BY EVA CHENG
Afghanistan's proximity to the Caspian region has fuelled speculation that US President George Bush's bombing, and now invasion, of the country has been motivated primarily by a desire for control of the Caspian's rich oil and gas reserves.
There can be no doubting Afghanistan's strategic importance to the United States.
Afghanistan is surrounded by four nuclear-armed countries — Russia, China, Pakistan and India. This makes the region a dangerous potential flashpoint of global significance.
Most of Afghanistan's neighbours have been actively backing one warring Afghan faction or the other. Pakistan had been fully behind the Taliban until very recently while Russia and Iran have been actively backing the opposition, the Northern Alliance. China is very much in the pciture, because of its friendly relations with Pakistan and Iran. India, besides being at war with Pakistan over Kashmir, has been a foe of China ever since their war in the early 1960s.
A continuing civil war in Afghanistan could easily spill over to these neighbours. There have already been flashpoints: in 1998, for example, Iran threatened retaliation against the Taliban after several of its diplomats were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif and was only stopped by UN intervention. During the Tajikistan civil war of the 1990s, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic jointly provided troops in an effort to stop Afghan armed units from crossing the border.
Moreover, Afghanistan is strategically located in a region where Russia still holds, and is trying to maintain, significant traditional influence, and where China is seeking to increase its weight.
By comparison, the United States has been falling behind in this part of the world, an unacceptable gap for the world's sole superpower. The war in Afghanistan has given the US a convenient excuse to establish a military presence, which the Bush regime will no doubt exploit to the full.
War for oil?
So how influential was the prospect of the Caspian's oil reserves in the US decision to militarily intervene?
The potential of the Caspian area as a significant energy source certainly adds extra importance to the region — but that is quite different from suggesting that the US started a war there primarily for oil.
There have been significant energy discoveries in and around the Caspian Sea since early last century but that, on its own, hasn't been a sufficient reason to trigger imperialist intervention.
A joint report by the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, commissioned by the US government and published in January, sheds some light on this issue.
It says, "The Clinton adminstration's Caspian strategy and the ensuing media discussion have made hydrocarbons appear more important than the geopolitical interests in the area, a disproportion that needs to be addressed ... this early policy has created stakes that could not be lost or challenged without significant damage to US prestige."
It goes on, "When all of Central Eurasia except Iran was under the rule of the Soviet Union, few US interests were at stake in what was then considered to be a backwater of the Soviet empire. The existence today of eight newly independent states that share borders with at least five countries that are immediately important to the US national security creates, by definition, a basic geopolitical interest."
Specifically on Caspian energy sources, it says, "Other interests involve access to national resources and the development of successful open societies with market economies that can serve as models elsewhere. However, these latter interests, though real, are not paramount and do not, in themselves, constitute a vital or strategic US interest in the region ... the so-called competition over energy pipelines has misplaced a sensible strategic view of the region."
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the proven oil reserves in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, varying between 15-40 billion barrels and possibly 70-150 billion, represents only between 1.5-4% of the world's proven oil reserves. The area's proven natural gas reserves of between 6.7-9.2 trillion cubic metres, and possibly 8 trillion more, is about 6% of global gas reserves.
These reserves hardly make the Caspian "another Middle East", the IEA concedes. The Middle East, in contrast, holds 65% of the world's proven oil reserves and 30% of its proven gas reserves.
But the agency also warned that "most observers consider that its [Caspian] resources will be on the same order of magnitude as those of the North Sea. As such, it could be a significant alternative source of oil and gas supply", adding that dependence on Middle Eastern oil is forecast to increase significantly by 2010 as production outside the Persian Gulf lags behind projected world demand.
This makes the Caspian energy supply small but possibly strategic, an argument supported by many commentators such as Lucian Pugliaresi, a National Security Council member in the Reagan administration.
He said in a January 2001 study for Harvard University, Energy security: How valuable is Caspian oil?, "Since these new supplies are added 'at the margin', they can have disproportional impact on world oil prices and erode some of the political control of the OPEC states".
Sufficient motivation?
But is that, on its own, a sufficient motivation for the US to start a war?
If seeking to guarantee energy supply is the prime concern, a military target of much higher priority would certainly be in or around the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia, a key producer, for example, is proving somewhat difficult for the US at present.
But nothing like that has happened, partly because, in the absence of adequate political cover, a blatant military intervention, especially in the Middle East, would likely be counterproductive, even for the sole superpower.
Moreover, getting the Caspian oil and gas out and into Western markets wouldn't be easy. As advocated by many US oil companies, piping the reserves out through Iran to the Persian Gulf would be the cheapest and most profitable path. But the US has so far ruled that out because of Iran's recalcitrance; the country remains a target of US sanctions.
If thinly disguised military intervention had been politically acceptable, all Washington would need to do is to install a US puppet regime in Iran and build a pipeline there to get the Caspian oil and gas out.
But that is clearly not the path that Washington considers viable. Carrying on a Clinton decision, Bush is pushing to build a 1730-km pipeline from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, running under the Caspian Sea to Baku in Azerbaijan, then through Tbilisi, Georgia, to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Construction started this year and is scheduled to be completed in 2004.
Pipelines
Requiring at least US$4 billion to build, adding up to US$4 to each barrel it carries, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline will cost much more than using the existing Russian pipeline which goes from Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorosiisk.
There have also been proposals to route some of the resources through a pipeline passing through Afghanistan to Pakistan (and probably India) and through another one eastward to China (possibly to Korea and Japan as well). But neither of these two proposals are likely to be acted on any time soon.
The BTC route makes so little economic sense that US energy giant Chevron, a major player in the Caspian, has criticised the idea, albeit politely, even after the plan was well underway.
Chevron's vice-chairperson Richard Matzke said in September 2000, "I realise the US government doesn't want Iran or Russia to have too much influence over the flow of Caspian oil. But the message I get from these two regional powers is that they are far more interested in the commercial benefits of that flow than in any geopolitical influence they might gain from it."
In comments not untypical of US corporations' gripes against the sanctions against Iran, which have given their European and Japanese competitors a significant edge, Matzke went on, "If the Cold War is really over, why not let business create the foundation for diplomacy? ... This is the opportunity facing the United States in Iran — an opportunity still closed to American companies by unilateral sanctions."
Chevron's complaint isn't confined to Iran. Peter Robertson, chairperson of Chevron Overseas Petroleum, slammed the use of "restrictive government actions" in a public address in April 2000.
"Unfortunately, the U.S. government is one of the chief practitioners of these sorts of actions, and the unilateral sanctions is its weapons ... The President's Export Council lists 73 countries around the world that are subject to some form of unilateral US sanction. Here's another statistic: In just four years, from 1993 through 1996, 60 US laws and executive actions were enacted authorising unilateral sanctions."
As much as sanctions are tools to solicit "desirable" behaviour, war has been Washington's choice to whip the flock back into line: designed to intimidate and to remind all countries, especially the recalcitrant ones, who is really in charge.
Just as any particular sanctions regime aimed at strengthening US, including US corporate, domination might not coincide with the immediate interests of particular US companies, so too do US wars not always serve tangible and immediate material interests.
Rather, the US's wars are often motivated by geopolitics — the need for the US to secure its strategic domination. That seems to be the case in the present assault on Afghanistan.
From Green Left Weekly, December 5, 2001.
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