The Next Major War is for Oil &Gas!

 Dear Comrades,
              Below are four short but highly informative articles from a 
right-wing think, "Stratfor", which produces its "Global Intelligence 
Updates" not for the media, but for big US companies. The articles are 
geared 
specifically to advising big oil, gas, luxury-goods and IT companies that 
have special interests in the southern Russia/CIS, Caspian Basin region and 
really need to know what is going on and going to happen. As such Stratfor 
are much more truthful, from an imperialist point of view - as correct 
political/military predictions of events unfolding are the basis of their 
profit margins.
              Comrades not very familiar with the geography might well 
benefit from getting out a map of the region whilst reading this stuff - a 
map that also shows southern Russia, Ukraine, the Middle-East and west as 
far 
as Pakistan/Kashmir. There are immense competing economic, political and 
military resources going into exploiting the vast energy resources of the 
region from the US, Russia, Europe and even China and Iran, that are little 
talked about.
               In my opinion, the fact that during the recent bombing war 
against Yugoslavia Iraq was bombed by the US every single day - and it goes 
on nowadays - shows that the real US aim of the war was a mass NATO 
presence 
(and the forcing of the EU into it) in south-western Europe - as a stepping 
stone towards total control of the Caspian Basin energy resources and the 
key 
geo-political region of the Eurasian land mass.
               For the US, everything depends on whether it can force the 
EU 
to join in as a junior partner. The US allowing EU companies a clean-sweep 
in 
the 'restoration' of Kosovar is to whet the EU bosses greedy appetites. 
Russia’s elite want to be partners alongside the EU, in a bloc with China 
and 
India (all Eurasia) - against US interests. In smoke filled rooms the 
Euro-countries' leaders are uncertain, as many are not sure of their 
strength 
to challenge US might - but whatever happens in the medium term (or even if 
conflict breaks elsewhere first - say Korea or Kashmir) in the long run EU 
and US competing imperialist conflict will travel well beyond trade wars - 
just look at the map!
 
 Regards, Steve Myers - London.
 
For your info: the GUUAM-bloc consists of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, 
Azerbaijan and Moldova - any look at a map quickly reveals this is a 
political/military bloc first and an economic trade bloc second.
 
 
 
 2030 GMT, 14th June 1999
 CONFLICT THREATENS CAUCASUS PIPELINES
 
 Besides Kosovo, the Baltics, and Ukraine, another area of heated 
contention 
between Russia and the West is in the Caucasus. There, Russia is 
increasingly 
cooperating militarily with Armenia and is believed to be cooperating 
politically with Abkhaz separatists, to counterbalance NATO influence in 
Azerbaijan and Georgia. Complicating matters, the wild card Chechnya is 
forging its own path with the aid of Middle Eastern interests. Caught in 
the 
middle are international oil companies, who are attempting to cash in on 
Central Asia’s oil wealth.
 
 The main pipelines for Central Asian oil – the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline 
and the Baku-Supsa pipeline – pass through the Caucasus and are vulnerable 
to 
regional unrest. The older and larger Baku-Novorossiysk line was ruptured 
by 
an explosion early on June 14, apparently during an attempt by Chechen 
rebels 
to steal oil from the route. The pipeline has been illegally tapped in the 
past. Flow through the pipeline has also been halted repeatedly by the 
Chechen government, on the grounds that Russia has failed to pay fees for 
use 
of the portion of the pipeline that passes through Chechen territory.
 
 The recently opened Baku-Supsa route, while touted as a safer route for 
avoiding the Chechen instability, also quite poignantly avoids Russia 
altogether – undermining Russian influence on the region’s oil and Russian 
revenue from that oil. The Baku-Supsa route was opened following military 
maneuvers training to defend the line by Ukrainian, Georgian, and Azeri 
troops, acting as part of the regional alliance then known as GUAM, and 
under 
the framework of NATO’s Partnership for Peace. GUAM, which also included 
Moldova, expanded to include Uzbekistan during meetings in Washington DC, 
held concurrently with the NATO anniversary summit in April, and 
established 
a charter encompassing military cooperation within the group and with NATO. 
GUUAM members, though part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 
have opted out of the CIS Collective Security Treaty.
 
 Intensifying this increasing competition between Russia and NATO in the 
Caucasus, Azerbaijan claims that Russia brokered the sale of several 
Chinese 
surface to surface missile complexes to Armenia, which remains in a fragile 
truce with Azerbaijan over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Russia 
has 
also provided Armenia with advanced jet fighters and surface to air missile 
systems. Reports have now surfaced, denied by Yerevan, that three of the 
Chinese missile systems are targeted at Georgia’s Supsa oil terminal. On 
June 
14, in the largest incident of its kind since the two countries signed a 
cease-fire five years ago, 300 Armenian troops reportedly attacked Azeri 
positions in the Terter region. Baku claims three Armenian assaults were 
repulsed with heavy losses.
 
 As tension escalates in the Caucasus, NATO must again decide – now that it 
has put a toe in the pool, whether it intends to dive in. Oil companies may 
not be willing or able for the situation to be resolved. While the 
Baku-Supsa 
route was a Russia-skirting stopgap until the expensive and controversial 
U.S.-backed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey could be built, neither route 
looks particularly secure now or in the future. As long as foreign access 
to 
the oil fields is not threatened, oil companies may now revive their 
interest 
in previously considered alternative pipeline routes. One of these, through 
western Afghanistan, has its own security concerns to contend with. But the 
other, and perhaps most rational route – south through Iran – is primarily 
blocked by U.S. political opposition. However, U.S.-Iranian relations have 
been gradually improving, and we expect to see U.S. oil companies with 
interests in Central Asia take another shot at accelerating U.S.-Iranian 
détente.
 
 
 
 1939 GMT,  21st June 1999
 RUSSIA FLEXES MUSCLES IN CAUCASUS
 
 In the wake of a series of clashes between Armenian and Azeri forces last 
week and over the weekend, Baku has charged Moscow with destabilizing the 
Caucasus in a deliberate attempt to keep Azerbaijan under Russian 
influence. 
The Azeri Defense Ministry specifically condemned Russia for supplying arms 
to Armenia, arguing that this helped fuel the recent clashes. As if to 
underscore Baku’s charges, four Russian MiG-29 fighter aircraft arrived in 
Yerevan on June 21, part of a Russian fighter group that, according to 
Armenian officials, is being deployed to Armenia in the context of a CIS 
air 
defense framework.
 
 However, Russia’s decision to deploy the jets is far from a benign matter 
of 
collective defense, as some of the fighters have already overflown 
contested 
territory currently held by Azerbaijan. And further emphasizing the 
political 
message behind the Russian deployment, Moscow apparently chose not to alert 
Tbilisi before the latest four MiGs passed over Georgian territory.
 
 Russia may have been treated as politically and militarily impotent by the 
West throughout the Kosovo crisis, and have been successfully marginalized 
in 
the crisis’ waning days, but Moscow is not ready to let the same thing 
occur 
on its own immediate periphery. Russia’s current concern and area of direct 
competition with Western interests is the Caucasus region. There, CIS 
members 
Georgia and Azerbaijan have been daily sliding farther from Moscow’s sway, 
while eagerly reaching to NATO to support them in their move. Both 
countries 
opted out of the CIS Collective Security Treaty and both are part of GUUAM, 
a 
regional organization of Western-oriented CIS members increasingly evolving 
from an economic cooperation forum to a NATO-affiliated security alliance. 
 
 At stake is not only a significant portion of Russia’s geographic buffer – 
and conduit – to the Middle East, but also an economically vital gateway to 
Central Asia’s oil and gas reserves. With the true nature of its relations 
with the West brought into sharp focus during the Kosovo crisis, Russia 
appears to be moving quickly to stave off a similar outcome in the 
Caucasus. 
With NATO only beginning to develop relations in the region, Russia seems 
willing to go so far as to fuel conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan 
and, 
according to previous reports, to back efforts to assassinate Georgia’s 
president, in order to keep those relations from taking hold.
 
 
 
 2130 GMT, 2nd July 1999
 US PRESSURES WOULD-BE ALLIES IN CASPIAN
 
 Upon concluding his visit to Azerbaijan in late June, special adviser to 
the 
U.S. President and the Secretary of State for Caspian Issues, Richard 
Morningstar, said moving ahead with the Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan gas 
pipeline 
was more urgent than resolving the legal status of the Caspian Sea. In his 
comments on the talks on the Caspian issue between Turkmenistan and 
Azerbaijan, Morningstar said it was essential that the two Caspian states 
agree as soon as possible on the matter of the Transcaspian gas pipeline 
that 
should transport oil from Turkmenistan to Turkey via the Caspian Sea, 
Azerbaijan, and Georgia. "If they do not reach the agreement in the near 
future, other parties will appear and enter the Turkish market earlier, and 
this will harm both parties," Morningstar said. He also stressed that the 
pipeline issue was more important than the delimitation of the legal status 
of the Caspian Sea, and that the two issues should not be associated.
 
 In early July, the Iranian Interior Minister Abdolvahed Musavi-Lari held a 
meeting in Moscow with the Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. The two 
politicians stated that their countries were opposed to any foreign 
influence 
in the Caspian region. The legal status of the Caspian and exploitation of 
the sea’s natural resources should be resolved exclusively by the Caspian 
littoral states – Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan – 
Musavi-Lari and Ivanov agreed. Prior to meeting with Ivanov, Musavi-Lari 
met 
with Russian State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznev. The two called for 
cooperation between their countries, in particular in the issue of the 
Caspian Sea, and sharply criticized Washington for "trying to obstruct 
Russia-Iranian cooperation." The United States "tries to obstruct 
Russia-Iranian cooperation and resorts to double or triple standards to 
attain benefits for itself," Seleznyov and Lari were quoted by Duma’s press 
service.
 
 Russia and Iran’s reaction to Washington’s Caspian policy is not something 
unanticipated. The two countries feel increasingly irritated by the U.S. 
activities in Central Asia, aimed at preventing Moscow and Teheran from 
reasserting their economic and political grip over the former Soviet 
republics in the Caspian region. What is surprising in the recent 
developments around the Caspian is the sense of urgency that the U.S. must 
be 
feeling to push Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan to effectively violate the 
existing legal status of the sea by constructing the Transcaspian pipeline.
 
 With the all too apparent collapse of U.S.-Russian relations, particularly 
on issues of or reated to Russian security interests, the race for the 
Caspian has kicked into high gear. The problem is, while Washington has 
gone 
so far as to urge its would be allies to ignore Russian and Iranian 
hostility 
and move ahead with a trans-Caspian pipeline, Washington has little it can 
offer Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan for their efforts – certainly no security 
guarantees. Although both countries are participants of NATO’s Partnership 
for Peace program and would like to cooperate with the alliance more 
closely, 
there are no indications that NATO would be considering its military 
presence 
in Central Asia. Washington asks for a lot, but offers little. With Russia 
finally taking the race for the Caspian seriously, the U.S. has discovered 
it 
may not be as far in the lead as it hoped.
 
 
 
 15th July 1999
 UKRAINE STRUGGLES NOW FOR NUTRALITY

 Summary:
 
 The pendulum of Ukrainian foreign policy swung closest to the West on June 
12, when Kiev briefly closed Ukrainian airspace to Russian aircraft trying 
to 
reinforce Russian troops at Slatina airbase in Kosovo.  For Moscow that was 
too far and Russia has launched a major campaign to reverse Ukraine's 
trajectory. Following very pointed discussions with Russian President Boris 
Yeltsin on July 4, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has reaffirmed 
Ukraine's 
strategic partnership with Russia, while declaring neutrality to be at the 
root of Ukraine's foreign policy.  For Kiev, NATO was a fleeting dream and 
neutrality is a desperate hope, but strategic partnership may be the final 
reality.
 
 Analysis:
 
 According to Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency, Ukrainian President Leonid 
Kuchma told members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on July 13 that Russia is 
a 
strategic partner of Ukraine. "There is no
 and there cannot be an alternative to the development of friendly, equal 
and 
partner relations between Ukraine and Russia," Kuchma said. Kuchma went on 
to 
call for the settlement of economic issues and increased military 
cooperation.  He also called neutrality the essence of Ukraine's foreign 
policy.
 
 Kuchma's comments came two days prior to Russian Prime Minister Sergei 
Stepashin's two day visit to the Ukraine.  According to TASS, items on the 
agenda include the status of the Dnester region, Ukraine's debt to Russia, 
the status of the Black Sea Fleet, and the demarcation of the 
Russian-Ukrainian border.  In other words, the discussions will cover the 
full range of Russian-Ukrainian relations.
 
 Kuchma's comments on Ukrainian-Russian relations also come in the wake of 
a 
meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin on July 4, which focused on 
the 
two countries' bilateral relations in the wake of the Kosovo crisis.  More 
pointedly, the meeting dealt with Ukraine's short lived decision on June 12 
to deny its airspace to Russian aircraft attempting to reinforce Russian 
troops at Slatina airbase in Kosovo.  Though Kiev swiftly reopened 
Ukraine's 
airspace, calling the incident a misunderstanding, Russia's military 
commanders were furious.  It was bad enough that NATO convinced ostensibly 
neutral Romania and Bulgaria to deny their airspace to Russian aircraft, 
but 
Ukraine was a step too far. Ukraine had to clarify its relationship with 
NATO 
and with Russia.
 
 On June 29, Yeltsin called Kuchma to discuss "a range of important 
international problems, as well as the development of Ukrainian-Russian 
relations," according to Ukraine's DINAU news agency. During the call, 
Yeltsin "invited" Kuchma to his country home outside Moscow to discuss 
"several large outstanding problems" burdening Russian-Ukrainian relations, 
according to Yeltsin aide Sergei Prikhodko. In addition to Ukraine's debts 
to 
Russia for fuel, Prikhodko said the two leaders discussed "the situation in 
Europe in the aftermath of the military phase of the Kosovo crisis and ways 
to give a new impetus to the Russian-Ukrainian strategic partnership to 
solve 
problems jointly."
 
 Kuchma emerged from the talks declaring they had given a great boost to 
Russian-Ukrainian relations. Ukraine would transfer to Russia the recently 
completed cruiser Moskva, the fuel and financial disputes would all be 
solved, as would territorial disputes. Now Kuchma has declared that Ukraine 
will be neutral and become Russia's strategic partner.
 
 Kuchma's use of the term "neutrality" is key. It is a theme Kuchma adopted 
with great vigor in the days after Ukraine briefly closed its airspace to 
Russia and before he answered for that action to Yeltsin.  It is both a 
signal to Russia that Ukraine's perceived tilt toward NATO and away from 
Russia during the Kosovo crisis was either misunderstood or corrected, and 
a 
declaration that Ukraine has no intention of being absorbed into a greater 
Russian dominated federation. Kuchma intends that Ukraine be neither a pawn 
of NATO nor of Russia. The question, now that Kuchma has abandoned the idea 
of siding against Russia, is how "equal" and "neutral" Kuchma can keep 
Ukraine in the strategic partnership.
 
 There is an extremely important game being played out between Moscow and 
Kiev.  Russia was stunned when Russia managed to persuade Bulgaria and 
Romania, non-NATO members and putatively neutral, to close their airspace 
to 
the Russians.  The Russians discovered that central Europe, far from being 
a 
neutral buffer zone, is effectively under the control of NATO.  For a few 
hours it appeared that Ukraine was in the same position.  That would have 
been intolerable to the Russians.  From the Russian point of view, the 
events 
in Kosovo are an argument for reasserting their
 power.  Now, Russia may not be able to assert much power against NATO in 
Kosovo, but there are areas where it remains much more powerful than NATO.  
Ukraine is not only one of those places, but
 it is also of fundamental strategic importance to the Russians. Without 
Ukraine, it has no way to influence events in the Balkans and Hungary.  
Without Ukraine, the long southern flank of Russia and its partner Belarus 
are vulnerable.
 
 Thus, any strategically minded Russian understands that defining Ukraine's 
relationship to Russia is a matter of fundamental national interest to the 
Russians.  Kuchma has been under constant pressure since the Kosovo crisis 
to 
demonstrate that he is not a threat to Russia.  Part of the pressure comes 
from Russia and part of the pressure comes from pro-Russian factions inside 
of Ukraine who promise to be important in upcoming presidential elections.  
Between geopolitics and local politics, Kuchma, whose heart is with the 
West, 
has been forced to try to define Ukraine's position as being somewhere 
between neutrality and Russia's strategic partner.
 
 Still, we are convinced that strategic partnership with Russia is the 
likely 
outcome, given the local correlation of forces, economic as well as 
military. 
 Neutrality would have been something Russia might have tolerated before 
the 
supposedly neutral Bulgarians and Romanians closed their airspace to the 
Russians.  Russia is now very suspicious of neutrality.  And unlike many 
other regions, NATO and the West can offer Ukraine little more than moral 
support.   We predicted in our 1999 Annual Forecast 
[http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/1999.asp] that the fate of Ukraine 
may 
be the burning issue of 1999.  We are seeing that issue played out now.