As the two main contenders for the Oval Office faced off in the last debate for the presidential run of 2016, Russia's role in the Middle East was a topic on which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and businessman Donald Trump fired some of their bitterest shots at one another. In response to Trump’s statement that he “would enjoy Putin’s respect” — something the flamboyant billionaire sees as a necessary and helpful tool in fixing the badly broken relationship with Russia — Clinton noted that a reason for Moscow to want to have it would be Kremlin’s desire to have a “puppet as president of the United States.”

Trump’s further claim about Russian President Vladimir Putin “outsmarting” Clinton and President Barack Obama “every step of the way” reflects a broader grievance that exists in the United States and in some places across the Middle East that Moscow is winning everywhere, with America in retreat. The narrative is quite appealing to Trump’s supporters but is rather shallow on the merits. Indeed, since the very beginning of the Arab Spring, Russia and the United States have had diametrically opposing views of the nature of the protests and their implications for the broader region. In fact, situations in Libya, Egypt and Syria are frequently brought up by the Russian media and decision-makers as a manifestation of badly conceived and unskillfully managed US policies in the region that started with the invasion of Iraq. In other words, the Russian narrative doesn’t package this as a “win for Moscow-lose for Washington,” but rather a “lose-lose” for everyone — the people in the region above all — and as a series of blunders that should serve as caveats for future regional uprisings and crises.

Still, the joint initiative on the destruction of the Syrian chemical arsenal that Moscow and Washington worked through over 2013-2014 was a great contribution to contemporary global and regional security. A few in the Russian media, for the sake of buttressing domestic propaganda, still recall Putin’s proposal to Obama on Syria's chemical weapons as the Russian leader’s diplomatic victory. In essence, however, it was one of those rare examples when Moscow and Washington could work together on issues of mutual importance and commit to their obligations; these types of initiatives and experiences are badly lacking today.

Unfortunately, the track record of successful bilateral dealings in the region isn’t long, with both sides pursuing their parallel missions — frequently seen as mutually exclusive. But the fact that one party isn’t getting what it wants doesn’t necessarily mean the other one is — especially when the other party is equally struggling to promote its own strategy. Trump’s remarks get him easy tweet followings but are targeted at ill-informed audiences who express little interest in having a critical perception of the events in the Middle East.