Category: America

  • When China Rules the World

    When China Rules the World

    By Martin Jacques

    Reviewed by John Gray – 18 June 2009

    It is clear that the rise of China marks the end of western global hegemony, but just what the coming Chinese ascendency will look like is another matter.

    dThe civilisation state

    On his first visit to China as US treasury secretary, at the start of this month, Timothy Geithner attempted to reassure an audience at Peking University that there is no need to worry about the enormous holdings China has built up in US government bonds. “Chinese assets are very safe,” he declared. Geithner’s statement produced loud laughter from the largely student audience.

    Unlike most western commentators, who still give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt, China’s emerging elite know there is no prospect that the United States will pay back its debts at anything like their current value. The only way the US can repay its vast borrowings is by debasing the dollar – a process in which China will inevitably be short-changed. Significantly, the students’ response was not anger, but derision – a clear sign of how the US is now perceived. Resentment at US power is being replaced by contempt, as the impotence and self-deception of the American political class in the face of the country’s problems become increasingly evident.

    In a characteristically incisive formulation, Martin Jacques writes that the “rise of China and the decline of the United States are central to the present global depression”. Although China remains a fast-emerging, rather than a developed, economy and even though it is nowhere near acquiring America’s worldwide military reach, the crisis has speeded up a shift in the balance of power between the two countries that has been taking place for decades. The importance of China’s advance goes far beyond the incontrovertible fact of America’s relative decline, however. If Jacques is right, the rise of China will bring the end of the western world as we have known it over the past several hundred years.

    Western commentators on China fall into two main camps. The first, which we may called the China sceptics, rejects out of hand the notion that China can ever become the world’s dominant power. The second – which is increasingly vocal and influential, especially in the US – sees the rise of China as a major threat to the existing, western-dominated global system. Though the two views are not finally compatible, they can quite often be found in the same person. The awkward fact with which both of them struggle is that China’s industrialisation – the largest in history – has been achieved indigenously. China’s success is widely praised by western governments, but it has been based on a rejection of western advice.

    Like climate-change sceptics, China sceptics tend simply to ignore evidence that does not fit their world-view. Even if they accept that China’s success over the past 30 years has been achieved by following a distinctive path, they can only insist that China will be compelled to westernise at some point in the future – overlooking how it is western neoliberalism, and not Chinese capitalism, that has collapsed. Or else, they must admit that China can go on developing, and even overtake the west, while remaining as different from the west as it has ever been. This last is a terrifying scenario, as it implies that if a country westernises, that does not ensure its economic success – if anything, it may be an impediment. In other words, China may be so successful because it is so different from the west. At this point, the first view of China morphs into the second and we start to hear hysterical warnings of the threat posed by China’s inexorable rise. Inside every China sceptic is a prophet of the New Yellow Peril waiting to be let out.

    The common conviction of nearly all these commentators is that no country can modernise without following a western path. The message of When China Rules the World – by far the best book on China to have been published in many years, and one of the most important inquiries into the nature of modernisation – is that this assumption blinds us to the way the world is being reshaped before our eyes. Jacques’s comprehensive and richly detailed analysis will be an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary China; but its primary value is in overturning the assumption – almost universal in the west, and held by some in China – that, as a country develops, it is bound to evolve into something like a western state. As Jacques points out, China “may seem like a nation state, but its geological formation is that of a civilisation state”. When China was weak it had little alternative but to accept western terms of reference. As it grows richer and stronger, China is more and more affirming the inherent value, if not the actual superiority, of its ancient civilisation. Far from turning its back on its history, the country is returning to the past in order to forge a new version of modernity.

    “The emergence of China as a global power,” Jacques writes, “in effect relativises everything.” The author is not endorsing any kind of fashionable postmodernism here. He is clear that there are universal human values. His argument is rather that there are many ways of recognising universal values in a modern society. All the same, the version of modernity which appears to be emerging in China does come with some rather dark spots. The deep sense of China as a unitary civilisation, together with a pervasive belief in Han superiority, leaves little tolerance for the claims of other cultural groups.

    Some way may be found, the author suggests, whereby the Tibetans can coexist with the Chinese state. But, as he admits, the dominant sense of Chinese identity is essentially racial, and most Chinese look down on Tibetans with loathing. In line with this, and also for strategic reasons, “China has encouraged large-scale Han migration in an effort to alter the ethnic balance of the population and thereby weaken the position of the Tibetans who for the most part live in the rural areas and in segregated urban ghettos.” It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, in building the Chinese civilisation state, Beijing is systematically destroying a unique civilisation.

    A resurgent China will be problematical in a number of ways. It remains very unclear how China’s rulers view the international system. Will they try to reshape it in their own image, and if so what will the world then look like? Jacques argues that something like the tributary system that existed in the past can be re-created, but that system applied mainly to China’s nearer and smaller neighbours. It is impossible to envisage such an unequal relationship being acceptable to India or Russia or, for that matter, Japan. Again, can China extend its control of world markets while retaining its grip on its own economy? Control of capital flows has been one of China’s strengths in the current crisis. Will it be ready to compromise this advantage in order to supplant the failing dollar as the world’s reserve currency?

    There are no clear answers, if only because China’s ruling elite have almost certainly not begun to answer these questions themselves. What is undeniable is that China’s ascendancy is bringing with it an international environment potentially more volatile than any in the recent past. So far, says Jacques, “The changes wrought by China’s rise have done little to disturb the calm of global waters, yet their speed and enormity suggest that we have entered an era of profound instability; by way of contrast, the Cold War was characterised by relative predictability combined with exceptional stability.”

    The witless, end-of-history triumphalism that shaped western attitudes in the post-Cold War era is nowhere more misplaced than in regard to China. History is on the move again – and it is not the delusional, teleological, self-congratulating history dreamt up by liberal rationalists, which somehow always ends with themselves as the winners. The rise of China is the real thing, a world-changing event that marks the end of western hegemony.

    New Statesman

  • CIA’s Iranian Plan?

    CIA’s Iranian Plan?

    Short video explores the possibility that the CIA is involved in Iran’s recent election unrest.

  • Antiterrorism expert to speak at OAS Lecture Series

    Antiterrorism expert to speak at OAS Lecture Series

    tsfWASHINGTON, USA — The French investigating Magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, in charge of counter-terrorist section and Vice-president of the Paris Court of Serious Claims (Tribunal de Grande Instance) will be the keynote speaker at the XXXVI OAS Lecture Series of the Americas that will take place on June 22nd, at the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington DC.

    Bruguière, who is also an antiterrorism expert at the Council of Europe, the Commission of the European Union and the United Nations (UNODC), will speak about the “the Fight against Terrorism and the Promotion of Democratic Values” and the opportunities for Europe and the Americas to work together identifying more effective mechanisms to combat terrorism.

    As part of his work at the Court, Judge Bruguière has promoted a strong relationship with his counterparts as well as with intelligence agencies around the world. He also dealt with investigations concerning radical Islamism, in particular Al-Qaeda; and dealt with inquiries into separatist organizations such as IRA, PKK and LTTE.

    During his career, Bruguière has advised several States on the fight against terrorism and has participated in numerous symposia on this issue.. Recently, he was appointed by the European Union as an “Eminent European Person” representing Europe in the United States within the framework of the US “Terrorism Finance Tracking Programme/SWIFT”

    At the end of the main speaker’s presentation, a question and answer session will take place.

    Source:  www.caribbeannetnews.com, June 19, 2009

  • The Eurasian Pipeline Calculus

    The Eurasian Pipeline Calculus

    Global Research, June 17, 2009

     

    Calculus has two main variants—derivative and integral. The Eurasian energy pipeline geopolitics between Turkey Washington and Moscow today has elements of both. It is highly derivative in that the major actors across Central Asia from China, Russia to Turkey are very much engaged in a derived power game which has less to do with any specific state and more to do with maintaining Superpower hegemony for Washington. Integral as the de facto motion of various pipeline projects now underway or in discussion across Eurasia hold the potential to integrate the economic space of Eurasia in a way that poses a fundamental challenge to Washington’s projection of Full Spectrum Dominance over the greatest land mass on earth.

    Since at least the time of the Crimean War of 1853, Turkey has played a strategic role in modern Eurasian and European developments. In the 1850’s Ottoman Turkey became a target of Great Power imperial ambitions as Britain and France sought to take advantage of tensions between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in order to weaken and ultimately take vital parts of that weakened empire. 

     

    The Great Powers of that time, the empires of Britain, France, Russia and Austria began plotting the dismemberment of the vast Ottoman Empire. Debt was their preferred instrument. The foreign debt situation in Ottoman Turkey had become so extreme that Sultan Abdul Hamid II was forced by his French and British creditors to put the entire finances of the realm under the control of a banker-run agency in 1881, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA), controlled by the two largest creditors—France and Britain. By the late 1880’s a new player on the Continent who was not part of this debt control, the German Reich, engaged the Ottoman Empire economically. That strategically challenged the vital imperial design of the most powerful empire of the day, Britain.

     

    After Britain sank into a Great Depression after 1873, Germany’s industrial colossus emerged as the fastest-developing economic power on earth with the possible exception of then fledgling United States. The political and economic fate of Germany and Ottoman Turkey were linked after 1899 with the decision by German industry, Deutsche Bank to build a railway connecting Berlin to the Ottoman Empire as far away as Baghdad in then-Mesopotamia. It was a land bridge for trade between Ottoman Turkey and Germany independent of British control of the seas.  

    A few Eurasian geopolitical basics

     

    German industry had begun to look overseas for sources of raw materials as well as potential markets for German goods. In 1894 German Chancellor, von Caprivi, told the Reichstag, “Asia Minor is important to us as a market for German industry, a place for the investment of German capital and a source of supply, capable of considerable expansion, of such essential goods as we now buy from countries of which it may well sooner or later be in our interests to make ourselves independent.”  Caprivi was supported by German industry, especially the steel barons, and by the great banks such as Deutsche Bank.

     

    That Berlin-Baghdad Railway linking the fate of Ottoman Turkey to that of Germany was a geopolitically strategic factor in the events which led Britain to the First World War in a failed bid to preserve her global hegemony. Turkey then as today was regarded by powerful Great Powers as a “pivot” state. The danger in being a pivot state is, of course, the question of who has their hands on it, who moves the pivot for their own geopolitical purposes.

     

    In 1904 a British professor of geography, Sir Halford Mackinder, delivered a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society titled The Geographical Pivot of History, which was to shape a history of two world wars and subsequent wars and power relations. Mackinder, the father of geopolitics—the relation of geography and political economy and power—developed the systematic axiom of British imperial power. It was simple as it was fateful:

     

    Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland:

    Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island:

    Who rules the World-Island commands the World.

     

    For Mackinder East Europe was Continental Europe from Germany to Poland, France and Austria. The Heartland was the vast Eurasian land power, Russia. The World-Island was Eurasia.

     

    When the United States emerged to displace the British Empire in world affairs after 1945, she also took the lessons of Mackinder geopolitics. The leading postwar foreign policy strategists including Henry Kissinger, were schooled in Mackinders’ ideas. One American disciple of Mackinder, Zbigniew Brzezinski, cited Mackinder’s geopolitical axiom in a 1997 essay in Foreign Affairs magazine where he defined the American strategic priorities in the post-Soviet era:

     

    Eurasia is home to most of the world’s politically assertive and dynamic states…The world’s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there… Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world’s population; 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia’s potential power overshadows even America’s.

    Eurasia is the world’s axial super-continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard…the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy. [1]

     

    That has largely defined US foreign political and military relations with Turkey and the newly emerging former Soviet Republics of Eurasia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unfortunately for Turkey and the republics of the Eurasian region, those relations have too often been determined by IMF conditionalities and by military alliances and actions more resembling the Cold War than an era of genuine peace and respect for national sovereignty. Until now the post-Soviet East-West relations have largely been based on a negative construct.

     

    The two geopolitical statements—the one from Mackinder in 1919 during the Versailles talks to divide Europe after the First World War, the second by Mr Brzezinski in 1997 at the end of a bitter Cold War—have defined the principle relations of Turkey and the rest of Eurasia to the world for more than a century.

     

    Eurasia’s Opportunity today

     

    What will define the future for the various nations of Eurasia, especially Turkey, two decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact Cold War structures?

     

    The answer requires some clarity on basic issues. First and most essential is how Turkey and other Eurasian nations define their bilateral and regional relationships. Second, how do they define their relationship with the Atlantic alliance, the system of political, military and economic relations built after 1945 around the dominance of the United States.

     

    What defines the situation today is a growing realization across all Eurasia from Beijing to Moscow, from Alma Ata to Ankara that the pillar of the postwar order, the United States has become an increasingly incalculable partner and force in world economic and political affairs. Some even within the US speak of a terminal decline in American influence over the coming decades, with terms such as ‘imperial overstretch.’ It’s essential to understand the extent and nature of the current economic and financial crisis of the Dollar System if we are to make any serious calculation of the future.

     

    The crisis which broke in August 2007 as a crisis in the sub-prime or high-risk segment of US real estate credit was in fact a first manifestation of a process of debt destruction which is bringing the United States into a new Great Depression, one that will last at least a decade, perhaps several. In its severity it will be far worse than that of the 1930’s. Today the USA is the world’s greatest debtor economy. In 1929 it was the largest creditor. Today the USA public debt is over $11 trillion, growing at the fastest rate in history. The Federal deficit this year is estimated to exceed $1.8 trillion as the Treasury pours money into a bankrupt banking system to try to rescue a collapsing Dollar System. In 1929 US Public Debt was insignificant.

     

    Since Washington abandoned the Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard convertibility in August 1971 it has been accepted wisdom in Washington that, as Dick Cheney put it, ‘deficits don’t matter.’ So long as the dollar was world reserve currency and the US was the greatest military power, the world would support the dollar. That era appears to have ended. The trade surplus economies of Asia, above all China are becoming increasingly concerned that the value of their dollar investments in US debt will depreciate as the volume of debt needed continues to soar.

     

    In recent months China has begun exploring alternative investment avenues to replace their dollar investments.  Russia and Brazil, seeking to reduce their dependence on the dollar, plan to buy $20billion of SDR bonds from the IMF and diversify foreign-currency reserves. Russia’s central bank said it may cut investments in US Treasuries, currently estimated at $240billion, and China says it may reduce reliance on the dollar and US bonds. China today is America’s largest foreign creditor.

     

    This is no short-term impulse to dump dollars or a pressure tactic by the countries of Eurasia. It’s the beginning of a global tectonic shift away from a sole financial center to many regional or ‘multipolar’ centers over the next decade. As the trillions of dollars of US taxpayer bailouts have demonstrated, try as they might, Humpty Dumpty, the Dollar System can’t be put together again, as it was even three years ago. Wrong economic policies, decisions taken more than four decades ago in Washington and Wall Street, have reached their relative limits. The world is in what Joseph Schumpeter once called ‘creative destruction.’ The consequences for the future of Eurasia are enormous.

     

    With the pillar of the US-centered Dollar System slowly collapsing, the choices for Eurasia begin to define themselves. At this point they can go one of two ways: Continue the status quo and subordinate national economic decisions to support the Dollar System. That means abiding by the rules of IMF and World Bank austerity. It means abiding by the trade rules of the G7-dominated WTO, even on issues such as GMO seeds which go against national health security. It means to subordinate national security interests to NATO, an institution created in the Cold War atmosphere of the Truman Doctrine in 1948. That, despite we are at a time the original purpose for NATO, defense against a Soviet military threat or Warsaw Pact aggression has long since become a relic of past history. Those four institutions are at the heart of the 1944 Bretton Woods Dollar System, as I have described in detail in a recent book.

     

    The main problem for fast-emerging Eurasian nations with continuing this Atlantic status quo, sometimes referred to by Washington as ‘Globalization,’ is that it now means going down with the Dollar Titanic over the longer term. 

     

    Emerging Eurasian Economic Space

     

    On the other hand there is second dynamic economic perspective, still raw and unformed, but one containing everything necessary to build a vast zone of economic prosperity, a huge new market.

     

    The catastrophic US military experience in Iraq and also in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2001 has led to much rethinking across Eurasia.

     

    The fact that the new Obama Administration to date, while making rhetorical gestures of a change, has done little of substance to shift US fundamental economic and military policy, suggests that the real options for maintaining the American Century are few at this point. That is clear from the fact that the key players in Obama economic policy were the same persons responsible for creating the conditions of the financial disaster in the first place. The military policies in the new Administration are represented by the same persons responsible for past military misadventures. They are representing an outmoded paradigm that is in fatal decline.

     

    In this situation of a declining economic influence of the USA the various nations across Eurasia are clearly beginning to look to new regional arrangements which could secure export markets, in fact to build new markets.

     

    A market in the end is a political decision. Markets, contrary to what Milton Friedman taught, do not exist free in nature. They are created. There is no abstract ‘world market.’ Regional or local markets can be and are created peacefully.

     

    In the past several years steps to build new markets have become visible across Eurasia. Notable is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). According to Russian and to Chinese economists with whom I have discussed, the SCO is seen as an evolving framework to build a new Eurasian economic space.

     

    It is very initial, but an important framework to economically weave the nations of China, Russia and Central Asia into closer cooperation. From the perspective of geopolitics, the SCO is a natural economic convergence of mutual interests of the republics of Central Asia. SCO founding members include Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia, India, Pakistan and Iran are observers. They just concluded an annual meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia where they discussed deeper economic, security and social cooperation. The background of the present deepening dollar crisis shaped the talks. As well the governments of Brazil and India joined after with Russia and China, to discuss mutual economic interests, including energy cooperation.

    The Eurasian energy calculus

     

    The future of any economic cooperation among the states of Eurasia, including Turkey, rests on the resolution of vital energy supply issues. Here Eurasia is fortunate to straddle some of the richest energy regions on our planet, in Russia as well as the Caspian Basin state of Kazakhstan and the contiguous Middle East Gulf region.

     

    Following the ill-conceived decision by the G7 in June 1990 to place the economic reorganization of former economies of the Warsaw Pact including Russia under the mandate of IMF conditionalities, a role for which the IMF had never been intended, Russia today is struggling to regain a stable economic base.

     

    It has a way to go. But Russia brings to the table huge positive resource advantages in terms of its wealth of oil and gas reserves and energy technology no Western country possesses. Given the rapid industrial expansion of China since the beginning of the decade, a natural partnership is emerging linking the economies of Russia, Kazakhstan and China increasingly around energy. The role of pipeline geopolitics in the economic future of Turkey and Eurasia generally is central.

     

    Today the future of competing gas pipelines is at the heart of the Eurasian economic calculus. Here Turkey is in a position to play a central role given its geographic and historical role as a bridge between East and West, North and South—Europe and Eurasia.

     

    One key link through Turkey has been the oil and gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to the port of Ceyhan via Georgia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline are cited as part of Turkey’s foreign policy strategy to become an energy conduit. BTC has also been a high priority US foreign policy goal to weaken Russian influence over Caspian energy corridors. By itself BTC has limited strategic effect on the regional geopolitical balance. Were it to be coupled with a second project, the much-discussed Nabucco project, the impact would definitely be a direct challenge to Russia’s energy role. The EU knows this well, which is why several member states have been less than eager to invest serious sums in Nabucco.

     

    Recent developments in discovery and development of new natural gas reserves in both Azerbaijan and most recently in Turkmenistan in South Yolotan-Osman and Yashlar gas fields, located in the eastern part of the Amudarya River basin, add significant new energy resources to the energy calculus of the emerging Eurasian economic space.

     

    Turkey-Russia cooperation or Turkish-Washington Cooperation?

    Turkish-Russian economic ties have greatly expanded over the past decade, with trade volume reaching $32 billion in 2008, making Russia Turkey’s number one partner. Gas and oil imports from Russia account for most of the trade volume.

    Turkey and Russia are already connected by the twin Blue Stream natural gas pipelines across the bottom of the Black Sea. Moscow and Ankara are talking about increasing deliveries through the network, which in 2008 carried 10 bn cm of Russian gas to Turkey.

     

    More importantly, following a March meeting in Ankara between the Turkish Energy Minister and Gazprom chief Alexei Miller, discussions are underway about a Blue Stream-2 project. It would be a new gas pipeline parallel to Blue Stream, in addition to the construction of a gas transportation system in Turkey by expanding Blue Stream to interlink with the proposed Samsun-Ceyhan line, with a spur line under the Mediterranean to Ashkelon in Israel.

     

    Russia’s Prime Minister Putin has also said he was counting on the support of Israel in the construction of a new oil pipeline via Turkey and Israel. The pipeline would link to the Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipeline, to be constructed across the Red and Mediterranean seas.

    For Turkey, which currently imports 90 % of its energy, the projects would provide increased energy security and, in the case of the Samsun-Ceyhan-Ashkelon pipeline, generate significant transit revenues.

     

    Discussions are also underway on possible extending Turkey’s gas lines across its Thracian territory to supply neighbouring Balkan nations Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary. In such an event, Moscow would have gained a prime goal of lessening its dependency on the Ukrainian pipeline network for transit.

     

    Russia also won a tender for the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear plant recently, though final resolution is unclear at this time. Russia’s market also plays a major role for Turkish overseas investments and exports. Russia is one of the main customers for Turkish construction firms and a major destination for Turkish exports. Similarly, millions of Russian tourists bring significant revenues to Turkey every year. Importantly, Turkey and Russia may start to use the Turkish lira and the Russian ruble in foreign trade, which could increase Turkish exports to Russia.

     

    In recent months both Turkey and Russia have taken steps to deepen economic and political cooperation. Cooperation between Russia and Turkey is seen by both now as essential to regional peace and stability.

     

    In talk of revived ‘Great Games’ in Eurasia during the 1990’s it seemed Turkey was becoming once more Russia’s geopolitical rival as in the 19th Century. Turkey’s quasi-alliance with Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia led Moscow until recently to view Turkey as a formidable rival. That is changing significantly.

     

    Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently commended Turkey’s actions during the Russian-Georgian war of last summer, and Turkey’s subsequent proposal for the establishment of a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform (CSCP). The Russian President said the Georgia crisis had shown their ability to deal with such problems on their own without the involvement of outside powers.

     

    Russian’s aim is clearly to use its economic resources to counter what it sees as a growing NATO encirclement, made dramatic by the Washington decision to place missile and radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, as they see it, aimed at Moscow. To date the Obama Administration has indicated it will continue the Bush ‘missile defense’ policy. Washington also just agreed to place US Patriot missiles in Poland, clearly not aimed at Germany.

    If Ankara moves towards closer collaboration with Russia, Georgia’s position is precarious and Azerbaijan’s natural gas pipeline route to Europe, the Nabucco Pipeline, is blocked. If it cooperates with the United States and manages to reach a stable treaty with Armenia under US auspices, the Russian position in the Caucasus is weakened.

     

    The strategy for Washington to bring Germany into closer cooperation with the US is to weaken German dependence on Russian energy flows. With the recent Obama visit to Ankara, Washington is evidently attempting to win Turkish support for its troubled Nabucco alternative gas pipeline through Turkey from Azerbaijan which would potentially lessen EU dependence on Russian gas.

     

    Turkey is one of the only routes energy from new sources can cross to Europe from the Middle East, Central Asia or the Caucasus. If Turkey decides to cooperate with Russia, Russia retains the initiative. Since it became clear in Moscow that US strategy was to extend NATO to Russia’s front door via Ukraine and Georgia, Russia has moved to use its economic “carrot” its vast natural gas resources, to at the very least neutralize Western Europe, especially Germany, towards Russia.

     

    A Washington Great Game?

    However the question of Turkish-EU relations is linked with the issue of Turkish membership into the EU, a move vehemently opposed by France and also less openly so by Germany, and strongly backed by Washington.

     

    Washington is clearly playing what some call ‘a deeper game.’ Obama’s backing for Turkey’s application for EU membership comes with a heavy price. As the US is no member of the EU it was an attempt to try to curry favor with the Erdogan government. Since the April Obama visit, Ankara has begun to discuss an agreement with Armenia including diplomatic relations.

     

    A Turkish accord with Armenia would change the balance of power in the entire region. Since the August 2008 Georgia-Russia conflict the Caucasus, a strategically vital area has been unstable. Russian troops remain in South Ossetia. Russia also has troops in Armenia meaning Russia has Georgia surrounded.

     

    Turkey is the key link in this complex game of geopolitical balance of power between Washington and Moscow. If Turkey decides to collaborate with Russia Georgia’s position becomes insecure and Azerbaijan’s possible pipeline route to Europe is blocked. If Turkey decides to cooperate with Washington and at the same time reaches a stable agreement with Armenia under US nudging, Russia’s entire position in the Caucasus is weakened and an alternative route for natural gas to Europe becomes available, reducing Russian leverage with Western Europe.

     

    This past March a memorandum was signed between the Azerbaijan state oil company SOCAR and Russia’s Gazprom for major deliveries of Azerbaijan natural gas to Russia by January 2010.

     

    Azerbaijan is the only state outside Iran that would likely supply gas to the planned EU Nabucco pipeline from Azerbaijan through Turkey to south-eastern Europe. Russia has proposed South Stream as an alternative to the Nabucco project, also in need of Azerbaijan gas, so in effect Russia weakens the chances of realization of Nabucco.

     

    In this Eurasian pipeline and economic diplomacy, clear is that Turkey and the other nations of Eurasia are grappling with new possible economic arrangements which will have profound impact on the future of the world economy. The EU as a body is at present clearly frozen in the dynamic of the old post-1945 Bretton Woods order. Initiative is unlikely to come from Brussels for a dynamic economic growth in Turkey or Eurasia generally. Interestingly, Eurasia is becoming the growth locomotive for the EU. Many Europeans find that a hard pill to swallow. It is however the reality, and a fascinating opportunity for the nations of Eurasia as well as for the economies of the EU. Ultimately, as well, a vibrant growing Eurasian economic space would be in the best long-term interest of the United States in a multi-polar world. 

     

     

    1. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, A Geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997.

    F. William Engdahl is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be reached via his website www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net 

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-eurasian-pipeline-calculus/14007

  • KARABAKH: CONTINUED LACK OF WESTERN INTEREST?

    KARABAKH: CONTINUED LACK OF WESTERN INTEREST?

    By Fariz Ismailzade (06/17/2009 issue of the CACI Analyst)

    The initial hopes that the change of administration in the U.S. would bring new momentum to the deadlocked Nagorno-Karabakh peace process are starting to fade. Although President Obama during the first months of his term in office pushed actively for the normalization of Turkish-Armenian and Azerbaijani-Armenian relations, not much has come out of this process. It is likely now that President Obama, just like his predecessor President Bush, will turn his attention to more global problems, like North Korea and Iraq, and thus forget the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict for the rest of his term.

    BACKGROUND: When President Bush was elected, he was searching an opportunity for a foreign policy success. Officials at the State Department presented him with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as one of the world’s ripest for a breakthrough. Urgent high level talks between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia were arranged by U.S. officials in Key West in 2001 and a great push was made to convince both leaders to come to an agreement. Many analysts believe that the Key West talks were the closest the parties have ever come to a peace agreement in the past decade. Yet, both presidents felt hostage to their nationalistic home crowds and were unable to make compromises. Particularly, then Armenian President Robert Kocharian, fearing the fate of his predecessor Levon Ter Petrosian, shied away from committing to a step-by-step solution of the conflict, in which Armenia would first return the occupied Azerbaijani territories and only after that the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh would be determined.

    The failed Key West talks, in which the US government invested heavily, including the personal involvement of then Secretary of State Colin Powell, led to a grave disappointment among the mediators. The conflict was put on the backburner for the rest of President Bush’s term in office. The September 11 terror attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq completely changed the foreign policy priorities of the U.S. and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was certainly not on the top list of urgent tasks for the State Department. Yet, much of the blame for the failure in the Key West talks can actually be placed on the US officials themselves. They rushed for a breakthrough without a proper understanding of the conflict’s realities, without proper involvement of Russia, Armenia’s key military ally, and without much change in the balance of power on the ground.

    Without proper preparations, it would be very naïve to expect a breakthrough in the conflict.

    A similar picture now arises with President Obama. Right after his election, he started pushing for the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. His agenda was clear: make a breakthrough in bilateral Turkish-Armenian relations and use this as an excuse not to use the “G” word when referring to the events of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. It was clear that President Obama did not want to use the “G” word and thus ruin the important relations with strategic ally Turkey. But simultaneously he needed to either keep his campaign promise or get out of the situation with a very solid excuse. Therefore, a very heavy diplomatic push started mounting on Turkey to open its border with Armenia.

    Many analysts believed that by opening the border, Turkey could engage Armenia more and thus reduce the latter’s dependence on Russia. Others saw little practical change in the situation on the ground as Armenia’s economy, military and security is practically in the hands of Russia. Thus, a one-sided opening of the border would only damage Turkish-Azerbaijani relations and cause a rift between the two strategic U.S. partners in the region. As a result, the balance of power in the region would shift and the fate of the Nabucco gas pipeline and other mega-projects would be put at risk. After April 24, when both President Obama and the Turkish government managed to avoid the potential disaster in U.S.-Turkish relations, things have calmed down. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan traveled to Baku and assured his Azerbaijani friends that Turkey would never open the border before the occupied Azerbaijani lands are liberated. There also seems to be substantial progress in Turkish-Azerbaijan talks on the issue of transiting Azerbaijani gas to the European markets through Turkey. Thus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is once again on its way down on the U.S. agenda for the region.

    IMPLICATIONS: It is likely that President Obama, after his initial excitement over the potential normalization of Turkish-Armenian and Azerbaijani-Armenian relations, is going to pay less and less attention to this part of the world. In that respect, he will repeat President Bush’s path. Initial diplomatic activity during both presidential terms would produce many hopes, but no concrete results. Thus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would again be put on the shelf.

    There are some clear signs of this trend already. In the latest peace talks in Prague, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian made no breakthrough on the terms of an agreement, despite high expectations and hopes. On the contrary, the Azerbaijani side came out of the meeting in a very frustrated mood, saying that Armenia makes no changes in its stubborn and unconstructive approach to the solution of the conflict. The hopeful remarks by U.S. mediator Matt Bryza also irritated official Baku, which accused Mr. Bryza of distorting the information and purposefully sending optimistic news to the State Department leadership whereas the real situation on the ground remained stagnant.

    There are fears that the upcoming meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents in St. Petersburg will put a final end to all hopes for the peaceful resolution of the conflict in the nearest future. No major breakthrough is expected during this meeting and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is likely to enter another 4 years of boredom and stagnation. The U.S. administration has to shift its focus to the North Korean peninsula, and its relations with Russia, Iran and Iraq.

    CONCLUSIONS: It has become a recurring pattern that after a change in the U.S. government, the new President rushes to score a foreign policy success by pushing for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This is usually done without much change on the ground and without a proper understanding of the conflict. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is very much an international conflict. Russia’s role in it is huge and the U.S. administration will never be able to resolve it without properly addressing the role of Russia and without taking into consideration the factor of Armenia’s dependence on Russia.

    Pushing for an immediate breakthrough and desperately wishing to see immediate successes lead to quick disappointments, after which the US administration forgets about the conflict and hesitates to organize another high level push for its solution. It would be better if the U.S. administration would not push for quick resolution of the conflict, for which the parties are not ready, but instead maintained a high level interest in the conflict throughout the whole presidential term and gradually prepared the ground work for a final resolution. This conflict can only be resolved through preparing a solid ground work and shifting the balance of power in the region. Investing all hopes in the initial months of negotiation will inevitably produce disappointment in the end. 

    AUTHOR’S BIO: Fariz Ismailzade is a political analyst based in Baku, Azerbaijan.

    http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5130

  • Some In Kirkuk Fear Kurds Will Replace U.S. Forces

    Some In Kirkuk Fear Kurds Will Replace U.S. Forces

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    June 18, 2009

    KIRKUK, Iraq — Turkoman and Arab politicians in the multiethnic Iraqi city of Kirkuk are concerned that Kurdish forces will fill the void after U.S. forces leave, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Iraq reports.

    Ali Mahdi, a spokesman for the Turkoman bloc on the Kirkuk provincial council, said that when U.S. forces withdraw on June 30 “we want the government to replace them with Iraqi forces from the middle and south because Kirkuk’s security forces are predominantly Kurdish.”

    Muhammad Khalil al-Juburi, a member of the provincial council’s Arab bloc, said that most of the Arab fighters fighting Al-Qaeda as members of the Awakening Councils “are stationed outside the city of Kirkuk and until all ethnic groups are fairly represented in the city’s security agencies and administration, we propose that Iraqi forces replace U.S. troops.”

    But Layla Hassan, a member of the Kurdish bloc on the council, said the Turkoman and Arab concerns are “unfounded” and deploying Arab forces from the south would be “counterproductive.”

    She added that “such a move would be unconstitutional as Kirkuk is recognized by all parties as a disputed area.”

    U.S. forces have often been called on to mediate ethnic confrontations in the oil-rich region.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Some_In_Kirkuk_Fear_Kurds_Will_Replace_US_Forces/1757185.html