The following is mirrored from its source at:
http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/DA26Ag01.html.
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Central Asia/Russia
THE ROVING EYE
Pipelineistan, Part 2: The games nations play
By Pepe Escobar
January 26, 2002
Asia Times Online
Part 1: The rules of the game
Two months ago, the White House was deliriously happy with the
official opening of the first new pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline
Consortium -- a joint venture including Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman,
ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and a bunch of other minor players.
This $2.65 billion pipeline links the enormous Tengiz oilfield in
northwestern Kazakhstan to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the
Black Sea: from there, the sky -- ie the world market -- is the
limit. Bush II, according to the White House, is developing "a
network of multiple Caspian pipelines that also include the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa, and Baku-Novorossiyisk oil
pipelines, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline". So one of
the key nodes in the American petrostrategy is composed by
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
The pipeline consortium for Baku-Ceyhan, led by British Petroleum,
is represented by the law firm Baker & Botts. The principal
attorney is none other than Texan superstar James Baker -
secretary of state under Bush I and chief spokesman for the Bush
II 2000 campaign when all gloves were off to shut down the Florida
vote recount.
Texas-based, scandal-prone Enron, together with Amoco, Chevron,
Mobil, UNOCAL and British Petroleum, were all spending billions of
dollars to pump the reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan. Baker, Scowcroft, Sununu and Cheney have all closed
major deals directly and indirectly on behalf of the oil
companies. But now the Enron scandal has just exploded right in
the face of the oil industry -- and Bush II's administration. It
will be very enlightening to see what the American tradition of
investigative journalism will make of all this.
Enron once had a market value of $70 billion. It filed for
bankruptcy in December 2001 after admitting it ovestated its
profits by almost $600 million. Paul Krugman wrote that "Enron
helped Dick Cheney devise an energy plan that certainly looks as
if it was written by and for the companies that advised his task
force". The Enron big-time crooks -- close pals of Cheney and Bush
II -- dwarf any Asian "crony capitalists" Americans were carping
about before and after the Asian financial crisis.
There's no shortage of crooks in the oil industry. Turkmenistan
and Azerbaijan have intimate relations with Israeli military
intelligence. A so-called "former" Israeli intelligence agent,
Yousef Maiman, president of the Mehrav Group of Israel, is nothing
less than "Special Ambassador", official negotiatior and even
policymaker responsible for developing the enormous energy
resources of Turkmenistan.
Maiman is a citizen of the gas republic by presidential decree -
signed by the Turkmenbashi himself, the fabulously megalomaniac
Saparmurad Niazov, former member of the Soviet Politburo. Maiman,
according to the Wall Street Journal, is actively involved in
advancing the "geopolitical goals of both the US and Israel" in
Central Asia. He certainly does not beat around the bush:
"Controlling the transport route is controlling the product."
Nobody knows where Mehrav's money comes from.
Mehrav's planned pipelines bypass both Iran and Russia. But after
the conquest of Afghanistan, oil sources in Singapore say Mehrav
may consider dealing with Iran. It's all to do with the importance
of the Turkish market. Russia and Turkmenistan are fiercely
competing to conquer the Turkish gas market. Considering the
strategic relationship between Turkey and Israel, the Israeli game
remains preventing Turkish strategic dependence on Iran. Turkey is
a NATO member and a key US ally. The US and Britain routinely
strike against Iraq from Turkish bases -- from which they patrol
the unillateraly-declared Iraqi "no-fly zones". These "no-fly
zones" are obviously not sanctioned by the UN.
Mehrav is also involved in a murderous project to reduce the flow
of water to Iraq by diverting water from the Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers to southeastern Turkey. And Magal Security
Systems, an Israeli company, is also involved with Turkey: it will
provide security for the 2,000 km-long oil pipeline from the
Caspian Sea to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Crook-infested Enron -- the biggest donor to the Bush campaign of
2000 -- was ubiquitious: it conducted the feasibility study for
the $2.5 billion trans-Caspian pipeline being built under a joint
venture signed almost three years ago between Turkmenistan and
Bechtel and General Electric. The go-between in the deal was none
other than the Mehrav Group. Chairman Maiman spent a fortune
hiring the Washington lobbying firm Cassidy and Associates to
seduce official Washington with the trans-Caspian pipeline
project.
The intrincate relationship between Israel, Turkey and the US
means that as much as the trans-Caspian pipeline, the Baku-Ceyhan
pipeline is also absolutely crucial. It could be extended to bring
oil directly to thirsty Israel. During the Clinton years, oil
giants were under tremendous pressure to build East-West
pipelines. But all of them preferred to build North-South
pipelines -- much cheaper, but with the inconvenience of crossing
Iran, an absolute anathema for Washington.
Russia already has a contract with Turkmenistan to purchase 30
billion cubic meters of gas a year. This represents a big blow to
the US field of dreams, the trans-Caspian gas pipeline. This also
means that Russia will never let go of its sphere of influence
without a tremendous fight. The Central Asian republics are on its
borders, Russia has dominated them for centuries and they are home
to millions of Russians. Russian is still the language they all
use to do business with each other.
Thanks to master political chess player Vladimir Putin, Russia is
now on the cosiest terms possible with Washington -- and US-Iran
antipathy is apparently receding. Russia may eventually become a
partner in at least some of Washington's petrostrategy games in
Central Asia -- like the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. The regional
map also reveals that Iran, besides holding important gas
reserves, offers the best direct access from the Caspian Sea to
the Persian Gulf, where oil and gas can be quickly exported to
Asian markets.
Iran assumes, not entirely without reason, that it is the rightful
guardian of Central Asia because of centuries of ethnic,
historical, linguistic and religious ties. And Iran is very
conscious that American military links and now physical presence
in Central Asia are part of a strategy to encircle it. But even
amid so many geopolitical and ideological pitfalls, the fact
remains that as long as the US is militarily involved in
Afghanistan, there will be some sort of US-Iranian diplomatic
engagement.
Under the control of the China National Petroleum Corporation
(CNPC), pipelines from Central Asia will also reach China's
Xinjiang. Oil sources in Singapore stress that this will certainly
spell a slump for the sea routes across the Indian Ocean and the
Pacific. Washington is more than aware through its think tanks of
the consequences: an extremely likely strategic realignment
between China, Japan and Korea.
The Chinese have their sights on only one terrifying prospect: the
encirclement of China by the US. UNOCAL is dreaming about profits.
Washington is thinking about the robust Chinese economy. Whatever
"war against terror" distractions, China remains the key strategic
competitor to the US in the 21st century. With Afghanistan in the
bag, UNOCAL dreams of monster profits in the Asian market -- much
higher than in Europe -- while Washington closely monitors the
Chinese economy: growth of 8 percent in 2000, 7 percent in 2001,
and needing all the oil and gas it can get. Chinese strategists
are working around the clock to develop local forms of energy
production.
What happens next will be closely linked to the deliberations of
the Shanghai Five, now Shanghai Six, or more burocratically, the
Shangahi Cooperation Organization (SCO): China and Russia, plus
four Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Takijistan
and Uzbekistan). Manouvering with extreme care, China is using the
SCO to align Russia economically and politically towards China and
northeast Asia. At the same time, Russia is using the SCO to
maintain its traditional hegemony in Central Asia. The name of the
game for solidifying the alliance is Russian export of its
enormous reserves of oil and gas.
Since the NATO war against Yugoslavia and the de facto occupation
of Kosovo -- where America built its largest military base since
the Vietnam War -- China and Russia have their minds set on
Chechnya and Muslim Xinjiang. For the moment, at least, America
has absolutely no way of interfering in these domestic problems,
since China and especially Russia are endorsing the war against
terrorism.
The Taliban were never a target in the "war against terrorism".
They were just a scapegoat -- rather, a horde of medieval warrior
scapegoats who simply did not fulfill their contract: to insert
Aghanistan into Pipelineistan. All the regional players now know
America is in Central Asia to stay, as Washington itself has been
stridently repeating these last few weeks, and it will be
influencing or disturbing the economy and geopolitics of the
region. The wider world is absolutely oblivious to these real
stakes in the New Great Game.
The US at the time of the Gulf War did not show any interest in
replacing "Satan" Hussein. That would seriously compromise the
American design to establish bases on the Arabian peninsula on the
convenient pretext of helping poor Arab sheikhs against the Iraqi
Evil Monster.
More than a decade later, Satan Hussein is still there, Bush I is
now Bush II, and assorted Pentagon hawks are still fuming, trying
to fabricate any excuse to blow Saddam back to Mesopotamian ashes.
But Saddam will not be attacked, because Saddam is the ultimate
reason for American military bases in the Gulf -- a splendid
affair because on top of it all it is a free ride, the expenses
being paid by the ultra-flush sheikdoms. Now, after the (also
unfinished) New Afghan War, American forces are already
establishing themselves in Central and South Asia to once again
"protect the interests of the free world".
It is never enough to remember that after the end of the communist
regime in Afghanistan, the American strategy was to deliberately
let Islamic extremism go wild -- a perfect way to scare the
unstable regimes in the Central Asian neo-republics. Islamic
fundamentalism has always been a key card in the American
strategic design since the Cold War days when the CIA
subcontracted to the Pakistani ISI the arm-them-to-their-teeth
policy regarding the mujahideen. It is always easy to forget that
the good-guys-turned-bad-guys were once were hailed by Ronnie
Reagan himself at the Oval Office as "the moral equivalent of the
founding fathers".
America has been trying hard to "get" Afghanistan -- the heart of
Asia in Antiquity, the Pipelineistan crossroads of Asia nowadays -
for more than 20 years. In the process, the mujahideen transformed
Afghanistan, with CIA blessing, into the world's leading producer
of heroin, opening the crucial and ultra-profitable drug pipeline
Afghanistan-Turkey-Balkans-Western Europe. More than a martini,
oil-arms-drugs is the classic CIA cocktail. This "Drugistan" road
has just been spetacularly reopened after the fall of the Taliban.
Pipelineistan is not an end in itself. Oil and gas by themselves
are not the US's ultimate aim. It's all about control. In
Monopoly, Belgian writer Michel Collon wrote: "If you want to rule
the world, you need to control oil. All the oil. Anywhere." If the
US controls the sources of energy of its rivals -- Europe, Japan,
China and other nations aspiring to be more independent -- they
win. This explains why pipelines from the Caucasus to the West
have to be America-friendly -- ie Turkish or Macedonian -- and not
"unreliable", meaning Russian-controled. Washington, always, has
to control everything: that's what Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger
always said. The same goes for the military bases in Saudi Arabia,
and now in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
There's no business like war business. Thanks to war against Iraq,
the US has its military bases in the Persian Gulf. Thanks to war
against Yugoslavia, the US has its military bases in Bosnia,
Kosovo and Macedonia. Thanks to war against the Taliban, the US is
now in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Not to
mention the base in Incirlik, Turkey. The US is also in the
Caucasus -- in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Iran, China and Russia are
practically encircled. There's no business like show business.
Raise the curtains. Enter Pipelineistan. (Applause).
Part 1: The rules of the game
© 2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Reprinted for fair use only.