CASPIAN ENERGY RESOURCES AND THE “PIPELINE WAR” IN EUROPE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: ENERGY GEOPOLITICS IN NORTHERN EURASIA
Abstract
In the post-9/11 world, energy resources have become the most coveted trophy, and force has become the main instrument, while national interests are prevailing over the 1990s.
Russia and the United States are locked in rapidly accelerating rivalry over the Caspian’s gas and gas pipelines (South Stream of Russia vs. Nabucco of the West).
While at the turn of the 21st century, Russia did not have a trump card it could successfully use to oppose the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline,1 later it armed itself with the South Stream to fight the “gas war.” The two projects competed in the “dilemma of simultaneity” regime,2 which describes the dynamics of the struggle over several alternatives for the limited resources. The resultant “diversification race”3 started the European “pipeline war” of the 21st century. What triggered the race? Never before, even at the height of the Cold War, has the West been so vehemently determined to lower Europe’s dependence on Soviet fuel; never before has the Caspian basin attracted the clashing political and economic interests of so many countries.
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The project undermined Russia’s position in the Greater Caspian. During Vladimir Putin’s first term as pres-ident, the Kremlin wasted its efforts on joining the “world community” by riding the American “bandwagon of free-dom” within the “anti-terrorist consensus.” The West, mean-while, won the first round: this oil route bypassed Russian territory. Moscow soon realized that it was not merely an engineering structure designed to move oil in the desired direction, but a geopolitical springboard the West had man-aged to snatch away from Russia.
The term coined by Claus Offe of Germany belongs to the “post-communist transit” paradigm and reflects the di-lemma of transition societies: either democracy or a market economy as the absolute priority. The powerful imagery and emotional component of this phrasing put the political strain of struggle for very limited energy sources in a nutshell (see:
. Offe, Varieties of Transition: The East European and East German Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.,1997, p. 35).
For more detail, see: A. Magomedov, “The Conflict in South Ossetia and the Frontiers of Struggle for the Greater Caspian's Energy Resources,” Central Asia and the Cau-casus, No. 2 (56), 2009, pp. 40-42.
A. Magomedov and R. Nikerov studied the “resource accumulation” phenomenon in their book Bolshoi Kaspiy.
nergeticheskaia geopolitika i tranzitnye voiny na etapakh postkommunizma, UlGU Press, Ulyanovsk, 2010, pp. 141-149.
I. Tsurina, “Imidzh energeticheskogo ‘agressora,’” NG-Energia, No. 242, 13 November, 2007.
See: “Russia’s Wrong Direction. What the US Can and Should Do,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 2006,available at [www.cfr.org/publication/9997].
See: N. Grib, N. Skorlygina, “Turkmeniia nashla gaz v obkhod Rossii. Zavety Turkmenbashi proshli mezhdunar-odny audit,” Kommersant, 15 October, 2008.
D. Freifeld, “The Great Pipeline Opera,” Foreign Policy, 24 August, 2009.
See: “Gaz podkliuchili k sfere interesov SShA,” Kommersant, 30 January, 2009.
“Rossiiskie truboprovody ugrozhaiut Evrope?” community.livejournal, 25 October, 2009.
The Kremlin lost the propaganda campaign: Europe remained convinced that it was blackmailed by Putin.
See: [http://www.newsazerbaijan.az/analytics/20081107/42569096.html].
D. Freifeld, op. cit.
M.K. Bhadrakumar, “Russia, China, Iran Redraw Energy Map,” Asia Times, 8 January, 2010.
M. Richardson, “China versus Russia and the Battle of ‘Pipelinestan,’” The National, 28 December 2009.
See: A. Gabuev, “Delegatsiia KPK posetila Moskvu i Baku,” Kommersant, 15 September, 2008.
Construction of the first line of the Nord Stream system began on 9 April 2010.
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