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Last Updated: Sep 8, 2008 - 9:02:12 AM |
The more oil and gas passing through Georgia on its way to the West,
the greater that country's geostrategic significance in the US-Russian
struggle over the distribution of Caspian energy. (Photo: Gleb Garanich
/ Reuters)
Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting
in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small
pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of
Stalin's jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to
the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted
minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores.
Neither of these explanations is accurate. To fully grasp the
recent upheavals in the Caucasus, it is necessary to view the conflict
as but a minor skirmish in a far more significant geopolitical struggle
between Moscow and Washington over the energy riches of the Caspian Sea
basin - with former Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir
Putin emerging as the reigning Grand Master of geostrategic chess and
the Bush team turning out to be middling amateurs, at best.
The ultimate prize in this contest is control over the flow of oil
and natural gas from the energy-rich Caspian basin to eager markets in
Europe and Asia. According to the most recent tally by oil giant BP,
the Caspian's leading energy producers, all former "socialist
republics" of the Soviet Union - notably Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan - together possess approximately 48
billion barrels in proven oil reserves (roughly equivalent to those
left in the U.S. and Canada) and 268 trillion cubic feet of natural gas
(essentially equivalent to what Saudi Arabia possesses).
During the Soviet era, the oil and gas output of these nations was,
of course, controlled by officials in Moscow and largely allocated to
Russia and other Soviet republics. After the breakup of the USSR in
1991, however, Western oil companies began to participate in the
hydrocarbon equivalent of a gold rush to exploit Caspian energy
reservoirs, while plans were being made to channel the region's oil and
gas to markets across the world.
Rush to the Caspian
In the 1990s, the Caspian Sea basin was viewed as the world's most
promising new source of oil and gas, and so the major Western energy
firms - Chevron, BP, Shell, and Exxon Mobil, among others - rushed into
the region to take advantage of what seemed a golden opportunity. For
these firms, persuading the governments of the newly independent
Caspian states to sign deals proved to be no great hassle. They were
eager to attract Western investment - and the bribes that often came
with it - and to free themselves from Moscow's economic domination.
But there turned out to be a major catch: It was neither obvious
nor easy to figure out how to move all the new oil and gas to markets
in the West. After all, the Caspian is landlocked, so tankers cannot
get near it, while all existing pipelines passed through Russia and
were hooked into Soviet-era supply systems. While many in Washington
were eager to assist U.S. firms in their drive to gain access to
Caspian energy, they did not want to see the resulting oil and gas flow
through Russia - until recently, the country's leading adversary -
before reaching Western markets.
What, then, to do? Looking at the Caspian chessboard in the
mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton conceived the striking notion of
converting the newly independent, energy-poor Republic of Georgia into
an "energy corridor" for the export of Caspian basin oil and gas to the
West, thereby bypassing Russia altogether. An initial, "early-oil"
pipeline was built to carry petroleum from newly-developed fields in
Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea
coast, where it was loaded onto tankers for delivery to international
markets. This would be followed by a far more audacious scheme: the
construction of the 1,000-mile BTC pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to
Tbilisi in Georgia and then on to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean
coast. Again, the idea was to exclude Russia - which had, in the
intervening years, been transformed into a struggling, increasingly
impoverished former superpower - from the Caspian Sea energy rush.
Clinton presided over every stage of the BTC line's initial
development, from its early conception to the formal arrangements
imposed by Washington on the three nations involved in its corporate
structuring. (Final work on the pipeline was not completed until 2006,
two years into George W. Bush's second term.) For Clinton and his
advisors, this was geopolitics, pure and simple - a calculated effort
to enhance Western energy security while diminishing Moscow's control
over the global flow of oil and gas. The administration's efforts to
promote the construction of new pipelines through Azerbaijan and
Georgia were intended "to break Russia's monopoly of control over the
transportation of oil from the region," Sheila Heslin of the National
Security Council bluntly told a Senate investigating committee in 1997.
Clinton understood that this strategy entailed significant risks,
particularly because Washington's favored "energy corridor" passed
through or near several major conflict zones - including the
Russian-backed breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With
this in mind, Clinton made a secondary decision - to convert the new
Georgian army into a military proxy of the United States, equipped and
trained by the Department of Defense. From 1998 to 2000 alone, Georgia
was awarded $302 million in U.S. military and economic aid - more than
any other Caspian country - and top U.S. military officials started
making regular trips to its capital, Tbilisi, to demonstrate support
for then-president Eduard Shevardnadze.
In those years, Clinton was the top chess player in the Caspian
region, while his Russian presidential counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, was
far too preoccupied with domestic troubles and a bitter, costly,
ongoing guerrilla war in Chechnya to match his moves. It was clear,
however, that senior Russian officials were deeply concerned by the
growing U.S. presence in their southern backyard - what they called
their "near abroad" - and had already had begun planning for an
eventual comeback. "It hasn't been left unnoticed in Russia that
certain outside interests are trying to weaken our position in the
Caspian basin," Andrei Y. Urnov of the Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs declared in May 2000. "No one should be perplexed that Russia
is determined to resist the attempts to encroach on her interests."
Russia Resurgent
At this critical moment, a far more capable player took over on
Russia's side of the geopolitical chessboard. On December 31, 1999,
Vladimir V. Putin was appointed president by Yeltsin and then, on March
26, 2000, elected to a full four-year term in office. Politics in the
Caucasus and the Caspian region have never been the same.
Even before assuming the presidency, Putin indicated that he
believed state control over energy resources should be the basis for
Russia's return to great-power status. In his doctoral dissertation, a
summary of which was published in 1999, he had written that "[t]he
state has the right to regulate the process of the acquisition and the
use of natural resources, and particularly mineral resources [including
oil and natural gas], independent of on whose property they are
located." On this basis, Putin presided over the re-nationalization of
many of the energy companies that had been privatized by Yeltsin and
the virtual confiscation of Yukos - once Russia's richest private
energy firm - by Russian state authorities. He also brought Gazprom,
the world's largest natural gas supplier, back under state control and
placed a protégé, Dmitri Medvedev - now president of Russia - at its
helm.
Once he had restored state control over the lion's share of
Russia's oil and gas resources, Putin turned his attention to the next
obvious place - the Caspian Sea basin. Here, his intent was not so much
to gain ownership of its energy resources - although Russian firms have
in recent years acquired an equity share in some Caspian oil and gas
fields - but rather to dominate the export conduits used to transport
its energy to Europe and Asia.
Russia already enjoyed a considerable advantage since much of
Kazakhstan's oil already flowed to the West via the Caspian Pipeline
Consortium (CPC), which passes through Russia before terminating on the
Black Sea; moreover, much of Central Asia's natural gas continued to
flow to Russia through pipelines built during the Soviet era. But
Putin's gambit in the Caspian region evidently was meant to capture a
far more ambitious prize. He wanted to ensure that most oil and gas
from newly developed fields in the Caspian basin would travel west via
Russia.
The first part of this drive entailed frenzied diplomacy by Putin
and Medvedev (still in his role as board chairman of Gazprom) to
persuade the presidents of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to
ship their future output of gas through Russia. Success was achieved
when, in December 2007, Putin signed an agreement with the leaders of
these countries to supply 20 billion cubic meters of gas per year
through a new conduit along the Caspian's eastern shore to southern
Russia - for ultimate delivery to Europe via Gazprom's existing
pipeline network.
Meanwhile, Putin moved to undermine international confidence in
Georgia as a reliable future corridor for energy delivery. This became
a strategic priority for Moscow because the European Union announced
plans to build a $10 billion natural-gas pipeline from the Caspian,
dubbed "Nabucco" after the opera by Verdi. It would run from Turkey to
Austria, while linking up to an expanded South Caucasus gas pipeline
that now extends from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Erzurum in Turkey.
The Nabucco pipeline was intended as a dramatic move to reduce Europe's
reliance on Russian natural gas - and so has enjoyed strong support
from the Bush administration.
It is against this backdrop that the recent events in Georgia
unfolded.
Checkmate in Georgia
Obviously, the more oil and gas passing through Georgia on its way
to the West, the greater that country's geostrategic significance in
the U.S.-Russian struggle over the distribution of Caspian energy.
Certainly, the Bush administration recognized this and responded by
providing hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the
Georgian military and helping to train specialized forces for
protection of the new pipelines. But the administration's partner in
Tbilisi, President Mikheil Saakashvili, was not content to play the
relatively modest role of pipeline protector. Instead, he sought to
pursue a megalomaniacal fantasy of recapturing the breakaway regions of
Abhkazia and South Ossetia with American help. As it happened, the Bush
team - blindsided by their own neoconservative fantasies - saw in
Saakashvili a useful pawn in their pursuit of a long smoldering
anti-Russian agenda. Together, they walked into a trap cleverly set by
Putin.
It is hard not to conclude that Russian prime minister goaded the
rash Saakashvili into invading South Ossetia by encouraging Abkhazian
and South Ossetian irregulars to attack Georgian outposts and villages
on the peripheries of the two enclaves. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice reportedly told Saakashvili not to respond to such provocations
when she met with him in July. Apparently her advice fell on deaf ears.
Far more enticing, it seems, was her promise of strong U.S. backing for
Georgia's rapid entry into NATO. Other American leaders, including
Senator John McCain, assured Saakashvili of unwavering U.S. support.
Whatever was said in these private conversations, the Georgian
president seems to have interpreted them as a green light for his
adventuristic impulses. On August 7th, by all accounts, his forces
invaded South Ossetia and attacked its capital city of Tskhinvali,
giving Putin what he long craved - a seemingly legitimate excuse to
invade Georgia and demonstrate the complete vulnerability of Clinton's
(and now Bush's) vaunted energy corridor. Today, the Georgian army is
in shambles, the BTC and South Caucasus gas pipelines are within range
of Russian firepower, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia have declared
their independence, quickly receiving Russian recognition. In response
to these developments, the Bush administration has, along with some
friendly leaders in Europe, mounted a media and diplomatic
counterattack, accusing Moscow of barbaric behavior and assorted
violations of international law. Threats have also been made to exclude
Russia from various international forums and institutions, such as the
G-8 club of governments and the World Trade Organization. It is
possible, then, that Moscow will suffer some isolation and
inconvenience as a result of its incursion into Georgia.
None of this, so far as can be determined, will alter the picture
in the Caucasus: Putin has moved his most powerful pieces onto this
corner of the chessboard, America's pawn has been decisively defeated,
and there's not much of a practical nature that Washington (or London
or Paris or Berlin) can do to alter the outcome.
There will, of course, be more rounds to come, and it is impossible
to predict how they will play out. Putin prevailed this time around
because he focused on geopolitical objectives, while his opponents were
blindly driven by fantasy and ideology; so long as this pattern
persists, he or his successors are likely to come out on top. Only if
American leaders assume a more realistic approach to Russia's resurgent
power or, alternatively, choose to collaborate with Moscow in the
exploitation of Caspian energy, will the risk of further strategic
setbacks in the region disappear.
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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