Finland is the daughter of the Baltic Sea and is known as the neutral land. Its capital is Helsinki. In 1917, the Bolsheviks granted it the right to self-determination. It did not belong to NATO. The United States and Russia brought together the Cold War détente document.

Helsinki's interest in the transformations and turmoil of the Middle East has increased in recent years, reflected in the inauguration of its own academic institutes, arranging visits of diplomatic and parliamentary delegations, organizing activities with research centers, offering documents to resolve crises and deepening cooperation with Arab intelligence services.

Since the end of World War II and until the Syrian war, the Middle East has been a suitable place for Helsinki, being the worst hotbed of instability in the world. It is the only geopolitical region in the world that does not have a system of security and regional cooperation.

Putin and Trump’s meeting with Trump at the gates of the end of the Syrian war in Helsinki on the seventeenth of last July may confirm this meaning, and it may also resemble Roosevelt’s meeting with Stalin and Churchill in February 1945 in Yalta at the gates of the end of World War II.

The similarity may be due to the fact that the international system has moved in the Yalta meeting to bipolarity between the Soviets and the Americans, just as the international system after the Helsinki meeting may move from unilateralism to a new international troika.

As a stop on a long road, the bipolar system passed through Helsinki in August 1975, when the European security and cooperation system brought together the Soviet and American axis states in one system, before the Soviets collapsed and the countries of Europe were united in the European Union in 1992.

The Soviet Union did not overlook the role of Helsinki in 1975 in undermining the Warsaw Pact in 1991 after the fall of the Soviets and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the emergence of the European Union, which had been growing slowly since the formation of the European Iron and Coal Company in 1953.

Will Putin ignore the role of the upcoming Helsinki, which will bring together the countries that came under Russia's mantle with the countries that came under the mantle of America, to result in a new Middle Eastern system far from the Russians, similar to the European Union?

Putin may overlook and realize that the frequent European and Middle Eastern traffic in Helsinki reveals a Russian-Western struggle for international leadership and influence in the Middle East and Europe, which has continued since the start of the Great Game between them in 1829 until 2018.

This Russian-Western conflict led to European chaos that continued until the fall of the Soviets and the Soviet Eurasian project and the emergence of the European Union, and Middle Eastern chaos that has continued since 1920 and until further notice.

Russia, while competing with the West for international leadership, insists that no single power should dominate Europe and the Middle East, while America insists that the Russians or others have no role in Europe and the Middle East, in addition to preventing Russia from competing with America for international leadership.

The Russians inherited Caper from Caper in their struggle with the West, a trilogy that enabled them to prolong their great game, which is the ability to stretch in every direction, absolute insecurity, and a transnational tyrannical revolutionary model capable of igniting wars without borders.

Although they lost political and security control over Europe at the end of the Cold War, they continued to monopolize Europe's need for Russian energy and prevented the energy of the Middle East from reaching Europe through their presence in Syria.

Syria is the mediator of the road linking Europe and the Middle East, and it is the mediator of the contract of Iran and Russia, which if one or both of them lose their presence in Syria, they may lose their role in the Middle East, and the impact of this may regress on the regime of each.

The Middle East, on the other hand, is the only international energy reservoir capable of breaking Russia's monopoly on Russian energy lines and prices for Europe, and perhaps the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin, as a prelude to a Middle Eastern station.

Syria has divided the Middle East and the conflicting countries in it into two parts, the countries of the Astana axis and the countries of the Geneva axis, and its repercussions have affected the Gulf Cooperation Council, so the so-called Qatari-Turkish-Iranian axis appeared, and it finally reached a dead end.

James Jeffrey, America’s envoy to Syria, said that the Astana-Sochi axis must end and we return to Geneva, if the constitutional committee is not formed before December 14, 2018, and the Russians must decide between Syria turning into Afghanistan, or being born from its womb Helsinki.

Helsinki, then, is an indispensable station for the Russians to break out of the impasse, as it will gain international status, instead of turning Syria into Afghanistan again, if they insist on not abandoning Iran and not going to Geneva.

Russia may need Arab cover for Iran’s exit from Syria, after it needed Israel to keep Iran away from the Golan, and this Arab party would be none other than Saudi Arabia, whose handshake between Putin and Mohammed bin Salman at the Argentina summit indicated an urgent Russian need.

This dire Russian need for Saudi Arabia is matched by a Saudi need for Russia as well, in light of the problems the two sides face with the (democratic) West inside and outside the United States.

This Russian need in the field of oil and Middle Eastern influence may reveal a Russian need for Saudi Arabia (greater) than Saudi Arabia’s need for Russia, and this may absolve Saudi Arabia from the argument of an alliance with the Russians, which is rejected by the United States, and may give the Russians a chance to win Syria without Iran.

The reason for the US-rejected alliance with any Middle Eastern party with the Russians is that this region is decisively decisive for the West, which does not even guarantee the luxury of neutrality for any Middle Eastern party in the West’s conflict with the Russians, just as the Russians are unable to defend their ally in the end, as Nouri Al-Saeed says:

Also, the Russian-Saudi rapprochement may bring them together with America in Syria, not on an oil road map in the era of zeroing Iran’s oil exports, but on a Syrian road map also in the era of zeroing Iran’s presence in Syria.

This double whistle by Iran may open the door to a Middle Eastern Helsinki station from which the Russians cannot escape, even if they realize its American goal, and Syria will remain until further notice divided between the Russians and the Americans, just as Germany remained divided until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And Iran may accept Helsinki and Pompeo’s conditions if it guarantees that its regime will not be attacked. Rather, the Helsinki station may be a cover for Russia that gives it the opportunity to talk about a symbolic victory that it desperately needs.

Helsinki, the potential Middle East, remains a (non-binding) negotiating platform on specific policies, a mechanism for maintaining the balance of power, and a station on an open road until the equation changes between the Russians and the Americans.

Writer Dr. Omar Abdel Sattar Mahmoud