New moves on the tripolar
chessboard By Michael T Klare
For months, the US press and policymaking
elite have portrayed the crisis with Iran as a
two-sided struggle between Washington and Tehran,
with the European powers as well as Russia and
China playing supporting roles.
It is
certainly true that US President George W Bush and
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad are the
leading protagonists in this drama, with each
making inflammatory statements about the other to
whip up public support at home.
But an
informed reading of recent international diplomacy
surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests that
another equally fierce - and undoubtedly more
important - struggle is also taking place: a
tripolar contest among the United States, Russia
and China for
domination of the greater
Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth
energy reserves.
When it comes to grand
strategy, top Bush administration officials have
long attempted to maintain US dominance over the
"global chessboard" (as they see it) by
diminishing the influence of the only other
significant players, Russia and China.
This classic geopolitical contest began
with a flourish in early 2001, when the White
House signaled the provocative course it planned
to follow by unilaterally repudiating the
US-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and
announcing new high-tech arms sales to Taiwan,
which China still considers a breakaway province.
After the events of September 11, 2001,
these initial signals of antagonism were toned
down to secure Russian and Chinese assistance in
fighting the "war on terror", but in recent months
the classic chessboard version of great-power
politics has again come to dominate strategic
thinking in Washington.
Advancing the
strategic pawns This was perhaps first
signaled on May 4, when Vice President Dick Cheney
went to Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, to
lambaste the Russian government at a pro-democracy
confab. He accused Kremlin officials of "unfairly
and improperly" restricting the rights of Russian
citizens and of using the country's abundant oil
and gas supplies as "tools of intimidation [and]
blackmail" against its neighbors. He also
condemned Moscow for attempting to "monopolize the
transportation" of oil and gas supplies in Eurasia
- a direct challenge to US interests in the
Caspian region. The next day, Cheney flew to
another former Soviet republic, Kazakhstan, in
oil-and-natural-gas-rich Central Asia, where he
urged that country's leaders to ship their
plentiful oil through a US-sponsored pipeline to
Turkey and the Mediterranean rather than through
Russian-controlled pipelines to Europe.
Then, on June 3, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld weighed in on China, telling an
audience of Asian security officials that
Beijing's "lack of transparency" with respect to
its military spending "understandably causes
concerns for some of its neighbors". These
comments were accompanied by publicly announced
plans for increased US spending on sophisticated
weapons systems such as the F-22A fighter and
Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines that
could only be useful in a big-power war for which
there were just two realistic adversaries - Russia
and China.
Like Russia, China has also
aroused Washington's ire over its aggressive
energy policies - but in China's case over its
increasing attempts to nail down oil and gas
supplies for its burgeoning, energy-poor economy.
In "Military Power of the People's Republic of
China", its most recent report on Chinese military
capabilities, issued on May 23, the Pentagon
decried China's use of arms transfers and other
military aid as inducements to such countries as
Iran and Sudan to gain access to energy reserves
in the Middle East and Africa, and for acquiring
warships "that could serve as the basis for a
force capable of power projection" into the
oil-producing regions of the planet.
There's nothing new about the Bush
administration's desire to roll back Russia and
"contain" China. Such thinking was famously
articulated in the "Defense Planning Guidance for
1994-99", written by Paul Wolfowitz, then under
secretary of defense, and leaked to the press in
early 1992. "Our first objective is to prevent the
re-emergence of a new rival, either on the
territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere,
that poses a threat on the order of that posed
formerly by the Soviet Union," the document
declared. This remains the principal aim of US
strategy today, but it has now been joined by
another key objective: to ensure that the United
States - and no one else - controls the energy
supplies of the Persian Gulf and adjacent areas of
Asia.
When first articulated in the
"Carter Doctrine" of 1980, named after former
president Jimmy Carter, this precept was directed
exclusively at the Gulf; now, under President
Bush, it has been extended to the Caspian Sea
basin as well - a consequence of rising oil
prices, fears of diminishing supplies and the vast
oil and natural-gas deposits believed to be housed
there. To assert US influence in this region, once
part of the Soviet Union, the White House has been
setting up military bases, supplying arms and
conducting a sub rosa war of influence with
both Moscow and Beijing.
Knight's moves
in the Gulf It is in this context that the
current struggle over Iran must be viewed. Iran
occupies a pivotal position on the tripolar
chessboard. Geographically, it is the only nation
that abuts both the Persian Gulf and the Caspian
Sea, positioning Tehran to play a significant role
in the two areas of greatest energy concern to the
United States, Russia and China. Iran also abuts
the strategic Strait of Hormuz - the narrow
waterway from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean through
which about one-quarter of the world's oil moves
every day. As a result, if Washington ever lifted
its trade embargo on Iran, its territory could be
used as the most obvious transit route for the
delivery of oil and natural gas from the Caspian
countries to global markets, especially in Europe
and Japan.
As the most populous and
industrialized nation in the Persian Gulf basin,
Iran has always played a significant role in that
region's affairs - a situation that has often
troubled neighbors such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq
(which invaded Iran in 1980, beginning a bloody
eight-year war that ended in an exhausted
stalemate). In recent years, Iran has also gained
regional clout as the center of the Shi'ite branch
of Islam. Long despised and abused by Sunnis, the
Shi'ites are now in the ascendancy in neighboring
Iraq and are gaining greater visibility in
Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and the Shi'ite-populated
areas of Saudi Arabia nearest to Kuwait (where
crucial Saudi oilfields lie) in what is starting
to be thought of as the "Shi'a Crescent".
At present, Iran's military capabilities
are not impressive - a result, in part, of the US
embargo on sales of spare parts to the Iranian air
force (largely equipped with American aircraft
during the reign of the shah). But Iran has
acquired submarines and other modern weapons from
Russia and has developed a ballistic-missile
capability - probably with help from North Korea
and China. Were it ever to succeed in acquiring
nuclear weapons, it would indeed become a
formidable regional power, possibly calling into
question America's projected military domination
of the Gulf. It is for this reason more than any
other that Washington is so determined to block
Iran's acquisition of nuclear arms.
While
both Russia and China claim to be opposed to such
a development, they certainly wouldn't view it
with the same degree of dread and fury as does the
Bush administration - a consideration that has no
doubt given added impetus to its drive to block
Iran's nuclear efforts.
Above all, of
course, Iran possesses the world's second-largest
reserves of petroleum - an estimated 132 billion
barrels (11.1% of the world's known reservoirs);
and also the second-largest reserves of natural
gas - 971 trillion cubic feet (27.5 trillion cubic
meters, or 15.3% of known reservoirs). The
Iranians may possess less oil than the Saudis and
less gas than the Russians, but no other country
controls so much of both of these vital resources.
Many states, including China, India, Japan and the
European Union countries, already depend on Iran
for significant shares of their petroleum
supplies; and China and the others have been busy
negotiating deals to develop, and then draw on,
its mammoth natural-gas reserves. Iran will not
only remain a major energy supplier, but also one
of the few that has the capacity - with the right
kind of investment - to boost its output
substantially in the years ahead when many other
sources of oil and gas will have gone into
decline.
In 1953, after the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped oust prime
minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had nationalized
the Iranian oil industry, US energy firms came to
play a commanding role in Iran's oil industry with
the blessing of the shah. This remained true until
he fell in the revolution led by ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. They would no doubt
love to return to Iran, if given the opportunity,
but Washington's hostility to the Islamic regime
in Tehran now precludes their re-entry.
Under Executive Order 12959, signed by
president Bill Clinton in 1995 and renewed by
President Bush, all US companies are barred from
operating in Iran. But should "regime change" ever
occur there - the implied objective of US policy -
this Executive Order would be lifted, and US firms
would be able to do what Chinese, Japanese, Indian
and other firms are now doing, exploiting Iranian
energy supplies. Just how much energy figures into
the US administration's desire for political
change in Iran cannot be fully judged from the
outside, but given the close ties Bush, Cheney and
other key administration officials have with the
US energy industry, it is hard to believe that it
doesn't play a highly significant one.
For
China's energy plans, Iran's "pariah" status has
certainly been a boon. Because US firms are barred
from investing and European companies face US
economic penalties if they do so (under the
congressionally mandated Iran-Libya Sanctions Act
of 1996), Chinese companies have had a relatively
open playing field as they shop for promising
energy deals like the US$50 billion one signed in
2004 to develop the massive Yadavaran gas field
and to buy 10 million tons of Iranian liquefied
natural gas annually for 25 years.
Russia,
unlike energy-desperate China, has abundant
supplies of oil and natural gas, but has an
abiding interest in not seeing energy-rich Iran
fall under the sway of the US and, as a major
supplier of nuclear equipment and technology, also
has a special interest in lending a profitable
hand to Iran's energy establishment. The Russians
are completing the construction of a civilian
nuclear reactor at Bushehr in southwestern Iran, a
$1 billion project, and are eager to sell more
reactors and other nuclear-energy systems to the
Iranians.
This, of course, is a source of
considerable frustration to Washington, which
seeks to isolate Tehran and prevent it from
receiving any nuclear technology. (Although an
entirely civilian project, Bushehr would no doubt
be on the target list for any US air attack
intended to cripple Iran's nuclear capacity.)
Nevertheless, the head of the Russian
nuclear-energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, announced
in February, "We don't see any political obstacles
to completing Bushehr" and bringing it online "in
the swiftest possible period".
Given what
is at stake, it is easy to see why the United
States, Russia and China all have such an abiding
interest in the outcome of the Iranian crisis. For
Washington, the replacement of the clerical
government in Tehran with a US-friendly regime
would represent a colossal, threefold
accomplishment: it would eliminate a major threat
to America's continued dominance of the Persian
Gulf, open up the world's No 2 oil-and-gas
supplier to US energy firms, and greatly diminish
Chinese and Russian influence in the greater Gulf
region.
From a geopolitical perspective,
there could be no greater win on the global
chessboard today. Even if Washington failed to
achieve regime change but, using its military
might, crippled Iran's nuclear establishment
without sustaining major damage itself in Iraq or
elsewhere, this would still be a significant
geopolitical win, exposing the inability of either
Russia or China to counter US moves of this sort.
(This would only work, of course, if the Bush
administration were able to contain the inevitable
fallout from such action, whether increased ethnic
strife in Iraq or a sharp spike in oil prices.)
Not surprisingly, Moscow and Beijing are
doing everything in their power to prevent any US
geopolitical triumph in Iran or Central Asia from
occurring, though without provoking an outright
breach in relations with Washington - and so
endangering complex economic ties with the United
States.
As this grand geopolitical "Great
Game" unfolds, with the potential economic
well-being of the planet at stake, all sides are
trying to line up allies wherever possible, using
whatever diplomatic levers are available. Since
the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US position in
both the Persian Gulf region and Central Asia has
noticeably deteriorated. At present, the Bush
administration's greatest weakness remains the
schism in US-European relations created by the
unilateral US invasion itself.
Because the
Europeans felt betrayed by that action, they have
largely refrained from helping out either in the
counter-insurgency effort in Iraq or in funding
the reconstruction of the country. This has
imposed a ghastly and mounting cost on the United
States. Fearing a repetition of this fiasco in
Iran, the White House has clearly decided to let
the diplomatic process play out on the Iranian
crisis in a way it refused to do when it came to
Saddam's Iraq. So, within limits, it is letting
the Europeans set the diplomatic game plan for
"resolving" the nuclear dispute.
This, in
turn, has given Moscow and Beijing their one
obvious option for averting what could be a
geopolitical disaster for them in Iran: the
potential use of a Security Council veto to block
the imposition of US-threatened sanctions on Iran
under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which could
legitimize not only such sanctions but also the
use of force against any state deemed to pose a
threat to international peace. The Europeans want
to prevent such a vote from occurring - knowing
that any "failure" at the United Nations might
only strengthen the arguments of the hawks in
Washington who want to move unilaterally and by
force against Iran. As a result, they are
listening to the Russians and Chinese, who insist
on relying on diplomacy - and nothing else - to
resolve the crisis, however long that takes.
"Russia believes that the sole solution
for this problem will be based on the work of the
IAEA" (International Atomic Energy Agency), said
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March.
Very similar statements have been issued by
Chinese officials, who have expressly ruled out
force as an acceptable solution to the crisis. In
February, for instance, the Chinese ambassador to
the IAEA, Wu Hailongon, called on "all relevant
parties to exercise restraint and patience" and
"refrain from any action that might further
complicate or deteriorate the situation".
Checkmate for whom? That all key
parties see this unfolding crisis as part of a
larger geopolitical struggle is beyond doubt. For
example, the Russians and Chinese have begun to
create something of a counter-bloc to the United
States in Central Asia, using the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a vehicle.
Originally established by Moscow and
Beijing to combat ethnic separatism in Central
Asia, the SCO - now including Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - has become
more like a regional security organization, a sort
of mini-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (but
also an anti-NATO).
Clearly, the Russians
and the Chinese hope that it will help them turn
back US influence in the energy-rich Islamic
territories of the former Soviet Union, and in
this it has shown - in Uzbekistan, at least - some
signs of realpolitik success. At a recent meeting
of the organization, the current members went so
far as to invite Iran to join as an observer - to
the obvious displeasure of Washington. "It strikes
me as passing strange," Rumsfeld opined recently
in Singapore, "that one would want to bring into
an organization that says it's against terrorism
... the leading terrorist nation in the world:
Iran."
At the same time, the United States
has sought to line up its own allies - including
South Asian wildcard India - for a possible
military confrontation with Iran. Even though Bush
insists that he's prepared to rely on diplomacy to
resolve the crisis, Pentagon officials have sought
the assistance of NATO in planning air strikes
against Iranian nuclear facilities. In March, for
example, the head of NATO's Airborne Early Warning
and Control Force, General Axel Tuttelmann,
indicated that his force was ready to assist US
forces at the very onset of a US attack on Iran.
The German press has also reported that former CIA
director Peter Goss visited Turkey late last year
to request that country's assistance in conducting
air strikes against Iran.
Despite
continuing calls for diplomacy to prevail, all
sides in this wider struggle recognize that the
current situation cannot last forever. For one
thing, the shaky position of the Bush
administration - politically at home, in its wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, in its attempts to secure
geopolitical advantage in Central Asia, and
economically at a global level - continues to
develop fissures and to embolden those countries,
Iran included, that might frustrate its desires.
To top Bush officials, still dreaming of
global energy hegemony, the situation may seem
increasingly perilous, but the window to act may
also appear in danger of closing. Their appetite
for European, Chinese or Russian stalling tactics,
no less Iranian intransigence, may not be great;
and, however much Moscow and Beijing try to
persuade the Iranians to back down on nuclear
matters, thereby averting US military action,
their influence in Tehran may not prove strong
enough.
If, in the coming few months, Iran
rejects US demands for the complete and permanent
termination of its nuclear-enrichment activities,
the United States will certainly insist on the
imposition of sanctions at the UN. If, in turn,
the Security Council (with the acquiescence of
Russia and China) adopts purely symbolic gestures
to no visible effect, Washington will then demand
tougher sanctions under Chapter VII; and if either
Russia or China vetoes such measures, the Bush
administration will almost certainly choose to use
military means against Iran, playing out Moscow's
and Beijing's worst fears.
Russia and
China can thus be expected to stretch out the
diplomatic process for as long as possible, hoping
thereby to make military action by the United
States appear illegitimate to the Europeans and
others. By the same token, the hawks in Washington
will undoubtedly become increasingly impatient
with the delays - viewing them as rear-guard
strategic moves by Russia and China - and so will
push for military action by the end of this year
if nothing has been accomplished by then on the
diplomatic front.
As the crisis over Iran
unfolds, most of the news commentary will continue
to focus on the war of words between Washington
and Tehran. Political insiders understand,
however, that the most significant struggle is the
one that remains just out of sight, pitting
Washington against Moscow and Beijing in the
battle for global influence and energy domination.
From this perspective, Iran is just one
battlefield - however significant - in a far
larger, more long-lasting, and momentous contest.
Michael T Klare is professor of
peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College and the author, most recently, of
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of
America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum
(Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The
New Landscape of Global Conflict.
(Copyright 2006 Michael T Klare. Used with
permission Tomdispatch
.)
