Earth Equity News

Oil and the Georgian Conflict. By Michael Klare, Foreign Policy in Focus, August 13, 2008. "In commenting on the war in the Caucasus, most American analysts have tended to see it as a throwback to the past: as a continuation of a centuries-old blood feud between Russians and Georgians, or, at best, as part of the unfinished business of the Cold War... But the conflict is more about the future than the past. It stems from an intense geopolitical contest over the flow of Caspian Sea energy to markets in the West...When the… republics of the Caspian Sea basin became independent [of Russia] and began seeking Western customers for their oil and natural gas… Western companies eagerly sought production deals… [But] because the Caspian… is landlocked… [oil has to] travel by pipeline -- and, at [the] time, Russia controlled all… pipeline capacity. … [Not wanting to rely exclusively on Russia,] President Clinton sponsored the construction of an alternative pipeline [known as the BTC] from Baku in Azerbaijan to Tbilisi in Georgia and then onward to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast… [The BTC] passes [through]… Chechnya and Georgia's two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With this in mind, the Clinton and Bush administrations… [made Georgia] the leading recipient of U.S. arms and equipment in the former Soviet space. President Bush has also lobbied U.S. allies in Europe to 'fast track' Georgia's… membership in NATO… [all of which] was viewed in Moscow with immense resentment. Not only was the U.S. helping to create a new security risk on [Russia's] southern borders, but, more importantly, was frustrating its drive to secure control over the transportation of Caspian energy to Europe… It is against this backdrop that the fighting in Georgia and South Ossetia has been taking place. Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books, 2008), as well as other books, and a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus.