When asked
recently about Iran's proposal to Russia to create
a global gas cartel, a number of top Russian
leaders and experts commented that the move
appeared rooted more in politics than in economics
- in particular, the politics of opposition to the
United States and of
counteracting its growing global aggressiveness.
Certainly powerful economic considerations
are driving the emergence of new global
confederations of gas and oil, but the political
motivations are profoundly potent as well.
Iran faces the very real prospect of a US
military strike. Even if that does not
materialize, the US is organizing against it
potent opposition in the form of sanctions, a
Sunni "alliance of moderation", and clandestine
support for Iran's domestic opposition groups,
many of which employ sabotage and terrorist
tactics, all in an effort to collapse the regime
in Tehran.
As for Algeria, another key
member of any "gas cartel", it pointedly disdains
the US-led unipolar order and US global influence.
Qatar, too, maintains increasingly good relations
with both Iran and Russia and is becoming less
amicable to aggressive and destabilizing US
policies in the Middle East. Indonesia, another
major gas producer, also is aligned against US-led
unipolarity. Those key gas producers, as well as
the bulk of the globe's oil producers, are
distinctly opposed to excessive US global power.
And then there's Russia.
From Moscow's
perspective, the United States and Europe are
pushing ahead to impinge pointedly on its
legitimate interests. Not only are they trying to
cut deep into Russia's growing global energy
clout, they are also working to set up
anti-ballistic-missile systems in Eastern Europe
that Russia sees as a direct threat.
Additionally, according to the Russian
view, they are pushing to expand the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization further eastward and
attempting to encircle Russia. Then, of course,
there is the matter of the United States'
antagonism toward Iran, Syria and North Korea -
which does not meet with Russia's approval.
From its standpoint, the US and certain
European powers are rivaling its core interests
and those of its strategic partners, and wish to
see Russia made weak and pliable again. Still
fresh in the mind of Russian leaders are the
"color revolutions" in the former Soviet states
that the US and Europe sponsored in an effort to
weaken Russia's grip on its mounting energy-export
monopoly. President Vladimir Putin's recent verbal
attack in Munich, Germany, against US
aggressiveness and arrogance, and increasingly
strident Russian opposition to aggressive US
policies around the globe, illustrate how powerful
the political motivations have become aimed at
finding ways to push back against a US superpower
increasingly seen as out of control on the global
stage.
Powerful political motivations
prompting Russia and its producer/consumer
partners to act so as to enhance leverage against
the US and Europe abound, therefore. With new
global energy groupings in oil and gas, Russia and
its partners will find that leverage, which could
be exercised to fracture Europe further along the
dividing line of those who support US
aggressiveness and those who do not. It could
further divide the European Union from the US, and
thereby scupper their plans to undermine Russia's
interests and those of its partners.
Additionally, such a global energy
grouping as described in Part 1 of this series,
one incorporating key consumers as well as
producers, would enhance Russia's already growing
ability to gather Eurasian powers into close
alignment with itself - an ability that pays many
valuable dividends, not the least of which is the
de facto undermining of US-led unipolarity.
However, increasingly potent as such
political motivations have already become, they
also constitute a bombshell that Russia and its
global partners prefer to keep out of public
awareness and debate for fear that such exposure
will create sufficient a backlash that would risk
a forfeit of their shared goal of a stealthy
undermining of US-led unipolarity. When it comes
to any acknowledgement of such political
motivations, large doses of ambiguity and
deniability are the key - for purely pragmatic
reasons.
When one hears that proposals for
a new global gas grouping are politically
motivated, one should not assume that such
motivations are therefore not pragmatic, or not
truly considered desirable by the potential
grouping's membership.
The fact that the
United States, in trying to recapture the top
global position it clearly now sees as slipping
away, is becoming ever more aggressive and
desperate, and is adopting increasingly dangerous
and destabilizing policies - that fact pushes the
political considerations to the fore and obliges
those who disdain US-led unipolarity to consider
seriously what can be done to counterbalance and
undermine unrestrained US global power.
As
the US embarks on aggressive policies, strategies
and actions in an attempt to weaken Russia's
mounting grip on global resources, then the
political considerations and motivations for
completing the ongoing creation of a Russian-led
global axis of oil and gas will become
increasingly potent, even dominant.
The
reader must acknowledge the fact that the US and
Russia are already deeply engaged in an
increasingly strident, yet brilliantly misleading
(both sides publicly deny that control of global
resources is their real aim), winner-takes-all
rivalry for control of strategic global resources.
Because the stakes are so enormous, each side can
be fully expected to spare no effort to come out
the winner.
Compelling economic
considerations Because of fears in the
West over Russia's already tight and ever more
potent grip on a gas monopoly that increasingly
places Europe at risk, both the US and Europe are
pushing for a radical liberalization of the
emerging global gas market to match that of the
global oil market. They are also pressuring Russia
in particular to open its rigid, closed gas market
and infrastructure to increased levels of
investment and ownership by consumer nations in
the West.
Additionally, they are exerting
pressure to try to prevent the formation of any
kind of cohesive grouping of gas exporters. If the
US and Europe succeed, the growing influence of
Russia and
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