BEIRUT — Almost undetected, Russia is regaining much of the influence that it lost in the Middle East after the Soviet Union collapsed. Ever since Russia invaded Georgia in August, Arab satellite television and Web sites have been rife with talk about the region's role in an emerging "new Cold War."
Is the Arab world's Cold War patron really back and, if so, what will it mean for peace in the region?
With the USSR's demise, communist ideology, which Muslims believe contradicts their faith, ended too. Communism never stopped Arab regimes opposed by the United States from accepting arms supplies from the Soviet-era Russians, but it did prevent Russia from securing the kind of intimate influence that America had secured with its regional allies.