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A SENSE OF ASIA

Being Number One is no picnic: The Central Asia balance sheet


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By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

June 1, 2005

Unipolarism is a dizzying concept.

It presupposes American power is overwhelming; for the moment challenged by no other single power nor coalition. Still it would be remarkable if American statesmen and bureaucrats could manipulate its full weight in more than one region simultaneously.

Right now, of course, the Mideast – if for no other reason than the continuing Iraq conflict – takes priority in resources. But increasingly East Asia bids for attention with North Korea’s threatened development of nuclear weapons and friction with China growing. Then suddenly there is the European cataclysm brought on by the failure of the EU constitution to get by a quarrelsome [if fully justified] French electorate. Off screen yapping at the backdoor is the growing threat of a second Castroite regime in Venezuela, a major oil supplier, amid growing general rejection [after a brief flirtation] of market economics in this Hemisphere.

That’s why one snatches at a few good news straws ignored by the legacy media. A case in point: the dedication of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan [BTC] oil pipeline in late May. The BTC will carry crude from the Caspian Basin to a Turkish port and world markets. While original Caspian Basin reserve estimates made when the project was conceived a decade ago have been dampened, expectations are up again because of Kazakhstan’s decision to defy Moscow, rejecting its current total dependence on groaning Russian pipelines, to go to the BTC. Four companies involved in developing Kazakhstan's super-giant offshore Caspian Kashagan field are also BTC consortium members.

Beyond the Caspian lie yet unproved but large gas deposits in Turkmenistan and oil and gas in Uzbekistan, and, perhaps, in Afghanistan. All this means the world will have some small measure of insurance against dependence on the Persian Gulf reserves. [The Department of Energy estimates that by 2025, 68 percent of U.S. oil consumption will be imported, up from 58 percent today; European trends are similar.]

Furthermore, the news tankers will be loading in Turkey by the end of the year was accompanied by Moscow’s agreement to fold its bases in Georgia, the end of Russia’s 200 years domination. BTC transit fees will help bolster the Tbilisi government headed by American-educated Mikhail Saakashvili who came to power two years ago in the nonviolent Rose Revolution. Ankara, too, profits from the transit fees and access to more energy for its nascent industrialization, with Brussels talking of Turkey as an “energy corridor” to the region if and when it does get EU membership.

A decade ago when the strategy was first mooted – Vice President Richard Cheney then at Halliburton was one of the enthusiasts – many industry sources doubted its viability. But $4 billion and the help of $600 million in government grants and guarantees to the banks has pushed the project with record speed. The original strategy preceded, of course, 9/11, and the necessity the necessity to clean out the Afghanistan sanctuary of the attackers, and the broader war against terrorism with its centrality in the region.

But the road ahead is far from strewn with flowers. Aptly VIPs gathering for the inauguration in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the Caspian, were greeted with police beating protesters, some holding portraits of Bush, shouting "Freedom!" and "Free elections!" Washington wants greater democracy across the region, but it also wants stability, and it counts Azerbaijan, a mostly Muslim country of eight million, as an ally in the war on terror. The BTC has enabled Ilham Aliev, heir to the throne of his father, a former Soviet Communist apparatchik, while an American ally, to oversee a government condemned for human rights abuses and to head of an administration placed 140 out of 146 in Transparency International's global corruption index.

The world has just seen an unusually bloody repression of dissidents in neighboring Uzbekistan. Repression characterizes all five former Central Asian Soviet republics. In Kyrgystan, a recent sudden revolt threw out a leader for whom Washington once had had its fondest hopes as a democrat. A militant Islam, suppressed during the half century of atheistic Soviet rule, now demands a role in new civil societies.

But uncritically supporting the dissidents isn’t a clear cut route to democracy nor stabiklity. Among the Islamicists are radicals, some allied with Osama Bin Laden, who would use any liberalization as a route to equally repressive power – like their fellow religionists in neighboring [and influential] Iran.

Neither China [who just wined and dined Islam Kamirov, Uzbekistan’s ruler, on the heels of his massacre of civilians] nor Moscow has any scruples about courting the depots. Beijing has just floated a trial balloon for setting up a military base with the new provisional Kyrgyzstan government, matching U,.S. and Russian bases already there, with Moscow suggesting the possibility of second base as a contribution to “stability”.

Again, the U.S. finds itself embroiled with difficult choices – with oil, backwardness, new riches, and radical Islam, democratization aims, and competing outside powers – a labyrinth for policymakers.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

June 1, 2005

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