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Sabina GARASHOVA
Ph.D. (Political Science), Senior Lecturer at the Department of Diplomacy and Modern Integration Processes, Baku State University
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
ON CERTAIN GEOPOLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE U.S.’S CASPIAN STRATEGY
Abstract
T
he author looks at the specific features of Washington’s Caspian policy suggested by the region’s post-Cold War geopo-
litical and geo-economic weight, as well as at the aims, forms, and methods the U.S. resorts to in order to ensure its geopolitical interests.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Throughout the post-Soviet period, the leading world and regional powers, attracted by the Caspian’s energy resources and advantageous geopolitical location, have never let this region out of their sight. It owes its worldwide post-Cold War geostrategic importance to its Eurasian location, political structure, and elements that link it to its neighboring countries. This forms the basis of the multivectoral geopolitical rivalry that has been unfolding in the region since the bipolar world became history.
The United States, as the only superpower, could not ignore the geopolitical skirmish in one of the key areas of post-bipolar Eurasia. I will try to find answers to the following and several other questions: why is Washington interested in the region; why does it remain active in this part of the world; and what mechanisms is it using to achieve its aims?
The Caspian’s Geostrategic Importance
In the new millennium, the world and regional powers have been paying much more attention to the Caspian Sea and its littoral states mainly because of the depleting oil and gas reserves elsewhere in the world. An obvious global trend, this has made internationalization of the Caspian’s energy sources (which until recently were under Soviet control) a strategic priority for all fuel-dependent Western countries. The Russian Federation, on the other hand, tends to dominate in the region and regards its control there as an opportunity to monopolize fuel transportation to Europe. The regional policy of other powers (Turkey, Iran, and China) also hinges on their interest in Caspian gas and oil.
The Caspian oil and gas region covers the sea and the adjacent areas belonging to Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran. Some of the Russian analytical community believes that
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
the sea contains 15-20 billion tons of oil, or nearly 10 percent of the world oil reserves.1 Today, Kazakhstan, which leads in terms of oil extraction and amount of proven reserves, and Azerbaijan are the two largest producers of Caspian oil, while Turkmenistan is the largest local producer of natural gas.
An analysis of the oil and gas geopolitics that has been unfolding in the Caspian since the end of the Cold War identifies the most active states and what motivated them to show an interest in the region’s hydrocarbons.
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan rely on the oil and gas extracted in their sectors of the Caspian to address their economic problems, while the European Union and, later, China need Caspian oil and gas as an alternative source of energy. Russia and the United States have been pursuing mainly political aims from the very beginning.
Moscow and Washington regard the Caspian as the key to their geopolitical problems in Eurasia. Since the early 2000s, Moscow has been trying to monopolize the region’s oil and gas potential to strengthen its geopolitical status in Eurasia. Washington has been seeking diversification of the pipeline system in the post-Soviet expanse to widen and stabilize the sources of fuel for its European allies and to prevent restoration of the imperial system which, to quote Brzezinski, “could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy.”2
With its economic and geopolitical interests in the Caspian, Russia has been playing the key role in the region throughout the post-Soviet period with the obvious intention of keeping the non-region-al countries away.
In the early and mid-1990s, Russia, due to its weak central power and vague Caspian strategy, acted ad hoc: it either responded to the initiatives of its Caspian CIS neighbors or obeyed the interests of the national oil companies (LUKoil, YUKOS, and others) which, on many occasions, differed from those of the state. Everything changed when Vladimir Putin became president. Since the 2000s, the Kremlin has been concentrating on retaining as much control over the energy resources exported by the coastal states as possible. Gazprom has been viewed as a monopolist of fuel transportation to the West and the East; and Russia has been seeking a greater role in oil and gas extraction for its corporations (mainly in the Kazakhstan sector).
Turkey has been seeking a transit role for Caspian energy resources (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum, and Nabucco) not only because it needs transit revenues. It expects that its role as Eurasia’s important energy junction will produce political dividends to be used, among other things, to speed up its joining the EU.
Iran is less inclined to welcome Western companies in the Caspian: first, its relations with the United States are still very tense, therefore the appearance of Western companies in the region might well be followed by military-political pressure from the United States and its NATO allies on Iran’s northern borders. Second, Tehran derives the bulk of its petrodollars from the Gulf.
This explains why in the post-Soviet period Iran has been seeking security in the north by establishing good relations with the Caucasian and Central Asian states, as well as with Russia and Turkey, its historical rivals in the region.
Driven by the tension with the United States and aware of Russia as the most likely counterbalance to America’s growing influence in Eurasia, Tehran wants closer relations with Moscow. The Iranians regard the Russian Federation as a supplier of military hardware and technology.
To realize its oil and gas interests, Iran is tapping its geopolitical advantages to the full and developing its transit potential,3 mainly from the Caspian to the Gulf and South Asia.
1 See: G. Starchenkov, “Caspian Oil in the Regional Economic and World Political Contexts,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 1 (37), 2006, p. 8.
2 Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard. American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1997, p. 198.
3 See: E. Dunaeva, “Kaspyskiy region i IRI,” in: Islamskaia revolutsia v Irane, Moscow, 1999, pp. 135-136.
Kazakhstan has the largest oil reserves among the newly independent states; it moves its oil mainly across Russia (through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and the Atyrau-Samara oil pipeline).
Russia and Kazakhstan were the first to agree on delimitation of the Caspian seabed, which added stability to the region and made the Caspian oil projects more attractive.
This, however, infringed on Kazakhstan’s ability to pursue an independent oil and gas policy, since Russia could manipulate the volumes of oil transit across its territory. As a rival of Russia in the world energy market and well aware that Moscow might use this lever to its own advantage, since the late 1990s, Kazakhstan has been trying to diversify the oil export routes in the western (through Aktau on the Caspian and the BTC pipeline),4 eastern (the Atasu-Alashankou oil pipeline),5 and southern directions (the possibility of moving Kazakh oil from Aktau to the Iranian port of Neka is being discussed).
This strategy decreased Astana’s dependence on the Russian pipelines and increased its political potential. It is adjusting the oil export routes to its long-term economic and political interests and the situation in its Caspian neighbors.6
Turkmenistan, the third richest oil and gas Caspian country and with no direct access to the world market, is very interested in developing a ramified network of export pipelines. Just like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan moves the bulk of its natural gas across Russia, but, very much like Kazakhstan, it wants a diversified network of export pipelines. In 2009, a gas pipeline for moving gas from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China was commissioned.7 Turkmenistan was interested in moving its fuel across Iran8; in the absence of a trans-Caspian pipeline and because of disagreements with Azerbaijan over the Caspian’s oil and gas fields, Turkmenistan cannot pump its gas to the West.
Its active foreign policy enables Baku to use the oil factor to maintain close relations with the leading Western powers; it is using the existing pipelines to move Caspian oil beyond Russia.
Late in 1991, as an independent state, Azerbaijan found itself in the center of a “geopolitical triangle” formed by the (sometimes conflicting) interests of Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Early in the 1990s, the country’s leaders had to choose one of them as a foreign policy partner; they opted for a pro-Western strategy and close cooperation with Turkey and the leading Western powers.
The new geopolitical trends that became apparent in the region, namely rapprochement between the United States, its main ally, and Russia, its recent rival, forced Baku to look for new ways and means of mutually advantageous economic cooperation with Moscow in the oil and gas sphere, among other things.
In his Kaspiyskaia neft Azerbaidzhana (Azerbaijan’s Caspian Oil), President Ilham Aliev wrote that “we can expect Azerbaijan to act as a mediator between the largest powers in the future. It geographic location at the junction between several of the largest geopolitical and geo-economic structures allows it ‘to befriend all, reconcile conflicting parties,’ and initiate West-East rapprochement.”9
There are many more actors very much interested in the development of energy and fuel transportation projects in the Caspian than just the five coastal states: Georgia, Ukraine, and several Central and East European countries (Rumania, Bulgaria—EU members since 2007—and Greece) want their share of the revenue created by their transit potential.
4 The agreement with Azerbaijan was signed in January 2007.
5 This oil pipeline which brought Kazakh oil to China was commissioned in 2006.
6 See: G. Starchenkov, op. cit., pp. 11-12.
7 According to the agreement between China and Turkmenistan of 2006, the latter will supply China with 30 billion cu m of gas every year for the next 30 years.
8 In January 2010, the gas pipeline which connected the Dovletabad gas fields with Hangeran in Iran was commissioned.
9 I. Aliev, Kaspiyskaia neft Azerbaidzhana, Izvestia, Moscow, 2003, p. 398.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Oil and gas, however, are not the only two factors that make the region attractive: its geographic location on the border between Europe and Asia and at the crossroads of intercontinental transportation routes is another indubitable advantage.10 Any power in control of the Caspian region acquires an edge in the post-Soviet geopolitical rivalry in Eurasia. Seen from Washington this looked even much more attractive than direct access to the Caspian hydrocarbons.
Specifics of America’s Geopolitical Activity in the Caspian
Given the region’s geopolitical context after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the newly independent states “involvement in the Caspian and Central Asian region would mean America had to contend with other players hoping to make their mark in the region, notably Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. This was to say nothing about the European Union and China, which were formulating their own policies toward the area.”11
In the mid-1990s, the United States moved in to gain control over the main transportation and energy projects in the Caspian region (TRACECA, the BTC oil pipeline, and the still unrealized Nabucco pipeline) to build a geopolitical line—the Balkans-the Caucasus-Central Asia. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Eurasian Balkans idea provided America’s Eurasian policy with a guideline: maintenance of “geopolitical pluralism” to “prevent Russia from exercising a monopoly on access to the region.”12 Washington never lets the Caucasus with its smoldering conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the Northern Caucasus out of its sight and also keeps an eye on what Turkey and Iran are doing in the region.13
In 1997, the United States made the Caspian a zone of its vital interests; its plans there well fit America’s national energy strategy: control over the world’s major oil fields—“control over the global strategic balance” in the official parlance.14 Washington is no less interested in the Caspian’s coastal states because of their geographic location and the fact that they border on its key geopolitical rivals in Eurasia: the RF, PRC, and IRI.
The following elements can be described as America’s main political levers: strengthening the statehood and independence of the local states that have embarked on the road of democracy and a market economy, and breaking their ties with Russia; increasing commercial opportunities for the United States; settling local conflicts by establishing political, economic, and military ties among the region’s newly independent states; creating special units trained to protect the West-bound energy transportation routes; strengthening America’s energy independence by means of Caspian energy resources; and decreasing the local states’ dependence on Russia by ensuring guaranteed free traffic of Caspian oil and natural gas to the world markets. Great attention is being focused on closer military-political and military-technical cooperation of the regional states with the United States and NATO.15
10 See: “O dolgovremennoy strategii SShA v Kaspiyskom regione i prakticheskikh shagakh po ee realizatsii. Anal-iticheskiy doklad Tsentra strategicheskogo razvitia,” available at [http://www.rusidea.ru/?part=82&id=813].
11 A. Ibrahim, “Evolving United States Policy toward the Caspian Region: A Delicate Balance,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 4 (46), 2007, p. 37.
12 Z. Brzezinski, op. cit., pp. 129, 139-143.
13 See: Z. Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Basic Books, New York, 2004, pp. 99-100.
14 “O dolgovremennoy strategii SShA v Kaspiyskom regione...”
15 See: S.S. Zhiltsov, I.S. Zonn, A.M. Ushkov, Geopolitika Kaspiyskogo regiona, Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenia Publishers, Moscow, 2003, pp. 238-240.
The well-known events in South Ossetia in August 2008 have made cooperation with Georgia especially important.16
Washington regards the region’s energy resources as a strategic reserve: it needs control over these riches rather than immediate access to their mining.
America’s regional policy is diverse: since 1996, it has been exerting immense efforts to draw Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan into its orbit; since 2008, it has been involved in stiff competition with Moscow over Armenia.
In the last twenty years, the region has become extremely important for the United States, which created a special foreign policy trend to deal with the Caspian problems.
In 1999, the Clinton Administration opened the Caspian Finance Center in Ankara to fund the oil and gas projects in Turkey, the Southern Caucasus, and Central Asia and increase the country’s commercial involvement in them. This structure opened the doors to the region and served as a handy mechanism of influence in some of the countries and for acquiring a foothold some time in future.17
A ramified pipeline network is one of the key elements of America’s Caspian policy; the new routes are expected to circumvent Russia and Iran to bring Caspian oil to the West via Turkey. This explains the stakes being placed on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
The United States expected to gain the upper hand once the new pipeline system between the Caspian and Turkey was in place: it hoped to re-orientate the Caucasian and Central Asian newly independent states toward the West; establish closer cooperation between the European NATO allies and Turkey; achieve greater isolation of Iran; and acquire the chance to limit China’s access to the region and its energy resources.18
The transportation projects in the Caspian are to be internationalized as much as possible since, the Americans argued, greater involvement of Western states will add an international dimension to the already obvious economic expediency.
As it moves toward this strategic aim, America has also been relying on some of the local newly independent states, in addition to its traditional allies (Turkey, Israel, and the EU countries). In particular, Washington has been placing its stakes at different times on Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. It has become clear that Washington is trying to create and develop consolidation in the form of GU(U)AM to promote its geopolitical vectors in the Caspian.
America has not yet abandoned its efforts to drive a wedge between Armenia, Russia’s closest military-political ally in the region, and the Kremlin; normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey was stirred up in 2008 with this aim in view.
The continued tension between Washington and Tehran prevented the former from encouraging the fuel transportation projects in which Iran was involved, including those that brought energy resources to the Gulf across Iranian territory and which are believed to be the best economic alternative. Some of the American companies prefer this option and insist on it even though geopolitical considerations will prevail over economic ones for a long time to come. The two countries will obviously not return to normal relations in the near future; this means that Tehran will be excluded from the trans-regional oil and gas projects that Washington implements in the Caspian region as part of its geopolitical strategy.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
The importance of the Caspian region as one of the world’s hydrocarbon-rich areas in the context of the overall depletion of these resources cannot be overestimated; it is equally important as a
16 See: K. Kakachia, “The Russo-Georgian Five-Day War: The Price to be Paid and Its Unintended Consequences,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 1 (55), 2009, pp. 16-17.
17 See: S.S. Zhiltsov, I.S. Zonn, A.M. Ushkov, op. cit., p. 232.
18 See: “O dolgovremennoy strategii SShA v Kaspiyskom regione...”
key area in the geopolitical confrontation that began as soon as the world lost its bipolarity. The external actors are fully aware of both factors.
America’s post-Soviet policy in the Caspian is obviously suggested by the above, the geopolitical factor being much more functionally important; the people in Washington are looking at the region’s energy resources through the prism of the geopolitical processes going on in Eurasia.
The Russian-Georgian conflict of 2008; the “resetting” of American-Russian relations launched by the Obama Administration; the mounting Islamic sentiments in Turkey, which have moved it away somewhat from Western geopolitics; the still suspended issue of energy security of America’s allies in Europe; as well as the continued and even greater tension in Washington’s relations with Tehran mean that America will probably become even more involved in the Caspian region. The region’s dynamics and the rapidly changing geopolitical and geostrategic processes around it will force the United States to adjust its tactics and strategies accordingly.
Farkhad HUSEYNOV
Doctoral candidate at the Chair of International Relations,
Baku State University (Baku, Azerbaijan).
AZERBAIJAN IN THE GEOPOLITICAL STRATEGY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
Abstract
This article analyzes the special features of the European Union’s geopolitical interests in the Caucasus, particularly in Azerbaijan. The problems in the relations between the EU and the Azerbaijan Republic are interpreted as a long civ-ilizational process. The author analyzes the role of EU-Azerbaijani relations in ensuring the energy security of the region and the EU. He notes that the EU is interested
in creating a European civilizational expanse in the region and particularly in Azerbaijan. This would promote the creation of a fragment of Europe in Azerbaijan with a view to establishing closer cooperation, which would make it less urgent for the republic to become an official member of the European Union. The author is convinced that this is the crux of the European Neighborhood Policy.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
International organizations perform different activities in Azerbaijan, ranging from humanitarian aid, various educational projects, and assistance to nongovernmental organizations to the devel-
