As a key international geopolitical region owing to its abundance of energy supplies and presence of global trade routes, there was significant competition between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War (Painter, 2014; Breslauer, 2015). This was an ideological struggle for power and influence in the region by the superpowers in the context of a bipolar global order and a zero-sum game in the historical geopolitical competition (Fuller, 1990). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly created Russian Federation lacked the state capability and capacity to continue its engagement in the Middle East and North Africa; it also lacked the political will as it sought closer relations with the West.