Indians on this forum are in denial and are blinded by their importance to the region. I have tried to point them to the error of their ways however I am reminded of a story told to me that a deaf man can not appreciate good music. In this regard I am going to put some articles on this thread that have been put up elsewhere. They talk about pipelines on the whole but the same geo strategic arguments apply. Now Indians don't feel obliged to post if you hae nothing to rebut my assertion:
Playing chess in Eurasia
By Pepe Escobar
Bets are off on which is the great story of 2011. Is it the Arab Spring(s)? Is it the Arab counter-revolution, unleashed by the House of Saud? Is it the "birth pangs" of the Greater Middle East remixed as serial regime changes? Is it R2P ("responsibility to protect") legitimizing "humanitarian" bombing? Is it the freeze out of the "reset" between the US and Russia? Is it the death of al-Qaeda? Is it the euro disaster? Is it the US announcing a Pacific century cum New Cold War against China? Is it the build up towards an attack on Iran? (well, this one started with Dubya, Dick and Rummy ages ago ...)
Underneath all these interlinked plots - and the accompanying hysteria of Cold War-style headlines - there's a never-ending thriller floating downstream: Pipelineistan. That's the chessboard
Dilbert
where the half-hidden twin of the Pentagon's "long war" is played out. Virtually all current geopolitical developments are energy-related. So fasten your seat belts, it's time to revisit Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski's "grand chessboard" in Eurasia to find out who's winning the Pipelineistan wars.
Got tickets to the opera?
Let's start with Nabucco (the gas opera). Nabucco is above all a key, strategic Western powerplay; how to deliver Caspian Sea gas to Europe. Energy execs call it "opening the Southern Corridor" (of gas). The problem is this Open Sesame will only deliver if supplied by a tsunami of gas from two key "stans" - Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
The 3,900-kilometer Nabucco will hit five transit countries - Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey - and it may end costing a staggering 26 billion euros (US$33.7 billion) [1].
Construction - endlessly delayed - might start by 2013. Essentially, everything is still a bloody mess. Nobody knows about prices, or the details of transit rights. Turkey is also eager to resell the gas on its own. Moreover, if Baku and Ankara decide to develop in tandem the Shah Deniz phase II [2] fields in Azerbaijan to feed the pipeline, they will need an extra $20 billion in investment.
Turkmenistan's president, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, sticks to his trademark wobbly script (Check him out singing his original hit "For You, My White Flower" ). He always says the European Union's myriad proposals "would be studied" and cooperation with the Europeans is "a strategic priority" of his foreign policy. But the EU's Holy Grail - an ironclad agreement to get the gas - is ever more elusive. The Russians and even the Azeris bet this will never happen.
Our man Gurbanguly, savvy operator that he is, would prefer to hatch his eggs in a Chinese basket - rather than in those far-away euro-messy lands. That's why he wobbles - feigning he's open to any offer. He knows better than anybody that for the Europeans Nabucco is the key to be released (a bit) from the grip of Russia's Gazprom. At the same time he keeps in mind how to maximize his Chinese profits while not antagonizing Russia.
Every European bureaucracy (not) worth its name is behind Nabucco [3], and most of all an eager European Commission (EC), the EU's fat salary-infested executive branch. The EC's do-or-die strategic priority is to link the Turkmen port of Turkmenbashi to the Absheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan via a Trans-Caspian Gas pipeline (TCGP) [4]. It's a breeze; I did the trip on a vodka-infested Azeri cargo ship and it took me only 12 hours.
But how to pull it off? Moscow locked up all Azeri gas. Gazprom locked up all the surplus gas from Turkmenistan. The only option would be Iran. Now tell that to the US Senate - who has declared economic war [5] against Iran.
Let's go TAPI!
A detour to AfPak is in order. Not even the deities who lord over the Hindu Kush know if the $7.6 billion (and counting), 1,735-kilometer TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline will ever be built.
For Turkmenistan's Oil and Gas Minister Bayramgeldy Nedirov, "There are no doubts that this [TAPI] project will be realized." [6] Pakistan and India - after infinite haggling - have finally agreed on pricing. Roughly a third of the pipeline's cost will be financed by the Philippines-based Asian Development Bank - since both Afghanistan and Pakistan are essentially broke.
Imagine a steel serpent entering western Afghanistan towards Herat, going south underground (to prevent terrorist bombing) parallel to the Herat-Kandahar road, then taking a detour via Quetta - home of Taliban supremo Mullah Omar - to Multan in Pakistan and finally reaching Fazilka, on the Indian border.
To quote Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, "This is the stuff dreams are made of," since the Bill Clinton administration, way before 9/11 and the now virtually extinct GWOT ("global war on terror"). Cynics may read this as gas republic Turkmenistan - holder of the fourth-largest reserves in the world - doing better to promote economic development and security in Afghanistan than 100,000 US troops.
The gas for TAPI will come from the new South Yolotan-Osman field - which already supplies China (according to British auditor Gaffney, Cline & Associates this is the world's second-largest [7] gas field, after South Pars in Iran). Our man Gurbanguly, by the way, issued a decree changing the gas field's name to Galkynys - Turkmen for "Renaissance"; after all, Gurbanguly's reign has been baptized as "The Epoch of New Renaissance and Great Transformations". These "transformations" have nothing to do with the Arab Spring(s).
Here we find yet another clever gambit by our man Gurbanguly. He keeps an open door to Nabucco by freeing the gas from Dauletabad field in southeast Turkmenistan to flow via a domestic pipeline to the Caspian, and then to the oh so elusive TCGP. Even the (delicious) sturgeons in the Caspian know that without a TCGP, Nabucco is DOA.
At least for a year now our man Gurbanguly has been telling every diplomat and top oil exec in sight that he rejects Russia's interference over Turkmenistan's gas strategy. [8] But apparently he didn't inform the Russians.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev did visit Ashgabat - the Las Vegas of Central Asia - to talk business [9]. And then, in a daring plot twist, suddenly Gazprom proclaimed its love of TAPI! Just imagine; the Americans have been dreaming of TAPI since 1996, just for rival Gazprom to barge in at overtime. No one knew what Medvedev offered to Gurbanguly so he wouldn't keep entertaining fancy Louis Vuitton ideas. Perhaps nothing. We'll come to that in a minute.
Ask the babushkas
TAPI's direct competition is IPI - the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline (India, pressured by the US, has virtually dropped out; China is ready to pounce and turn it into IPC). Well, who else but Gazprom now wants to get into the IP groove as well [10], alongside China's CNPC? The Iranian stretch of the pipeline is virtually ready. The Pakistani stretch begins in early 2012. Still another Russian chess move - and Washington never saw it coming.
Even a wooden babushka knows what Moscow does not want; the Afghan chapter of the US Empire of Bases never going away. Then there's regime change in Syria (with the implicit end of the Russian Black Sea fleet using the port of Tartus). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) advances in the Black Sea. The ever-expanding (at least rhetorically) US missile defense and the US's "New Silk Road" gambit to re-penetrate Central Asia [11].
It was Russia that authorized the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) to supply US and NATO troops in Afghanistan [12], an endless trek across Eurasia, including Uzbekistan - whose ghastly dictatorship US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised for its political "progress" - and Tajikistan. Pushing Moscow too far is not exactly a winning strategy.
Moscow also sees how Washington has antagonized virtually everyone in Pakistan - with the non-stop "war of the drones", the non-stop violations of territorial sovereignty, the non-stop threats to barge in and "take over your nuclear arsenal". Washington's priority is for Islamabad to attack the Pakistani Taliban in Balochistan and thus be dragged into a civil war against not only Pashtuns but also Balochis. As Moscow - and Beijing - survey the battlefield, all they have to do is bide their time while sipping green tea.
When former reds see red
The Russian-Chinese entente is not always a Bolshoi dance.
Russia wants to sell gas to China for $400 per 1,000 cubic meters (cm), the same price it charges Europe. The wily Turkmen charge the Chinese only $250. Beijing already spent $4 billion in South Yolotan (and counting); they want all the gas they can get to supply the hugely successful Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China pipeline (which they built), online for two years now [13]. Beijing is insatiable; oil major CNPC wants to import no less than 500% more gas from Central Asia by 2015 [14].
What this means is that for China the potentially $1 trillion-worth, 30-year gas deal with Russia may not be as imperative [15]. Gazprom's strategy boils down to two pipelines from Siberia to China. For Russia, this is absolutely essential in terms of making money out of Siberia. Geopolitical ramifications are immense. A close Russia-China steel umbilical cord may be interpreted in Europe - a virtual hostage of Gazprom - as perhaps a signal that they need Iran more than ever. At the same time Russia remains extremely uncomfortable with China's energy onslaught all across Central Asia.
This is Beijing's take, in a nutshell. We won't pay European prices for Turkmen gas. And we don't want a TCGP to Europe. China, Russia, even Iran, no one outside NATO wants the TCGP [16].
So this is how it breaks down. The Turkmen may sell gas to
Dilbert
China and Iran. They may even sell gas to South Asia via TAPI (after all Gazprom has joined the party). But forget about selling gas to Europe - where Gazprom rules. No one knows whether our man Gurbanguly got the message.
All hail the gas Czar
Any way you look at it, there's this inescapable feeling the Czar of Pipelineistan is Vladimir Putin (and just like the Terminator, he will be back, next March, as president, whatever his current predicament). After all, Russia produces more oil than Saudi Arabia (at least until 2015 [17]) and has the world's largest known reserves of natural gas. Around 40% of all Russian state funds come from oil and gas.
Putin's plan is deceptively simple; Gazprom "takes over" Western Europe and thus neutralizes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Exhibit 1 is the Nord Stream, a $12 billion, twin 1224-km pipeline, respecting extraordinary complex environmental guidelines, launched last September. That's gas from Siberia delivered under the Baltic Sea, bypassing problematic Ukraine, straight to Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Denmark and the Czech republic (10% of the entire EU annual gas consumption, or one third of China's entire current gas consumption). Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder heads the Nord Stream consortium.
Exhibit 2 is the South Stream (the shareholder agreement is already signed between Russia, Germany, France and Italy). That's Russian gas delivered under the Black Sea to the southern part of the EU, through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia. Instrumental in the deal was the quality time Putin spent with his close pal, former Italian prime minister Silvio "bunga bunga" Berlusconi.
Nord Stream drove Washington nuts. Not only it redesigned Europe's energy configuration; it forged an unbreakable German-Russian strategic link. Putin, better than anyone, knows how pipelines hardwire governments. South Stream is driving Washington nuts because it beats Nabucco hands down, and it's way cheaper. Talk about a geopolitical - and geoeconomic - battle.
Washington - alarmed at what the Germans deliciously dubbed the "modernization partnership" with Russia - is left to promote European "resistance" to Gazprom's onslaught, as if Germany was Zucotti Park and Russia was the NYPD. Again here's Pipelineistan infused with political reverberations. For instance, Germany and Italy are totally against NATO expansion. The reason? Nord and South Stream. The formidable German export machine is fueled by Russian energy; the motto might be "Put a Gazprom in my Audi".
As William Engdahl, author of the seminal A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order, has observed, the "Nord Stream and South Stream are poised to leap out of the world of energy security and choreograph an altogether new power dynamic in the heart of Europe." [18]
Putin's roadmap is his paper, "A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making", published by Izvestia in early October [19]. It may be dismissed as megalomania, but it may also be read as an ippon - Putin loves judo - against NATO, the International Monetary Fund and neo-liberalism.
True, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of "snow leopard" Kazakhstan was already talking about a Eurasian Union way back in 1994. Putin, though, makes it clear this wouldn't be Back In The USSR territory, but a "modern economic and currency union" stretching all across Central Asia.
For Putin, Syria is just a detail; the real thing is Eurasian integration. No wonder Atlanticists started freaking out with this suggestion of "a powerful supranational union that can become one of the poles of today's world while being an efficient connecting link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific Region". Compare it with US President Barack Obama and Hillary's Pacific doctrine [20].
You integrate when I say so
Everything is up for grabs at the crucial intersection of hardcore geopolitics and Pipelineistan. Washington's New Silk Road dream is not exactly a success. [21]
Moscow, for its part, now wants Pakistan to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) [22]. That also applies to China in relation to Iran. Imagine Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran coordinating their mutual security inside a strengthened SCO, whose motto is "non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-interference in the affairs of other countries". R2P it ain't.
Snags abound. For China the SCO is above all about economics and trade [23]. For Russia it's above all a security bloc [24], which must absolutely find a regional solution to Afghanistan that keeps the Taliban under control and at the same time gets rid of the Afghan chapter of the US Empire of Bases.
As Pipelineistan goes, with Russia, Central Asia and Iran controlling 50% of world's gas reserves, and with Iran and Pakistan as virtual SCO members, the name of the game becomes Asian integration - if not Eurasian. China and Russia now coordinate foreign policy in extreme detail. The trick is to connect China and Central Asia with South Asia and the Gulf - with the SCO developing as an economic/security powerhouse. In parallel, Pipelineistan may accelerate the full integration of the SCO as a counterpunch to NATO.
In realpolitik terms, that makes much more sense than a New Silk Road invented in Washington. But tell that to the Pentagon, or to a possible bomb Iran, scare China, neo-con-remote-controlled next president of the United States.
Notes
1. Hungary sees Nabucco costs quadrupling, may sue French firm, Reuters, Oct 24, 2011.
2. Shah Deniz II Natural Gas Field: What Will Azerbaijan's Decision Be? ITGI, Nabucco or TAP?, Turkish Weekly, 18 August 2011.
3. EU banks throw their weight behind Nabucco pipeline, EU Observer, September 2010.
4. Trans-Caspian pipeline vital to Nabucco, Petroleum Economist, October 2011.
5. U.S. Senate Passes Iran Oil Sanctions as EU Blacklist Grows, Bloomberg, December 5, 2011.
6. Gas pipeline deal for Pakistan, India imminent , The Express Tribune, November 5, 2011.
7. Second Gas Congress of Turkmenistan, Open Central Asia, June 5 2011.
8. Gazprom Disbelief Draws Turkmen Ire , Moscow Times, 22 November 2011.
9. Russia, Turkmenistan focus on energy cooperation, Caspian problems, innovation BSR Russia, 24 October 2010.
10. Russian gas giant may fund 780-km pipeline, Pakistan Observer, August 22, 2011.
11. The United States' "New Silk Road" Strategy: What is it? Where is it Headed?, US State Dept, September 29, 2011.
12. US Now Relies On Alternate Afghan Supply Routes, NPR, September 16, 2011.
13. China plays Pipelineistan, Asia Times Online, Dec 24, 2009.
14. Central Asia-China Gas Pipelines Capacity To Nearly Double, Oil and Gas Eurasia, August 29, 2011.
15. Russia, China closer to gas deal says Putin, RIA NOVOSTI, October 11.
16. China Plans To Buy All Turkmenistan's Gas To Scuttle Sales To Europe..., Geofinancial, November 24, 2011.
17. Saudi Arabia to overtake Russia as top oil producer-IEA , Reuters, Nov 9, 2011.
18.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=27653 , Global Research, November 14, 2011.
19. Izvestia publishes an article by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on cooperation and interaction in the post-Soviet space.
20. China and the US: The roadmaps , Al-Jazeera, 31 Oct 2011.
21. US's post-2014 Afghan agenda falters , Asia Times Online, Nov 4, 2011.
22. Russia endorses full SCO membership for Pakistan Dawn, November 7, 2011.
23. SCO member states vow to strengthen economic cooperation , Xinhua, Nov. 7, 2011.
24.Russia, China dont see US in SCO , Voice of Russia, Nov 1, 2011.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
Dai Bingguo heading for Islamabad
Francis Fukuyama wrote a sequel to his celebrated book The End of History and the Last Man (1992) no sooner than he realised that he was hopelessly wrong in his prediction that the global triumph of political and economic liberalism was at hand. He wrote: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the crossing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such
That is, the end point of mankinds ideological evolution and the universalization of Western democracy as the final form of human government. But in no time he realised his rush to judgment and he retracted with another book.
However, unlike the celebrated American neocon thinker, Indian foreign policy thinkers who were heavily influenced by his 1992 thesis are yet to retract. The Indian discourses through the 1990s drew heavily from Fukuyama to throw overboard the scope for reinventing or reinterpreting non-alignment in the post-Cold War setting and came to a rapid judgment that Russia belonged to the dustbin of history. Our discourses never really got updated despite Fukumayas own retraction.
Indeed, western commentators also fuelled the consequent sense of insecurity in Delhi through the 1990s by endorsing that India would never have a Russia option again and Boris Yeltsins Russia itself was inexorably becoming an ally of the west and, therefore, what alternative is there for India but to take to the New American Century project? Remember the drama of the Bill Clinton administration arm-twisting Yeltsin not to give to India the cryogentic engines?
In sum, India got entrapped in a unipolar predicament. The best elucidation of this self-invited predicament has been the masterly work titled Crossing the Rubicon by Raja Mohan, which was of course widely acclaimed in the US. While releasing the book at a function in Delhi, the then National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra even admitted that Indias main foreign policy challenge was somehow to engage the USs attention.
Russia, of course, went on to prove our pundits completely wrong. Russia remerged as a global player and the evidence of it is today spread (and is poised to expand) all across global theatres Libya, Syria, Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, etc.
Why I am underscoring all this is that I am strongly reminded of that sad chapter in the recent history of Indias foreign policy when I see the huge psywar being let loose on Pakistan currently when that country too is at a crossroads with regard to its future policy directions in a highly volatile external enviornment.
In Pakistans case, the psywar substitutes Russia with China. The USs Track II thesis is that China is hopelessly marooned in its own malaise so much so that it has no time, interest or resources to come to Pakistans aid, the two countries all-weather friendship notwithstanding. Let me cull out two fine pieces of this ongoing psywar.
One is the lengthy article featured by Americas prestigious flag-carrier Foreign Affairs magazine in early December titled Chinas Pakistan conundrum. Its argument is: China will not simply bail out Pakistan with loans, investment, and aid, as those watching the deterioration of US-Pakistani relations seem to expect. China will pursue politics, security, and geopolitical advantage regardless of Islamabads preferences. It puts forth the invidious argument that Chinas real use for Pakistan is only to box out New Delhi in Afghanistan and the broader region.
Alongside the argument is the highly-tendentious vector that is beyond easy verification, namely, that US and China are increasingly coordinating their policies toward Pakistan. Diplomacy is part dissimulation and we simply dont know whether the US and China are even anywhere near beginning to coordinate about coordinating their regional policies in South Asia, especially with regard to Pakistan (and Afghanistan). The odds are that while the US and China may have some limited convergent interests, conceivably, their strategic interests are most certainly in sharp conflict.
A milder version of this frontal attack by US pundits on Pakistans existential dilemma appears in Michael Krepons article last week titled Pakistans Patrons, which, curiously, counsels Islamabad to follow Indias foreign-policy footsteps and make up with the US. Krepon literally suggests that the Pakistanis are living in a fools paradise.
The obvious thrust of this psywar strikingly similar to what India was subjected to in the 1990s is that Pakistan has no option but to fall in line with the US regional strategies, as it has no real China option. The main difference between India and Pakistan is that the foreign policy elites in Islamabad unlike their Indian counterparts are not inclined to buy into the US argument with a willing suspension of disbelief. In a way, the Sino-Pakistan relationship is proving once again to be resilient. Pakistan is in no mood to get into a unipolar predicament, as the Indian elites willingly did in the 1990s.
Thus, the visit by the Chinese delegation led by State Councilor, Dai Bingguo to Islamabad at this point in time assumes much significance. Dai is one of the highest-ranking figures in the Chinese foreign-policy establishment and the fact he is leading a delegation that includes of senior Chinese military officials is very significant. Dai is scheduled to meet not only Pakistans political leadership at the highest level but also army chief Ashfaq Kayani and ISI head Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Obviously, Beijing is making a big point through the timing of this visit as well, which, incidentally, is taking place at a time of great uncertainties in Pakistans internal affairs. When it comes to relations with China, it must be assumed that Pakistans civil and military leaderships are together.
Dai doesnt really have a US counterpart as he is ranked above the FM. Arguably, it would be secretary of state Hillary Clinton. If so, to what extent Dai coordinated his proposed visit with Clinton will be of particular interest. The future of the USs psywar on Pakistan is at stake.
The big question is whether this would be Dais last major trip to South Asia, as he is a key member of President Hu Jintaos team and China is moving into a period of transition at the leadership level. Dais visit to Delhi for the Special Representatives meet was called off at the last minute.
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By M K Bhadrakumar December 23, 2011
Dai Bingguo heading for Islamabad - Indian Punchline
Its time to look beyond Afghan war
This may sound strange but frankly, the first time I travelled to the Amu Darya region of northern Afghanistan was on foot. 18 years ago, when we didnt have an embassy in Kabul and Pakistan wouldnt permit me anyway to walk across the Khyber Pass.
I was trekking to meet up with Rashid Dostum in his famous castle in Shibirghan (Jowzjan province) - via Tashkent to Termez on the Uzbek-Afghan border and into Afghanistan. For an Indian diplomat, it was an altogether unusual situation, having to walk across the Termez-Heiraton bridge across the Amu Darya (no-mans land) and cross into the Mujahideen-ruled Afghanistan with which India claimed civilizational ties.
The sturdy bridge fenced by steel girders was built by the Soviets and it was actually a rail track that ended in the Afghan port of Heiraton. Termez, of course, was a massive military base, which was the biggest in Soviet Central Asia and it coordinated the dispatch of supplies for the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. By the way, General Boris Gromov walked across the same bridge on a wind-swept winter morning as he personally led the last Soviet detachment out of Afghanistan in 1989. Thus, Afghanistan, technically speaking, is not entirely new to the fascinating world of the railways. Nonetheless, the opening of the railway connecting Heiraton with Mazar-i-Sharif is invariably suffused with certain poignancy.
The railway system promises to open up a new world to the Afghan people. As for that, it is the same anywhere, including for British India. The arrival of the railway system makes the stuff of legends. My wifes ancestral home is full of memorabilia of the construction of the Bengal-Nagpur railway ['BNR'] Indias equivalent of the 75-kilometre long Heiraton-Mazar-i-Sharif line which was an incredible engineering feat at that time in very tough conditions, built in the early part of the last century by a carefully chosen team of British engineers deputed specially from London that included her grandfather, who, incidentally, went on to become the first chief engineer of the Indian railways in the British times. The folklore lingers on for generations, as any railway family would testify.
Imagine an Afghan from Bamyan first taking a train journey with his wives and his pack of little sons and daughters; it could be as unspeakable an ecstasy as when he first glimpses the sea licking the shores with its waves. But the geopolitics of the Afghan railway system is going to be no less spell-bounding. Most observers are viewing the new line in Mazar-i-Sharif as a cog in the wheel of the Afghan war, which would facilitate quicker and cheaper transportation of the supplies for the NATO troops via Termez.
But behind that is unfolding a panorama that will change the face of Afghanistan phenomenally. I am speaking about the plans being worked out for an entire regional rail grid in which Afghanistan can act as the hub. Mainly, it is going to be the railway system that China is planning through Afghanistan that is destined to change the scope of the great game in the region over the Silk Road. The proposed line, which is already under construction in segments, originates from Xinjiang and enters Afghanistan via Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and can thereupon have two branch lines, leading to Iran and Pakistan respectively.
For China, the rail line opens a strategic link with the Persian Gulf and South Asia, bypassing Malacca Straits. If Pakistan plays its card carefully and I can see that finally Pakistan is able to grasp the quintessence of the great game and is getting its act together it will have a key role to play in Chinas hugely ambitious plans of developing the Silk Road toward the ports of Karachi and Gwadar. By the way, the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan who met in Moscow early this week exchanged notes on how to expedite the proposed railway line connecting China with Afghanistan.
The picture that emerges is that the region has begun looking beyond the Afghan war. Where does that leave India? A big question, indeed. We just had our famous trialteral with US and Japan. But, will it help us in our region?
Instead of Pax Americana, the prospects are brightening actually for a regional concord between Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran as the underpinning of stability and security for Afghanistan. It really requires a leap of faith for Indian pundits to grasp this geopolitical reality as it is unfolding slowly but inexorably. Thus, Indias neighboring countries such as Sri Lanka or Bangladesh are gearing up for a new ball game, as it were and, Sri Lanka is already getting close to being one of Asias middle income countries.
Posted in Diplomacy, Politics.
Tagged with Silk Road.
By M K Bhadrakumar December 22, 2011
Its time to look beyond Afghan war - Indian Punchline
Tajik-Russian military cooperation
Tajikistan and Russia: partnership for stability in Central Asia — RT
just copied what i thought related to thread russian thoughts from RT:
In light of the many problems being faced by NATO forces in Afghanistan, compounded by drug trafficking, Russia’s military presence in Tajikistan has taken on a whole new dimension.
Medvedev reiterated that the presence of the 201st Motorized Rifle Division in Tajikistan serves as a solid stabilization factor and promised “further help to our Tajik allies in accordance with previous agreements.”
In early 1990s, during the civil war in Tajikistan, the base – originally the Soviet Union's 201st infantry unit, which has been located in Tajikistan since the fall of 1945 – went under Russia’s jurisdiction. Since May 1993, the base operated under various agreements reached by the two countries. The base hosts 7,000 troops and an assortment of tanks, armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles.
Russian-Tajik military co-operation will be maintained "for the sake of national and regional security,” said a joint statement by both presidents.
As a side note, beginning in the early nineties, Russian troops served as special border guards on the Tajik-Afghan border. Russia handed over those duties to the Tajik Army in July 2005. Today, a handful of Russian advisers work and train with Tajik forces in an effort to better protect the sensitive border zone.
The Russian president seemed enthusiastic about a number of proposals put forward by the Tajik side for dealing with Afghanistan that demand “new forms of cooperation.”
“I think, we should get back to some ideas that have been expressed and think about creating new formats of work,” said Medvedev.
Russia's only other permanent base in the region is in Kant, Kyrgyzstan, an aviation group that serves under the auspices of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
In addition to military cooperation, Tajikistan and Russia, together with China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, are both members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is showing much promise as a regional organization for tamping down local problems.
Mongolia, India, Pakistan and Iran are observers of the group.
In an effort to cement relations between members of the SCO, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang last week suggested that members work out an agreement on the facilitation of road transport as soon as possible, which could make for a tangible link for regional transportation. As long as the drug traffickers are kept off of this futuristic Silk Road, the plan seems to have much merit.
The joint communique stressed cooperation in customs through simplifying trade procedures, improving custom-clearance capabilities, as well as improving infrastructure.
On the more virtual level, a plan was floated to implement a "SCO information super highway" and "cross-border digital cooperation by using digital signatures," a plan that would certainly help to boost the Tajik economy, now experiencing the doldrums due to the global financial crisis.
Finally, on a sensitive international subject, Tajikistan has announced its support for Iran's membership bid to join the SCO after a meeting that was held between the Tajik President and the Iranian foreign minister.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has commented that "Iran and Tajikistan are one spirit in two bodies." He also added that there are no limits to the expansion of relations between the two countries and that "We do not feel that we have a non-Iranian guest with us thanks to the many commonalities our two countries share".
Energy on tap
Tajikistan has been on the road to economic and political recovery with the election of Imomali Rakhmonov in 1994, a year that also gave the Tajik people a new constitution. This recovery has forged a mutually advantageous business relationship between Dushanbe and Moscow in the form of big energy deals.
Last month, Russia confirmed its intention to construct three medium-capacity hydroelectric power stations in Tajikistan, while a total of 12 investment projects worth 3bn somoni (over $700m dollars) are being implemented in the country.
In addition to fortifying Tajikistan’s unpredictable power supplies, these long-term projects will create thousands of construction jobs in the country.
The projects include the construction of hydroelectric power plants with small and medium capacities, the construction of electric power lines and other energy infrastructure, as well as modernizing existing electric power stations, which includes the hulking Norak hydroelectric power station with a capacity of 3,000 MW.
There is also the golden opportunity for Tajikistan to become an energy exporter, especially with economic powerhouse China right next door.
"The implementation of these projects will allow Tajikistan not only to provide itself with cheap electric energy in full, but also to export it to other countries," the Tajik president noted.
For the last few years, Tajikistan has been experiencing a serious energy crisis, especially during the autumn and winter periods when energy consumption peaks in the country.
On a much brighter note, Russia's Rosatom state-owned corporation is starting detailed talks on the development of uranium deposits in Tajikistan, its deputy head Nikolay Spassky told the press in Dushanbe on Friday.
"There have been reports that Tajikistan has new uranium deposits. All this requires concrete study. We are ready for the job and interested in it. We are presently getting down to practical cooperation," he said on the sidelines of the fifth session of the Council for Cooperation in Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy with the Integration Committee of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC), Interfax reported
You may have noticed that in western press normally bring on analysts of jewish/israeli origin or indian analysts on their propaganda channels be that bbc, sky tv, fox news. The reason that these analysts are brought on as neutrals is normally to support western aims and interests.
In the same vein please take the following article on RT news-Russian channel:
‘US military – source of instability in Afghanistan and region’
Published: 22 November, 2011, 06:32
With many Afghans opposing plans to extend US-Afghan partnership, a Pakistan-based expert says that the US military presence in the country has become a source of instability both within Afghanistan and in the region.
On Sunday, some 1,000 people took to the streets in eastern Afghanistan to protest against plans for a long-term partnership deal between Kabul and Washington. Many fear it could extend the US military presence in the war-torn country.
Ahmed Quraishi, a political analyst from Pakistan told RT that the Afghan people have no reason to welcome the American presence in their country as the US record over the past decade in Afghanistan is not very encouraging.
“The United States has failed to bring social harmony to Afghanistan, to bring political stability to the country and to stabilize the region.”
Nevertheless, the current Afghan ruling elite wants Americans to stay as they are totally dependent on them, the analyst explains.
“The moment the Americans are out, these people don’t really have a chance to stay in power. Many of them are proxies of various American organizations, NGOs, US military, intelligence and other departments of US government.”
As the US and officials in Kabul quietly discuss an extended American presence in the country, Afghanistan’s neighbors are “deeply concerned about a permanent state of instability in the region,” he argues.
According to Quraishi, Afghanistan is an important base of operations for the US and Washington will not let this strategic piece of land go.
“They are testing new weapons over there,” he says. “And they are sitting in the backyards of the major powers in the region, Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and other countries
Russia, China, Iran defeat U.S. in the “pipeline wars”
While the West kills thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and ravages both countries, Russia, China and Iran are acquiring the crucial energy riches of Central Asia and the Caspian area without firing a shot.
by Asad Ismi
A major reason for the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was the building of a pipeline through the country that would take natural gas from Turkmenistan to India and Pakistan. Canada and the other 44 Western countries occupying Afghanistan are supporting this U.S. objective by bolstering Washington’s military position in the country.
Turkmenistan, which borders Afghanistan, contains the fourth largest reserves of natural gas in the world. The U.S. has been trying to set up the pipeline for a decade, having first negotiated the venture with the ousted Taliban government. Two months after these negotiations broke down, Washington overthrew the Taliban in October 2001 when it invaded Afghanistan.
Since then, the U.S. has persuaded India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan to sign an agreement aimed at constructing the pipeline, but the war in Afghanistan and the U.S.’s failure to defeat the Taliban stalled actual work on this project. Washington’s occupation of Afghanistan and pipeline plans are part of its strategy to gain control of Central Asia’s and the Caspian Sea area’s energy riches and divert them away from Russia, China, and Iran.
As Richard Boucher, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, stated in September 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan so it can become a conduit and hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south… and so that the countries of Central Asia are no longer bottled up between the two enormous powers of China and Russia, but rather that they have outlets to the south as well as to the north and the east and the west.”
However, as the Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar put it in an article for Asia Times, “The United States' pipeline diplomacy in the Caspian, which strove to bypass Russia, elbow out China and isolate Iran, has foundered.”
Recently, the U.S.’s Turkmen-Afghan pipeline plans have suffered what appears to be a fatal blow. On January 6, Turkmenistan committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia, and Iran with the inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran (DSK) pipeline which connects Iran's northern Caspian area with Turkmenistan.
As Bhadrakumar explains, Turkmenistan “has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing.” The operation of the DSK pipeline, along with the launching of another one between China and Turkmenistan in December 2009, has “virtually redrawn the energy map of Eurasia and the Caspian,” he maintains. “We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil [private Western multinational oil companies]. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran, and Turkmenistan hold, respectively, the world's largest, second-largest, and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to U.S. global strategy.”
Bhadrakumar has served in diplomatic posts for India in the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Russia and Turkmenistan have also agreed to build an east-west pipeline connecting all of the latter’s gas fields to one network so that the pipelines going to Russia, Iran, and China can take gas from any of the fields. (See the accompanying map for the routes of these new and proposed pipelines.)
Three weeks before the opening of the DSK pipeline, China and Turkmenistan inaugurated a major natural gas pipeline between the two countries. The presidents of China, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan attended the opening ceremony of the 1,833-kilometre pipeline on December 14, 2009. The pipeline will transport natural gas from the Saman-Depe field in eastern Turkmenistan through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to China’s Xinjiang province, from where it will go to 14 Chinese provinces and cities. By 2012, the pipeline will deliver 40 billion cubic metres of gas per year, which is more than half of China’s present gas consumption.
Chinese President Hu Jintao described the pipeline as “another platform for collaboration and cooperation” between China and Central Asia. In return for access to Central Asian gas, China is building infrastructure and giving cheap loans to the area’s republics. According to John Chan, writing on the World Socialist Website: “Beijing’s broader aim is to bring the region within its own political and strategic orbit.”
Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov declared that the pipeline has “not only commercial and economic value. It is also political,” and will become “a major contributing factor to security in Asia”.
Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov added: “China, through its wise and farsighted policy, has become one of the key guarantors of global security.”
As Chan puts it, “The opening of a major Chinese pipeline from Turkmenistan alters the Central Asian energy equation. The Financial Times commented last week that the pipeline “deals a blow to the European Union’s plans to win Turkmen supplies for the planned Nabucco pipeline.”
This pipeline is the U.S.’s and E.U.’s attempt at breaking Russia’s dominant role as the leading energy supplier to Europe. Nabucco depends mainly on getting gas from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. However, Russia now wants to double its consumption of Azerbaijani gas, and Iran is also becoming a consumer of this gas, further reducing supplies for Nabucco.
In December 2009, Azerbaijan signed an agreement to deliver gas to Iran through the 1,400km Kazi-Magomed-Astara pipeline. Russia's South Stream and North Stream pipelines (the latter’s construction starts in Spring 2010), will supply gas to northern and southern Europe, ensuring Moscow’s continued dominance of energy supplies to Europe.
As Bhadrakumar points out, the DSK pipeline shows that U.S. efforts to demonize, isolate, and terrorize Iran have failed miserably. In open defiance of U.S. policy, President Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenistan is busy creating “a new economic axis” with Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad, whom he considers a valuable partner.
Washington’s and the West’s show of force in Afghanistan has also failed to impress Berdymukhammedov, who is giving all of his country’s natural gas to Russia, China, and Iran. These countries are not currently engaged in imperialist military occupation of another nation. All they had to do to get Turkmenistan’s gas was to offer it a decent economic deal. So, while the West kills thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and ravages both countries, Russia, China and Iran are acquiring the crucial energy riches of Central Asia and the Caspian area without firing a shot.
Russian dominance of Central Asia was further cemented by the recent overthrow of the pro-U.S. government in Kyrgyzstan and its replacement by a pro-Moscow regime. The new government has told Washington that it can no longer use the Manas airbase, which is the main transshipment point for American supplies to Afghanistan.
In light of such major Western energy-related defeats, the continuing occupation of Afghanistan by 46 Western nations must have some other purpose. If their military venture were mainly economic — if they simply wanted greater access to Central Asia’s resources — why did they not offer the region’s countries acceptable prices for them, just as Russia, China, and Iran are doing?
The answer perhaps lies in a memorable remark by the great Palestinian intellectual Edward Said: “At the heart of the Western Idea is imperialism.”
The West did not become rich by offering resource-endowed countries fair and mutually beneficial economic deals. It became rich by subjecting countries in the Global South to 500 years of genocide and plunder through colonialism, neocolonialism, and the endless wars these aggressive actions entail.
The U.S. and its allies do not seem to realize that the dark age of “might-is-right” imperialism is coming to an end. Russia, China, India, and Iran are not countries that can be subdued by displays of military aggression in neighbouring nations. The continuing futile occupation of Afghanistan reflects the failure of the West’s political and military strategists to face this new geopolitical reality.
What possible threat could a financially and politically crippled West — a coalition that can’t even defeat the Taliban after nine years — pose to nuclear-armed Russia, China, and India? Countries like these are busy creating a post-imperial age in which aggression and occupation are not required to secure needed resources.
They are leaving the decadent West in the dust of history.
(Asad Ismi is The CCPA Monitor’s international affairs correspondent. He has written extensively on Afghanistan and is the author of the forthcoming radio documentary The Latin American Revolution
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