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> WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Russia
>
> The struggle for Caspian oil, the crisis in Russia and the
> breakup of the Commonwealth of Independent States
>
> By Patrick Richter
> 1 July 1999
>
> Back to screen version
>
> As NATO troops occupy Kosovo and the media is busy justifying the
> bombing of Yugoslavia, new struggles are developing away from the
> front lines which could lead to much greater military
> conflagrations. Such conflicts are taking place on the territory
> of the former Soviet Union, the source of the world's largest
> untapped reserves of oil and gas and a region where Russian
> influence has declined dramatically.
>
> Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 8,
> 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was founded,
> consisting of Russia, White Russia and the Ukraine. On December
> 21 of the same year a further eight former Soviet republics
> joined the CIS—the states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
> Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenia and Uzbekistan. The
> Commonwealth was founded in Alma Ata, the former capital of
> Kazakhstan. In 1993 the Caucasus republic of Georgia also joined
> the union.
>
> Russian power was the cement which held the CIS together. However
> the economic, political and military weakening of Russia has
> brought into the open the centrifugal forces which had led to the
> dissolution of the Soviet Union in the first place and have
> marked the CIS from its very beginning. Two events have
> accelerated this process: the financial crisis in Russia of
> August 1998 and the political humiliation of Russia by NATO in
> the war against Yugoslavia.
>
> At the beginning of the 1990s Russia was able, with its powerful
> military apparatus, to exert its influence over various political
> conflicts taking place within the former Soviet republics. By
> stationing troops Russia was able to ensure a temporary status
> quo between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the conflict over
> Nagorno-Karabakh; in Georgia it supported the Abkhazia separatist
> movement; in Tajikistan it maintained the weak pro-Moscow puppet
> government of Imomali Rokhmonov against the Islamic opposition
> (UTO); in Moldova it backed the Russian separatist Transnistria
> republic.
>
> More recently Moscow's military grip over these republics has
> weakened, while new conflicts have arisen and old ones have
> reemerged. This development is bound up with Russia's own decline
> and the fact that the Central Asian and Caucasus regions have
> developed relations in other directions.
>
> Overall internal trade between the CIS states has fallen by
> two-thirds since 1991. The percentage of foreign trade has
> declined from 78 percent in 1991 to 24 percent today. Trade of
> White Russia, the Ukraine, Moldova and Kazakhstan with Russia is
> down between 40 and 60 percent; between Russia and the Caucasus
> republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan trade has fallen by
> an average of 23 percent; between Russia and the rest of the
> Central Asian republics (Turkmenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and
> Tajikistan) the decline on average is 13 percent. While the
> Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia are striving to develop close links
> with the European Union, the Central Asian republics and
> Azerbaijan aim to develop relations with Turkey, Iran and China.
>
> This process has intensified considerably since last year's
> financial crisis in Russia. Up to that point Russia, as the most
> stable of the CIS economies, was able to artificially maintain
> links to the republics by buying products which were
> uncompetitive on the world market and making available
> non-repayable credits.
>
> Since the August crisis, however, Russia has been “transformed
> from a centre of gravitation to a source of economic tremors. The
> main concern of all its former partners has been to put
> sufficient distance between themselves and Russia”, according to
> Yuri Shishkov, deputy chairman of the Institute for World Economy
> and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Science.
> “All of the integration programmes within the framework of CIS
> are a thing of the past”, he wrote in the weekly Obshaya Gazeta
> of May 13-19, 1999.
>
> The atmosphere between Russia and the “partner countries” has
> cooled considerably. Whereas a chorus of “hope and optimism”
> greeted the founding of the CIS, today it is regarded as a
> “listless organisation”, whose authority is not taken seriously
> by any of the member countries. Kyrgyzstan, for example, recently
> joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in open defiance of the
> customs regulations drawn up by five of the CIS member countries.
> Turkmenia, which was formerly only able to offer its gas to the
> world market via Russian pipelines and with a Russian subsidy,
> now delivers through Iran and is gradually breaking all its
> relations with Russia. Train connections and travel without a
> visa between Moscow and the Turkmenian capital, Ashkhabad, have
> been stopped.
>
> The most significant organisation to emerge as a challenger to
> Russian influence is the union of states known as GUAM, formed in
> 1998 by Georgia, the Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. In April
> 1999 the union was extended to include Uzbekistan (after which
> the organization's name was changed to GUUAM). From its outset
> the proclaimed aim of the alliance was the revival of the “Silk
> Road”.
>
> This point was first made by the Georgian president and former
> foreign minister of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, Edward
> Shevardnadze. At an Asian Pacific Economic Community (APEC) forum
> in 1994 he called for the integration of the Central Asian and
> Caucasus states into the world market with the aid of a
> trans-European Caucasus/Pacific communications system.
>
> The heart of this system is a transport route for Azeri oil which
> circumvents Russia and its spheres of influence. The
> trans-Caucasian states of Azerbaijan and Georgia would become key
> elements in a transport system linking Asia and Europe and
> controlling the passage of goods by road and rail. Such a system
> would be highly attractive to investors. The first projects
> involved in this system, such as the construction of a highway
> from the north Turkish industrial town of Samsun to the Georgian
> port of Batumi, are being built or—as with the oil pipeline
> between the Azerbaijani capital of Baku and the Georgian Black
> Sea port of Supsa—are already finished.
>
> The European Union, which partly financed this latter project,
> seeks as well to participate in an oil transport route between
> Poti and Ilytshovsk. This will secure a direct route for
> Azerbaijani oil to the states of western and southeastern Europe
> fully independent of Russia. Instead of the existing route from
> Grosny to Novorossik in Russia, it is to be transported by rail
> from Baku to the Georgian port of Poti and then transported by
> ship to the Ukrainian port of Odessa Ilytshovsk.
>
> Ukraine and neighbouring Moldova are making their own oil
> pipeline available to the Czech and Slovakian republics and
> Rumania, and then to Western Europe and the Balkans. By so doing
> they can free themselves altogether from Russian oil interests
> and grab their own share of business. Talks are being held with
> Turkmenia over oil and gas pipelines through the Caspian Sea over
> Baku, and further on to Georgia and Turkey.
>
> A major problem, however, is the existence of ethnic conflicts in
> these countries. Up until now these antagonisms were utilised by
> Russia to maintain its control and hinder the efforts of these
> states to free themselves from Moscow's grip. But with Russia's
> decline the GUUAM states are more and more openly opposing Moscow
> and seeking the support of the United States in order to assert
> their own interests.
>
> Uzbekistan's entry into the GUUAM alliance took place in
> Washington during the festivities to mark the fiftieth
> anniversary of NATO, which were boycotted by Russia in protest
> over the bombing of Yugoslavia. For their part the presidents of
> the GUUAM states made clear their unqualified support for the
> actions of the US and NATO.
>
> Moreover, since the beginning of the year joint military
> maneuvers by the Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia have been taking
> place for the first time without the participation of Russia. The
> maneuvers were conducted as defence exercises for the newly
> opened oil routes. Immediately after the CIS summit in Moscow
> last April, these countries asserted their de facto withdrawal
> from the treaty of Tashkent, agreed in 1992 between the CIS
> states with the aim of creating a “joint defence framework”.
>
> The United States has warmly approved the aims of GUUAM. As early
> as 1997 the US Congress passed a resolution declaring the Caspian
> and Caucasus region to be a “zone of vital American interests”.
> At the end of April this year Clinton's special envoy for energy
> diplomacy, R. Morningstar, outlined American interests in a
> number of points: 1) independence, sovereignty and welfare in
> these countries to be secured through the imposition of economic
> and political reforms; 2) reducing the danger of regional
> conflict through the involvement of the states in international
> economic collaboration; 3) strengthening the energy security of
> the USA and its allies with the help of the countries of the
> Caspian region and; 4) expanding the opportunities for American
> corporations.
>
> An especially aggressive role is being played by oil-rich
> Azerbaijan, where American petroleum concerns are responsible for
> more than 50 percent of oil investment. Its president, Heydar
> Aliyev, has repeatedly boasted that “the great possibilities for
> the deepening and broadening of economic and military
> collaboration with the USA and NATO have been fully exploited”.
> Intense efforts have been made to establish an American, Turkish
> or NATO base as a counterpart to Armenia (which is supported by
> Russia) on the territory of the former Soviet air defence base
> “Nasosnaya”, located 45 km north of Baku.
>
> The US, which is evidently prepared to impose its interests in
> the region by means of military force, sent a working group of
> American officers under the leadership of General Charles Box on
> a special mission to the area. According to the Russian weekly
> Vyek (century), they examined the possibilities of stationing
> NATO troops “for the strengthening of security and stability in
> the Caucasus.”
>
> It was more than empty words when Azerbaijani Defence Minister
> Safar Abiyev called for “a peace intervention by NATO” in
> connection with renewed fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. He had
> already offered NATO the use of Azeri air installations for the
> Alliance's operations in Yugoslavia.
>
> Europe is also well aware of the significance of the region. NATO
> General Secretary Javier Solanas, who has visited the region
> twice in the past two years, stated, “Europe cannot be totally
> secure as long as the Caucasus states remain outside the borders
> of European security.”
>
> Russian influence and CIS stability are also under threat from
> the Islamic side. Because of the decline in Moscow's authority,
> President Rachmonov of Tajikistan was forced to make further
> concessions to the Islamistic United Tajik Opposition (UTO),
> which has controlled half of the shattered country since the end
> of the five-year civil war in 1997. The opposition has close
> relations to the Afghan Taliban militia, and in the latest
> conflict opposition leader Nuri received four additional
> ministerial posts in the coalition government that was formed
> after the civil war.
>
> Uzbekistan, where a third of the population belongs to the ethnic
> Tadchikis minority, fears for its future amid growing pressure
> from Tajikistan and an increase in incidents on its short border
> with Afghanistan. Were Russia to desert its neighbour Tajikistan,
> and the latter to fall into the hands of the Islamists,
> Uzbekistan would hardly be in a position to defend its borders.
> This is why Uzbekistan President Karimov is seeking to secure his
> rule with the help of the US and GUUAM.
>
> The only CIS state to maintain unconditional loyalty to Russia is
> White Russia, whose economy has hit rock bottom. During the
> Soviet era White Russia was closely integrated into the Russian
> economy and was known as the Russian “tool-shop”. Today its
> economy is totally uncompetitive on the world market, and its
> output has declined to less than 30 percent of the level in 1989.
>
> Those seeking to determine the source of future military
> conflicts should follow the flow of oil and gold. The ethnic
> conflicts encountered along the way could well serve as the
> trigger for new NATO interventions.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
>
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> World Socialist Web Site
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>
>
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