the voice of the “small,” ordinary and shattered Arabs in Syria and Palestine, and are giving them an arrogant and cold look. So who is to blame if the rulers achieve what they want from the mutual bloodshed?
