Page 2 of 3 Russia draws Europe into its
orbit By M K Bhadrakumar
the EU-US calculations of
developing a pipeline tapping Caspian and Central
Asian gas and bypassing Russian territory at the
same time.
In other words, Europe's
growing dependence on Russian gas supplies will
remain a fact of life for years to come. European
countries will continue to negotiate bilaterally
with Moscow for their gas supplies. This has
far-reaching significance for any common EU energy
policy for which Washington has been
desperately striving.
This will also impact EU-Russia relations
on the whole, apart from having the potential to
cast a shadow on Washington's trans-Atlantic
leadership within the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). Ariel Cohen of the
neo-conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation
recently commented:
Washington policymakers are
scrambling to develop tactics that can counter
Russia's aggressive action aimed at cementing
Kremlin control over Caspian basin energy and
export routes. In reacting to the Russian moves,
US officials are conducting consultations with
the EU representatives, seeking to improve the
coordination of energy policy ...
However, Brussels is split over what to
do about Russia's ominous behavior. Germany is
already deferential to Russia's energy
interests, and Berlin appears to want to do
nothing that would disturb the status quo ...
France and Italy are also not enthusiastic about
confronting Moscow as their national companies
too are involved in lucrative joint ventures in
Russia.
Equally, US energy diplomacy
in the Caspian finds itself in a cul-de-sac.
Washington focused on Kazakhstan all through last
year. The US vice president as well as the energy
secretary visited the capital, Astana. President
George W Bush hosted Kazakh President Nurusultan
Nazarbayev in Washington.
Washington's
objective was threefold: cajole Nazarbayev into
committing Kazakh oil in a big way to the
US-financed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline so
that the venture becomes economically viable; two,
encourage Kazakhstan to work in tandem with
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan so that a
trans-Caspian gas pipeline bypassing Russia
becomes a reality; third, promote Kazakh oil
exports to Central Europe via Georgia and Ukraine
so that the pro-US countries of "new Europe" ,
such as Poland and the Baltic states (and
potentially Ukraine), could jettison their
dependence on Russian energy supplies, which is an
imperative for the geopolitics of Eurasia in any
new cold-war setting.
So it came as a body
blow to Washington that Nazarbayev said in Astana
after talks with Putin last Thursday, "Kazakhstan
is absolutely committed to shipping most of its
oil, if not all of it, through Russian territory.
We have always said this." Nazarbayev punctured a
big hole into the myth propagated by the US in
recent months that Kazakhstan was disengaging from
its strategic partnership with Russia and aligning
with the US, the EU and NATO.
Furthermore,
Nazarbayev affirmed on Thursday that Kazakhstan is
interested in joining a Russian project to build
an oil pipeline to link the Black Sea port of
Novorossiysk with the Bulgarian port of Burgas and
further with the Greek port of Alexandroupolis on
the Mediterranean - a project that Washington has
opposed tooth and nail.
What does it
imply? Question marks resurface over the long-term
economic viability of the much-acclaimed
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline built with US
support, which had counted on Kazakh oil supplies
in substantial quantities. Second, Kazakh
participation makes the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil
pipeline a 100% certainty, which also means that
Russia emerges as a significant energy supplier in
southeastern Europe as a whole. In strategic
terms, US attempts in recent years to roll back
Russia's traditional influence in the Black Sea
region and the Balkans have suffered a setback.
Besides, Russia is separately working on a
project called Blue Stream 2, which promises to
make Hungary the "hub" of Russian gas supplies to
Central Europe. Washington has been hitherto
pressuring Budapest to give up the idea of
cooperating with Russia, and instead sign up for
the trans-Caspian pipeline system bypassing
Russia. Hungary's socialist government now gains
the leeway to withstand US pressure on this score.
The burial of the idea of the
trans-Caspian pipeline (which would have passed
through Turkey) also means that Turkey will now
have greater impetus to work with Russia in energy
cooperation. That opens up a whole lot of
possibilities for routing Russian oil and gas
exports to the Mediterranean region via Turkey.
There is an added geopolitical dimension.
An entente cordiale has been developing
between Turkey and Russia in the Black Sea region.
The two historical rivals share the common
interest that outside powers such as the US do not
erode their traditional influence in the Black Sea
region. Washington has been monitoring this with
unease at a time when Turkish-US relations are
passing through a difficult phase on account of
the war in Iraq. Finally, Nazarbayev also made
a telling point by staying away from the energy
summit hosted in Warsaw by the Polish government
last Friday, and attended by the presidents of
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine. The
main agenda was to discuss a new oil-export route
that would avoid Russia. Without Astana's active
participation, the entire Polish venture to create
an energy corridor from the Caspian - a venture
with pronounced anti-Russia bias - is doomed to
become a non-starter, despite the strong US
backing for it.
The sum total of all these
developments is, to quote a senior analyst at
London's Center for Global Energy Studies, "It
will be very difficult to see either gas or oil
moving from Central Asia by pipeline toward Europe
bypassing Russia." The two-day EU-Russia summit in
the Russian city of Samara that was due to start
on Wednesday cannot remain unaffected.
What bears close watch in the months ahead
will be whether Turkmenistan's growing
foreign-policy tilt toward Moscow translates as a
willingness to be integrated with the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS), the Eurasian Economic
Community and the CSTO, in particular.
In
comparison, Moscow has every reason to be
satisfied with its exceptionally close strategic
partnership with Kazakhstan. As the official
Russian news agency put it, "Kazakhstan is the
alter-ego of Russia in the CIS space." Evidently,
there is a high degree of coordination between the
two countries (at the level of the two
leaderships) in their foreign and security
policies in the Caspian and Central Asian region.
This became obvious on May 2 when the
Kazakh Parliament endorsed Russia's condemnation
of the removal of a World War II memorial in the
Estonian capital Tallinn. Again, Nazarbayev's
visit to Bishkek on April 25-26 was a barely
disguised intervention aimed at countering the
covert US plan to destabilize the leadership of
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Nazarbayev offered US$100 million as
emergency assistance for Kyrgyzstan, apart from
food and fuel supplies. Nazarbayev used his
immense personal prestige as a regional figure to
do some
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