The Conflict Between Russia And Georgia
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Petropolitics at heart of Russia-Georgia clash
Oil-pipeline routes, market leverage make struggle a 'battle for
energy.' In both geopolitical and economic terms, the United States
appears a loser in the Russia-Georgia conflict.
If the pipeline crossing Georgia, bringing approximately a million barrels
of Caspian oil a day to the West, remains shut down for much longer, it
could result in higher oil prices. "We could see $4 a gallon gasoline
again," warns Edward Yardeni, an American consulting economist.
The 1,100-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline provides only about 1
percent of the global demand for oil. But, as Prof. Michael Klare of
Amherst College notes: "There's not a lot of spare [crude oil] capacity"
in the world.
In the long-running struggle for control of Caspian oil and gas and
influence in the ex-Soviet states of that region, the clash has been a
blow to US clout.
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World's Second Largest Oil Reserves
"The Russians come out of this as winning this round," says Professor
Klare. "They are the power brokers in this part of the world…. But there
will be more skirmishes to come."
Klare, author of "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of
Energy," sees the conflict as "not a battle for democracy," as portrayed
by Washington. "It was a battle for energy," he says.
Oil reserves underneath the Caspian Sea are believed to be huge, perhaps
as much as 200 billion barrels. That compares with the estimated 260
billion barrels in Saudi Arabia.
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In his State of the Union Address in 1980, President Jimmy Carter
proclaimed what has become known as the "Carter doctrine." It stated that the
US would use military force if necessary to defend its national interest in
the Persian Gulf region. Carter saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at that
time as "a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil."
President Clinton, as Klare sees it, expanded the Carter doctrine "more or
less" to include Caspian oil. The BTC pipeline, taking crude from Azerbaijan
through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, where it is loaded on tankers
for the international market, was "Clinton's brainchild," says Klare.
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President Bush has heated up what Klare regards as a struggle over
vital resources, rather than a throwback to the cold-war era or classic
balance-of-power politics. In that struggle, the US helped Mikheil
Saakashvili win the presidency in Georgia after its 2003 "Rose Revolution"
and helped build up and train Georgia's armed forces. When the
American-educated Saakashvili attempted to show his mettle and restore the
breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia's control, the
Russians took the opportunity to show who is boss.
Klare worries that an American military adviser might be hit inadvertently
by a Russian bomb, raising US-Russia tensions further.
"Throughout the Caucasus, the US has been striving to establish
pro-American governments for strategic reasons," says William Beeman,
chair of the anthropology department at the University of Minnesota. One
reason aside from Caspian oil, Professor Beeman suspects, is to provide a
staging area for possible attacks on such perceived enemies as Iran and
Syria.
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The $4 billion BTC pipeline, managed by and 30 percent owned by British
Petroleum, was routed through Georgia to avoid sending Caspian oil through
Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Russia. A 10-mile pipeline could have
connected Caspian oil to the well-developed Iranian pipeline system. Beeman
charges that millions in government bribes changed hands to place the pipeline
in its tortuous route.
Georgian authorities charged Russia with trying to bomb the pipeline last
Tuesday, a pipeline that had been buried deep in a trench for the sake of
security. BP stated it was unaware of such bombings. In any case, the BTC flow
of oil – about $1 billion worth every 10 days – had already been stopped by an
earlier fire at a facility in Turkey. Kurdish rebels, known as the PKK,
claimed the fire was their responsibility.
There have been plans to take the same Georgia route for a Caspian natural-gas
pipeline ending in Europe. Klare considers the Russian action as partially a
warning that this is not a good idea. Such a pipeline would offer serious
competition to Gazprom, the giant Russian oil-and-gas conglomerate. Russia
supplies one-quarter of the oil and half the natural gas consumed in Europe,
and the revenue is seen as key to Russian prosperity. The European Union has
been keen on the Georgia plan as a way to gain bargaining power and reduce the
risk of supply cutoffs.
But the Russia-Georgia war may have reduced the prospects for such a gas
pipeline getting financing and European backing.
"I wouldn't hold my breath," says Klare. He advocates that the US, EU, Russia,
and the Caspian states develop a comprehensive regional energy plan for
Caspian oil and gas.
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