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Message-ID: <00a101bf3a57$f69b4580$c7b4883e@mjones>
From: "M A Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "li" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: L-I: more on US plundering Caspian oil
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 09:33:13 -0000
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Boston Globe
28 November 1999
Editorial
Perilous pipe dream in Asia

With a pride that may eventually look like hubris, President Clinton
announced
an agreement in Istanbul earlier this month on construction of an oil
pipeline to carry that precious resource from the port of Baku on the Caspian
Sea, across Georgia, and then through Turkey to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on
the Mediterranean.

The accord, which hardly guarantees that such a pipeline will actually be
built, represents the culmination of a strenuous campaign by the
administration to persuade Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Turkey to
join forces with the United States in a project that was molded even more by
strategic designs than by the lure of profits.

''This is a major foreign policy victory,'' crowed Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson at the signing ceremony. ''It is a strategic agreement that
advances America's national interest.''

There is no denying that the Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline accord represents a
short-term victory for the members of the administration who labored to bring
it about, but it is less certain that the strategic rationale behind it will
serve long-term US interests. That rationale is simple: to deprive Russia of
a traditional sphere of influence and preclude an Iranian role in the
exporting of the region's energy resources.

The leaders of states in the region that were until recently Soviet republics
are only too glad to have a new superpower protector that can shield them
against a revival of Russian imperialism. By contrast, international oil
companies, motivated principally by cost-benefit calculations, would prefer
to build a pipeline that runs southward through Iran to a port on the Persian
Gulf.

The statesmen would be more likely to achieve durable strategic benefits if
they heeded the purely cost-conscious thinking of the oil company executives.

To foresee the consequences of excluding Russia from a Caspian oil and gas
bonanza, Clinton need only cast an eye on Chechnya. A pipeline already runs
through Chechen territory, and it is no secret that one of Moscow's prime
motives for seeking to recapture Chechnya is to take control of that
pipeline.

Moscow is sending two crude messages via its bombing and shelling of
civilians whom it defines as Russian citizens. The first is that the Chechnya
pipeline can be accounted secure once it is back in Russian hands. The second
message is even more ominous but no less important to understand.

By making war against the Chechens, Boris Yeltsin's regime demonstrates to
the new states around the Caspian that the Kremlin is willing to take the
most extreme measures to prevent any possibility that Russia, in its
temporary weakness, might be prevented from sharing in the riches associated
with the transport of Caspian oil and gas.

As brutal as Yeltsin's second war for Chechnya has been, the leaders who
toasted the pipeline accord in Istanbul should realize that Yeltsin could be
succeeded by someone who will be even less solicitous of international
opinion and more willing to give free rein to great-power chauvinism.

No matter who follows Yeltsin, the chances are that a policy of making the
export of Caspian energy resources an exclusive preserve of the United States
and its ally Turkey will become a formula for perpetual instability in the
Caucasus. It is folly to act on the assumption that Russian leaders, or their
counterparts in Iran, will merely resign themselves to an American fait
accompli.

To paraphrase Che Guevara, they are much more likely to create two, three,
many Chechnyas. Indeed, there have already been blatant examples of Moscow
stoking ethnic conflicts and independence struggles across the Caucasus. The
aim is to make Russia the indispensable power in its old backyard. Like a
Mafia don with an interest in his old neighborhood, whoever sits in the
Kremlin will want to ''wet his beak'' in any profitable activity emanating
from the Caspian.

If there turn out to be enough oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin to
make the region a geopolitical prize, then for economic as well as strategic
reasons there will have to be several pipelines. They can run north through
Russia, west through Georgia to Turkey, and south through Iran to the Persian
Gulf. Eventually there may even be a gas pipeline that runs through
Afghanistan and eastward toward China. If the powers around the region share
in the pipeline profits, they will have a stake in preserving regional
stability. If not, they are certain to provoke the equivalent of gang warfare.




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