May 17, 2007
ATimes
On May 9, the Chinese People's Daily admitted, "If we look at US-Russian relations closely, it is clear that we are standing at the edge of a new cold war." It was an assessment long in coming.
Chinese commentaries in recent months have tended to view the growing tension in Russia's relations with the United States as the inevitable manifestation of the "pulls and pushes" of a complex, but in essence interlocking, relationship of cooperation and competition, where each side is optimally realizing its interests.
But the thinking has changed. The People's Daily commented,
"As the Russian economy grows stronger, the US simply cannot sit back and relax. It must continue to contain the nation to prevent it from rising again. By deploying its national missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Washington is no doubt targeting Russia ... the likelihood of a new arms race will increase dramatically ... the possibility of another cold war does exist."
Curiously, the commentary appeared on the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin set out on a crucial mission to Central Asia, a vast region bordering China, which increasingly resembles the Maginot Line of the new cold war. Fresh trenches are being dug; new fortifications erected overnight; vantage points are occupied without ceremony.
Russian media quoted a Kyrgyz secret-service agent as saying that the US has been quietly stockpiling low-grade uranium-tipped weapons at its airbase in Manas for use in any military operation against Iran.
Putin's visit to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan on May 9-12 resulted in a dramatic agreement over a trilateral deal involving the three countries: to build a pipeline along the Caspian Sea coast for transporting Turkmen gas to the European market via Kazakhstan and Russia. The pipeline is expected to be operational by 2009, and is estimated to carry 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas annually.
Simultaneously, the presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also announced an agreement involving Uzbekistan, revamping the entire Soviet-era pipeline grid connecting Central Asia to Western markets via Russia to enhance its capacity to 90bcm annually in anticipation of increased exports of gas by the Central Asian countries.
Putin's visit was about energy cooperation - Russia and Kazakhstan also agreed on a joint uranium-enrichment venture and discussed cooperation in nuclear power generation - but its political and strategic implications are equally far-reaching.
Its outcome constitutes a great strategic setback for the United States' obsessive campaign in recent years to secure oil and gas from the Caspian and Central Asian region that would be independent of Russian control.
With 40-odd weeks remaining in his presidency, Putin has categorically established that Russia's intention is to stage a comeback in Central Asia, which he underscored as a priority seven years ago soon after taking over power in the Kremlin.
Arguably, what must have lent a sense of urgency to Moscow's diplomacy was the arc of encirclement that the US began putting around Russia. The reverberations of last week's development are already being felt in European capitals. The "old-new" Europe divide surfaced at a European Union foreign ministers' meeting on Monday in Brussels as leaders bitterly debated a common policy toward Russia. Poland and Germany aimed pointed barbs against each other.
US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said at a meeting of the International Energy Agency in Paris on Monday that the Russian-Turkmen-Kazakh gas pipeline deal is "not good for Europe". But Bodman sidestepped the harsh reality that US energy diplomacy, too, must now painstakingly claw its way back from Square 1. And not only that.
Tehran will have sensed by now - just as it is about to sit down for negotiations with the US over Iraq - that it has virtually become the last frontier in the energy war. Europe's remaining hope of diversifying its energy sources (away from Russian supplies) will significantly depend on its access to Iran's gas reserves.
Not by coincidence, the secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolai Bordyuzha, seized the moment in Moscow on Monday to make a startling suggestion that Iran could become a member of the CSTO.
In yet another sign of the new cold war, Bordyuzha also announced the CSTO's intention to have a common air-defense system and create a large military contingent. (The CSTO's current members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia and Uzbekistan.) If the CSTO is so forthcoming toward Iran, can the Eurasian Economic Community and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) lag behind?
More important, with a consolidation of Russian influence over the energy-producing countries of the Central Asian region, is Moscow finally moving toward the "SCO energy club"? The annual SCO summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in a few weeks should provide some interesting answers. (The SCO's members are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran has observer status.)
To be sure, Putin's visit to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan last week heralded a profound shift in the co-relation of forces in the Caspian and Central Asia. This shift is discernible from many angles.
First and foremost, it is becoming clear that with the transition of power in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, its policy of "positive neutrality" under the late president Saparmurat Niyazov is giving way to one of rejoining the Central Asian fold. That means Putin's 2002 proposal for a "gas exporters' alliance" comprising Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan may be taking a giant leap forward.
Thus Russia's transit monopoly through the so-called Central Asia-Center Pipeline, known officially as the Single Export Channel, will remain firmly in place for the foreseeable future. Thereby, Central Asian states' gas reserves are, in effect, amalgamated with Russia's into a single pool that will be marketed under Russia's physical and commercial control.
Turkmenistan, which has a potential capability of exporting 100bcm of gas annually, was crucial to the realization of Moscow's idea of the "gas exporters' alliance" - which was why the "Great Game" over Turkmen energy policies in the post-Niyazov era became so absorbing in recent months.
Second, Turkmenistan was the key to the success of the EU-US plan of developing a gas pipeline from the Caspian to South Caucasus and then to Turkey and Europe - a negotiating process that dates to the Bill Clinton administration's 1998 initiative for a East-West Energy Transport Corridor.
A key component of this was to be an Aktau-Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil-export route stretching from Kazakhstan all the way to the eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, the EU and the US had counted on Kazakhstan (with an anticipated export potential of 40bcm) to link up with Turkmenistan in the trans-Caspian gas pipeline to make it economically viable.
But last week's deal locks up the bulk of Turkmenistan's gas production via Russia. In turn, Turkmenistan's pledge to Russia to handle the bulk of its gas exports puts paid to the EU-US calculations of developing a pipeline tapping Caspian and Central Asian gas and bypassing Russian territory at the same time. In other words, Europe's growing dependence on Russian gas supplies will remain a fact of life for years to come. European countries will continue to negotiate bilaterally with Moscow for their gas supplies.
This has far-reaching significance for any common EU energy policy for which Washington has been desperately striving. This will also impact EU-Russia relations on the whole, apart from having the potential to cast a shadow on Washington's trans-Atlantic leadership within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation recently commented:
Washington policymakers are scrambling to develop tactics that can counter Russia's aggressive action aimed at cementing Kremlin control over Caspian basin energy and export routes. In reacting to the Russian moves, US officials are conducting consultations with the EU representatives, seeking to improve the coordination of energy policy ...
However, Brussels is split over what to do about Russia's ominous behavior. Germany is already deferential to Russia's energy interests, and Berlin appears to want to do nothing that would disturb the status quo ... France and Italy are also not enthusiastic about confronting Moscow as their national companies too are involved in lucrative joint ventures in Russia.
Equally, US energy diplomacy in the Caspian finds itself in a cul-de-sac. Washington focused on Kazakhstan all through last year. The US vice president as well as the energy secretary visited the capital, Astana. President George W Bush hosted Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev in Washington.
Washington's objective was threefold: cajole Nazarbayev into committing Kazakh oil in a big way to the US-financed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline so that the venture becomes economically viable; two, encourage Kazakhstan to work in tandem with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan so that a trans-Caspian gas pipeline bypassing Russia becomes a reality; third, promote Kazakh oil exports to Central Europe via Georgia and Ukraine so that the pro-US countries of "new Europe" , such as Poland and the Baltic states (and potentially Ukraine), could jettison their dependence on Russian energy supplies, which is an imperative for the geopolitics of Eurasia in any new cold-war setting.
So it came as a body blow to Washington that Nazarbayev said in Astana after talks with Putin last Thursday, "Kazakhstan is absolutely committed to shipping most of its oil, if not all of it, through Russian territory. We have always said this." Nazarbayev punctured a big hole into the myth propagated by the US in recent months that Kazakhstan was disengaging from its strategic partnership with Russia and aligning with the US, the EU and NATO.
Furthermore, Nazarbayev affirmed on Thursday that Kazakhstan is interested in joining a Russian project to build an oil pipeline to link the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk with the Bulgarian port of Burgas and further with the Greek port of Alexandroupolis on the Mediterranean - a project that Washington has opposed tooth and nail.
What does it imply? Question marks resurface over the long-term economic viability of the much-acclaimed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline built with US support, which had counted on Kazakh oil supplies in substantial quantities. Second, Kazakh participation makes the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline a 100% certainty, which also means that Russia emerges as a significant energy supplier in southeastern Europe as a whole. In strategic terms, US attempts in recent years to roll back Russia's traditional influence in the Black Sea region and the Balkans have suffered a setback.
Besides, Russia is separately working on a project called Blue Stream 2, which promises to make Hungary the "hub" of Russian gas supplies to Central Europe. Washington has been hitherto pressuring Budapest to give up the idea of cooperating with Russia, and instead sign up for the trans-Caspian pipeline system bypassing Russia. Hungary's socialist government now gains the leeway to withstand US pressure on this score.
The burial of the idea of the trans-Caspian pipeline (which would have passed through Turkey) also means that Turkey will now have greater impetus to work with Russia in energy cooperation. That opens up a whole lot of possibilities for routing Russian oil and gas exports to the Mediterranean region via Turkey.
There is an added geopolitical dimension. An entente cordiale has been developing between Turkey and Russia in the Black Sea region. The two historical rivals share the common interest that outside powers such as the US do not erode their traditional influence in the Black Sea region. Washington has been monitoring this with unease at a time when Turkish-US relations are passing through a difficult phase on account of the war in Iraq.
Finally, Nazarbayev also made a telling point by staying away from the energy summit hosted in Warsaw by the Polish government last Friday, and attended by the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine. The main agenda was to discuss a new oil-export route that would avoid Russia. Without Astana's active participation, the entire Polish venture to create an energy corridor from the Caspian - a venture with pronounced anti-Russia bias - is doomed to become a non-starter, despite the strong US backing for it.
The sum total of all these developments is, to quote a senior analyst at London's Center for Global Energy Studies, "It will be very difficult to see either gas or oil moving from Central Asia by pipeline toward Europe bypassing Russia." The two-day EU-Russia summit in the Russian city of Samara that was due to start on Wednesday cannot remain unaffected.
What bears close watch in the months ahead will be whether Turkmenistan's growing foreign-policy tilt toward Moscow translates as a willingness to be integrated with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Eurasian Economic Community and the CSTO, in particular.
In comparison, Moscow has every reason to be satisfied with its exceptionally close strategic partnership with Kazakhstan. As the official Russian news agency put it, "Kazakhstan is the alter-ego of Russia in the CIS space." Evidently, there is a high degree of coordination between the two countries (at the level of the two leaderships) in their foreign and security policies in the Caspian and Central Asian region.
This became obvious on May 2 when the Kazakh Parliament endorsed Russia's condemnation of the removal of a World War II memorial in the Estonian capital Tallinn. Again, Nazarbayev's visit to Bishkek on April 25-26 was a barely disguised intervention aimed at countering the covert US plan to destabilize the leadership of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Nazarbayev offered US$100 million as emergency assistance for Kyrgyzstan, apart from food and fuel supplies. Nazarbayev used his immense personal prestige as a regional figure to do some plain speaking with pro-US agitators in Bishkek's city square - something that Putin couldn't afford to do lest it was construed in Washington as Russia's "imperial muscle-flexing".
Nazarbayev chastised the agitators clamoring for Bakiyev's resignation:
"First, all must sit at the negotiating table. Second, one must respect authorities who have been elected by the people, and these authorities must use their power to establish order in the country in a democratic and lawful way. If neither the first nor the second solution is acceptable, then Kyrgyzstan will be left with the alternative of being another Afghanistan - with its turmoil, anarchy, lawlessness, extremism, terrorism, drug trafficking. In such an eventuality, Kyrgyzstan will turn into an enclave of instability. Does anybody really want this?"
Nazarbayev has been equally caustic about attempts by Washington to instigate instability in Ukraine with the objective of rolling back the revival of Russian influence in Kiev.
What emerges is that the US attempt to drive a wedge between the Central Asian countries and Russia lies in shambles. Russia's economic recovery and its willingness and capacity to play an assertive role in the region have instilled confidence in the Central Asian states that they can look up to the Kremlin for a leadership role.
Contrary to Western propaganda, Central Asian leaderships have always felt close to Moscow. A variety of factors work as underpinnings of affinity between Moscow and the Central Asian capitals - personal, cultural, historical, political and geopolitical, and economic. Plainly speaking, Washington has grossly underestimated the Central Asian states' reluctance to antagonize their big neighbor.
Putin's emphasis on pragmatic common interests as the cornerstone of Russia's relations with the countries of the region appeals to the Central Asian leaderships. Putin doesn't mind if Ashgabat or Astana or Tashkent bargains hard with Moscow on the basis of economic self-interest, as long as Russia's overall geopolitical interests are kept in view, especially at a time when the growing contradictions in US-Russia relations are bound to affect the CIS countries.
Putin unceremoniously got rid of Moscow's remaining notions of imperial ambitions. He cut out the needless verbiage of the Boris Yeltsin era. At the same time, he concentrated on upgrading Russia's economic presence in the region and began responding to the calls of regional security and stability. Over the past seven years of his presidency, Putin transformed Russia's ties into working relationships. This may well be his finest legacy in post-Soviet Russia's foreign policy.
Washington's record, in comparison, has been appalling. US policies are predicated on competitive politics with regard to Russia. They take stock of the challenges and opportunities in Central Asia in zero-sum terms. Thus if the US were to assist Kyrgyzstan in hydroelectric-power generation, the prerequisite would be that the awesome power of the Pamir's cascades doesn't flow through transmission lines criss-crossing the Russian landscape.
But as Frederick Starr, an influential scholar on Central Asia, pointed out recently, how could Washington make Kyrgyz hydroelectric power flow toward South Asia? "The only trouble is that Pakistan has this whole process and, therefore, US policy by the throat. The fact is, everything we've discussed here stops at the border of Pakistan," Starr reminded a senior State Department official on a public forum at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington.
Washington's policies in Central Asia are intrusive. And, when the Central Asians retaliate, as Tashkent did in May 2005 after the Andizhan events, there was nothing the US could do about it (see Into the valley of death ..., Asia Times Online, June 15, 2005).
In due course, Washington stooped to make amends. But when a superpower stoops low, it becomes ungainly. Tashkent ignored US entreaties. Washington is now left with an Uzbekistan policy that is content with spreading an occasional canard or two about Tashkent's equations with Moscow.
Yet Washington is still to learn that the proud people of the steppes do not easily forget slights. In a completely unwise move last week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice all of a sudden raised US concerns over Kazakhstan's political reforms with Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin, who was on a visit to Washington. Rice tied US support to Kazakhstan's bid to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to political reform.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.)
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