Lee Harris brings his sense of history to current events once again, in Russia … An Honest Broker?:
In its recent dealing with Iran and Hamas, Russia has succeeded in achieving a major geopolitical objective. And it has done so with relatively little cost. It has managed to convince many in the Muslim world that it is willing to play the role of ‘the honest broker’ — the role that the wily German Chancellor Otto Bismarck assigned to himself at the Congress of Berlin. For example, representatives of Hamas, on returning from their trip to Moscow, praised the Russian efforts at mediation, and noted that Russia’s geographical position made it the ideal party to settle differences between the Islamic world and the West.