CHOMSKY Members:
For your information . . .
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alan Spector <[log in to unmask]>
Note from Alan Spector:
When NATO began its intensification of the war against Yugoslavia, some
people thought it was because NATO wanted to defend human rights, and
others thought it was just "mistaken" US-NATO policy. And some of us said
it was because of Caspian Sea oil. Some of us were ridiculed for that by
some rather simple minded arguments about how there was no oil in Kosovo,
etc. etc. Please now read the following article from the (not
particularly Marxist) Guardian of London.
Here is the link:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4136440,00.html>
==============================================
The Guardian of London
February 15, 2001
NATO mocked those who claimed there was a plan for Caspian oil
George
Monbiot
Gordon Brown knows precisely what he should do about BP.
The company's œ10bn profits are crying out for a windfall tax.
Royalties and petroleum revenue tax, both lifted when the oil price
was low, are in urgent need of reinstatement. These measures
would be popular and fair. But, as all political leaders are aware,
you don't mess with Big Oil.
During the 1999 Balkans war, some of the critics of NATO's
intervention alleged that the western powers were seeking to
secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea. This claim was
widely mocked. The foreign secretary Robin Cook observed that
"there is no oil in Kosovo". This was, of course, true but
irrelevant.
An eminent commentator for this paper clinched his argument by
recording that the Caspian sea is "half a continent away, lodged
between Iran and Turkmenistan".
For the past few weeks, a freelance researcher called Keith
Fisher has been doggedly documenting a project which has, as far
as I can discover, has been little-reported in any British, European
or American newspaper. It is called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, and
it's due for approval at the end of next month. Its purpose is to
secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea.
The line will run from the Black sea port of Burgas to the
Adriatic at Vlore, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. It is
likely to become the main route to the west for the oil and gas now
being extracted in central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a
day: a throughput, at current prices, of some $600m a month.
The project is necessary, according to a paper published by
the
US Trade and Development Agency last May, because the oil
coming from the Caspian sea "will quickly surpass the safe capacity
of the Bosphorus as a shipping lane". The scheme, the agency
notes, will "provide a consistent source of crude oil to American
refineries", "provide American companies with a key role in
developing the vital east-west corridor", "advance the privatisation
aspirations of the US government in the region" and "facilitate
rapid integration" of the Balkans "with western Europe".
In November 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary,
spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil.
"This is about America's energy security," he explained. "It's also
about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our
values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries
toward the west.
"We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and
political interests rather than going another way. We've made a
substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very
important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out
right."
The project has been discussed for years. The US trade agency
notes that the Trans-Balkan pipeline "will become a part of the
region's critical east-west Corridor 8 infrastructure ... This
transportation corridor was approved by the transport ministers of
the European Union in April 1994". The pipeline itself, the agency
says, has also been formally supported "since 1994". The first
feasibility study, backed by the US, was conducted in 1996.
The pipeline does not pass through the former Yugoslavia,
but there's no question that it featured prominently in Balkan
war politics. On December 9 1998, the Albanian president
attended a meeting about the scheme in Sofia, and linked it
inextricably to Kosovo. "It is my personal opinion," he noted,
"that no solution confined within Serbian borders will bring
lasting peace." The message could scarcely have been
blunter: if you want Albanian consent for the Trans-Balkan
pipeline, you had better wrest Kosovo out of the hands of the
Serbs.
In July 1993, a few months before the corridor project was
first
formally approved, the US sent peacekeeping troops to the
Balkans. They were stationed not in the conflict zones in which
civilians were being rounded up and killed, but on the northern
borders of Macedonia. There were several good reasons for
seeking to contain Serb expansionism, but we would be foolish to
imagine that a putative $600m-a-month commercial operation did
not number among them. The pipeline would have been impossible
to finance while the Balkans were in turmoil.
I can't tell you that the war in the former Yugoslavia was
fought
solely in order to secure access to oil from new and biddable states
in central Asia. But in the light of these findings, can anyone now
claim that it was not?
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