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Michael Klare: Putin's Ruthless Gambit
Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch
The Bush Administration Falters in a Geopolitical Chess Match
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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.

... 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.
(2 September 2008)
Also at Common Dreams.

Iraq reaches oil agreement with China
Reuters via IHT
Iraq and China have agreed on the terms of a $3 billion oil service contract, the Iraqi oil minister said Wednesday, announcing his country's first major oil contract with a foreign company since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The oil minister, Hussain al- Shahristani, warned that time was running out for big Western oil companies, which have pressed for years for Iraqi contracts, to seal even short-term deals that had been expected to mark their return to Iraq, which has the world's third-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Iran.
(28 August 2008)

A foreign policy that makes little sense at all
Clare Short, Birmingham Post
The conflict between Russia and Georgia may seem far from Birmingham’s concerns., but as the price of petrol and gas is straining most people’s budgets, we should stop and think of what it means to pick a fight with Russia.

Russia still has a massive nuclear armoury. It also supplies crucial gas and oil to Europe. Yet American policy, with the UK continuing as its nodding poodle, is to surround Russia by inviting all its neighbours to join NATO. In addition the US has put its new missile defence system into Poland, which Russia sees as an attempt to undermine the nuclear balance and therefore make an attack on Russia more likely.

One of the sad lessons of the crisis is that young David Miliband, the new Foreign Secretary, is continuing the Blair policy of acting as a complete echo of US policy.

... There is no intelligent strategy underpinning this. It seems the US still thinks it can dominate the whole world but the result is the growth of bitter division. The risk of growing instability and conflict in a world facing the problems of global warming and peak oil are quite mad.
(2 September 2008)