There are 139 days until Jan. 20, 2009.
Putin's Ruthless Gambit
The Bush Administration Falters in a Geopolitical Chess Match
By Michael T. Klare
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174971/michael_klare_the_bush_administration_checkmated_in_georgia
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.
Michael T. Klare is professor of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and the author,
most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The
New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books).
Copyright 2008 Michael T. Klare
No comments:
Post a Comment