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Asia Times Online
Obama may cede Iran's nuclear rights
By M K Bhadrakumar
Apr 10, 2009
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KD10Ak03.html

When the wastes of Qyzylqum and Karakum blossom in early spring, the enchanting sight can pain one's heart. But the killer deserts are deceptive in appearance, especially Qyzylqum, which is in the tract of land between the two great rivers in Central Asia - the Amu Darya and Sirdarya.

In the spring of 1220, when Genghis Khan abruptly rode out of the Qyzylqum with a few hundred Mongol horsemen to take the Amir of Bukhara by surprise, the Amir never imagined that the desert would so easily concede safe passage to a Mongol stranger. Bukhara - one of the biggest cities at that time along with Cordoba, Cairo and Baghdad - paid heavily for the desert's treachery. Bukhara took over two centuries to recover from "God's wrath", which the austere Khan insisted he was administering to the slothful, opulent city for its sinful ways.

It is again early spring in the Central Asian steppes. There is a deceptive calm, but all signs are that the Great Game is bestirring from its slumber. The United States is focusing on the key Central Asian country of Kazakhstan, which straddles the Qyzylqum and the Karakum, to stage a strategic comeback in the region. Prospects are brighter than ever as Kazakhstan is edging closer to the chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Economic Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) next year. The OSCE leadership brings Kazakhstan into the forefront of the Western strategies in Eurasia - and out of Russian orbit.

The war in nearby Afghanistan provides the backdrop for the US's proactive diplomacy. But that, too, is deceptive. It seems the US is also probing a solution to the Iran nuclear problem with Kazakhstan's helping hand. The urgency is great and President Barack Obama has already hinted that he intends to pay a visit to Kazakhstan, the first ever to the steppes by an American president.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is "carefully considering" the setting up of an international uranium fuel bank in Kazakhstan, which could form the exit strategy for the historic US-Iran standoff. That is why the visit by the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to Astana, Kazakhstan, on Monday assumes exceptional importance.

In bits and pieces, a stray thought has been surfacing in the recent months in the US discourses over the situation surrounding Iran. It sought a rethink of Washington's insistence on Iran jettisoning its pursuit of uranium enrichment as a pre-requisite of commencement of direct talks between the two countries. This was borne out of a growing realization that the US insistence was no longer tenable. A logjam has indeed developed as it became clearer by the day that within the fractious Iranian opinion there is virtual unanimity when it comes to the continuance of the country's nuclear program, and effecting a regime change in Tehran didn't necessarily alter Iran's policies.

The Obama administration faces the reality that unless the impasse is broken somehow, the standoff continues. The standoff worked to Iran's advantage only insofar as the country speeded up its nuclear program ever since the series of United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions since 2006 began forbidding Iran from enriching uranium. Iran today has installed over 5,500 centrifuges and built up a stockpile exceeding 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium.

It now appears that the US might cede to Iran's nuclear program. The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that as part of a policy review commissioned by Obama, "diplomats are discussing whether the US will eventually have to accept Iran's insistence on carrying out the [enrichment] process, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material". The newspaper assessed that the Obama administration's message to Tehran is increasingly shaping up as "Don't develop a nuclear weapon" - a nuanced stance that would not rule out a deal accepting Iranian enrichment as such. It pointed out that Obama's articulations on the subject have become much less specific than those of former president George W Bush, who never minced words in crying a halt to Iran's enrichment.

The new thinking is that the priority should be to win greater access for UN inspectors to the Iranian nuclear establishments, as compared with the current limited inspection regime, which has led to diminishing information regarding Iran's nuclear program. In other words, why not trust Iran to retain its enrichment activities so long as its program can be effectively verified.

In this scenario, it is significant that following talks with Ahmadinejad, Kazakhstan President Nurusultan Nazarbayev chose the venue of their joint press conference on Monday in Astana to make the public offer that his country is willing to host a global nuclear fuel bank as part of a US-backed plan to put all uranium enrichment under international control. "If such a nuclear fuel bank were to be created, Kazakhstan would be ready to consider hosting it on its territory as a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and as a country that voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons," Nazarbayev said.

The veteran Kazakh statesman (who might have been the Soviet Union's prime minister but for the superpower's implosion in 1991) didn't speak out of the blue. Such impetuousness is alien to his shrewd political temperament. He knew the time has come for his proposal to be publicly voiced. It is an idea that is evidently supported by Obama. It devolves upon the creation of a global repository that would allow countries to tap into Kazakhstan's vast reserves of uranium to fuel their nuclear plants without having to develop their own enrichment capability. At any rate, Ahmadinejad also chose to publicly welcome the Kazakh proposal. "We [Iran] think that Nurusultan Nazarbayev's idea to host a nuclear fuel bank is a very good proposal," he noted.

These are, of course, early days. However, Iran used to maintain at one point that it would be open to the idea of stopping sensitive uranium enrichment if a supply of nuclear fuel from abroad could be guaranteed. In the face of the Bush administration's mindless containment strategy, the Iranian stance hardened, especially as the nuclear file got transferred from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the UN Security Council, and the country began harping on its due rights to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle, including enriched uranium, for peaceful purposes.

Later on Monday in Astana, Ahmadinejad utilized yet another press conference to argue that he welcomed Nazarbayev's proposal since "any country that has uranium mines and the capability to produce nuclear fuel can also establish a nuclear fuel bank". He then went on to elaborate the Iranian response:

As regards the nuclear issue, two major developments are simultaneously needed. One is ending the assumption that nuclear energy is quite the same as nuclear bomb. And the other one is about disarmament by the nuclear powers in the world. This would ease [Iranian] concerns regarding these powers and also ease the global concerns. That is to say, the issue needs to be solved fundamentally ... Ever since nuclear energy got equated with [the] nuclear bomb, a monopoly developed over nuclear energy, whereas nuclear energy has beneficial uses in medicine, agriculture and industry. I wouldn't say that it was intentional to equate nuclear energy and nuclear bomb, but, considering the broadly negative fallouts of it, we cannot say that it has been totally unintentional, either.

Significantly, Ahmadinejad also utilized the second press meet to make some positive references to Obama's recent overtures. "We hope Obama would manage to … establish friendly relations with other countries on equal terms. We welcome fundamental changes and are longing for them to happen … we are waiting for practical deeds and real changes … Currently, the statements are satisfactory … If fundamental changes [in US policy] occur, we ill definitely welcome them."

What emerges is that Japan might also play a key role in the US-Kazakh nuclear paradigm and any resultant new opening with Iran. The news agency Agence France-Presse reported that senior Japanese diplomats with deep experience in dealing with Iran - Tatsuo Arima, special envoy on the Middle East, Toshiro Suzuki, head of the foreign ministry's Middle East and Africa department, and Akio Shirota, Japanese ambassador in Tehran - have held several days of intensive consultations in Washington with the Obama administration, including with the National Security Council in the White House.

Curiously, Japan and Kazakhstan have an expanding cooperation program in the nuclear field. There is much complementarity between the two countries since Japan is the world's third-largest importer of uranium, next only to the US and France, while Kazakhstan possesses the world's second largest reserves of uranium after Australia. Japan currently imports only 1% of its uranium from Kazakhstan and hopes to increase it to 30-40% in the next decade or so.

As for Kazakhstan, at 1.5 million metric tons, it holds roughly 19% of the world's total uranium deposits. More than half of the Kazakh deposits are also available for extraction by in-site leaching, which is a cheap and environmentally friendly method in comparison with extraction from open pits or deep shaft mines. Kazakhstan produced 6,637 metric tons in 2007 and 8,521 metric tons in 2008. The production is expected to jump to 11,900 tons in 2009.

Japanese companies like Marubeni have moved into Kazakh uranium mines. Within the framework of a series of cooperation agreements, Japan has agreed to provide technology assistance to Kazakhstan for processing uranium fuel and building light-water reactors. One key agreement in October 2007 enabled Kazatompom, a Kazakh state company, to acquire 10% of Westinghouse Electric from Japan's Toshiba at a cost of $540 million.

All in all, therefore, Kazakhstan is gearing up as a leading player in the global uranium market while Japan is eager to secure a stable supply of uranium for its growing nuclear energy industry. Japan is a notoriously reticent partner in nuclear cooperation and the fashion in which it made an exception in the case of Kazakhstan is truly extraordinary. From the US perspective, Japan would be an ideal partner for fleshing out the idea of a nuclear fuel bank in Kazakhstan since it has an advanced nuclear fuel cycle industry. Japan's Rokkasho reprocessing plant gives it a unique status as the first country to have such facility, though a non-nuclear weapon state. Japan is also committed to commercialize practical fast breeder reactor cycles. At the same time, Japan has been right in the vanguard of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Washington would see that Japan fits well with Kazakhstan's ambitious plans for developing nuclear energy, increasing uranium exports, and expanding nuclear fuel production and export. Besides, Tokyo always kept up cordial ties with Tehran through the 30-year period since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

More importantly, Japan rivals China in both the Central Asian and Middle Eastern regions. The rivalry provides Tokyo with just the right impetus to pay close attention to ties with Astana and Tehran, which are two key capitals in Beijing's energy diplomacy.

But China won't be alone in taking stock of any US-Japanese-Kazakh tie-up in the field of nuclear energy. Russia would be equally wary of the geopolitical implications of any expansion of US influence in Kazakhstan. Russian companies have been making robust efforts to gain control over Kazakhstan's uranium mines. The Kremlin encouraged Astana to become a partner in setting up an international nuclear re-processing center in Siberia. Thus, Moscow would be displeased with any US-Japanese attempt to build up Kazakhstan as an international nuclear fuel bank.

In short, Iran's support of the idea of setting up a nuclear fuel bank holds the potential to address the US-Iran nuclear standoff. On Thursday, the European Union's foreign policy advisor Javier Solana invited Iran's nuclear negotiators for talks. He wouldn't have taken the initiative without synchronizing with the Obama administration. The big question is whether Washington will shed its reluctance to engage with Ahmadinejad, who is completing his term in office in June. The indications are that Obama might be inclined to directly engage, the impact on the presidential poll in Iran notwithstanding.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Eurasian Crossroads: The Caucasus In US-NATO War Plans
by Rick Rozoff
April 8, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13101

The South Caucasus is rapidly becoming a critical strategic crossroads in 21st century geopolitics, encompassing the most ambitious energy transit projects in history and the consolidation of a military corridor reaching from Western Europe to East Asia, one whose command centers are in Washington and Brussels.

The culmination of eighteen years of post-Cold War Western designs is on the near horizon as oil and gas are intended to be moved from the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea to Central Europe and beyond and US and NATO troops and equipment are scheduled to be deployed from Europe and the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Nothing less is at stake than control of world energy resources and their transportation routes on one hand and the establishment of a global army under NATO auspices fanning out in South and Central Asia and ultimately Eurasia as a whole on the other.

The three nations of the South Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - are increasingly becoming the pivot upon which that strategy turns. With the Black Sea and the Balkans to its west, Russia to its north, Iran and the Arab world to the south and southeast and the Caspian Sea and Central Asia to the east, the South Caucasus is uniquely situated to become the nucleus of an international geostrategic campaign by the major Western powers to achieve domination of Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa and as such the world.

The overarching plan for the employment and exploitation of this region for the aforementioned purposes is and has long been an American one, but it also takes in the US's European allies and in addition to unilateral and bilateral initiatives by Washington includes a critically vital NATO component.

With the nearly simultaneous breakup of the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991 - one a cataclysmic and instantaneous and the other a prolonged process - prospects were renewed for the West to engage in a modern, expanded version of the Great Game for control of Central and South Asia and for that vast stretch of land that was formerly the socialist world excluding Far East Asia.

Since 1991 a 20th and now 21st century Silk Route has been opened up to the West, one beginning at the northeast corner of Italy and ranging to the northwest border of China and taking in at least seventeen new political entities, some little more than diminutive mono-ethnic statelets sovereign in name only. They are the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia and the international no man's land of Kosovo in the Balkans; Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the South Caucasus; and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, with Moldova and Ukraine representing the northern wing of this vast redrawing of historical borders and redefining of geopolitical space.

As previously noted, the South Caucasus lies at the very center of this new configuration. As in the days of empire, both ancient and modern, armies seeking plunder and states replenishing their treasuries with it must now pass through this region.

Pass through it, that is, if their intent is a hostile, confrontational and exclusionary one, a policy of containing Russia and Iran and effectively blockading both in their respective and shared neighborhoods, for example the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia.

On the energy front American, British, French, Norwegian and other Western nations, sometimes individually but most always as consortia, are the prime movers; on the military one the task has been assigned to NATO.

Of the seventeen new nations listed above, all except for the aborted Kosovo entity, aptly described by a leading Serbian political figure as a NATO pseudo-state, have Partnership for Peace and in many cases Individual Partnership Action Programs with NATO and two former Yugoslav republics, Slovenia and as of three days ago Croatia, are now full Alliance members.

Of the seventeen only Serbia, Kosovo (so far), Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have not been dragooned into providing troops for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The way stations on NATO's 21st century caravan route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Chinese frontier progressively reveal the pathetic - and tragic - status of what awaits much of the world in this not so grand plan. The West's two latest mini-states, Montenegro which became the latest member of the United Nations in 2006 and Kosovo which was torn from Serbia a little more than a year ago, are both underworld enclaves, gangland smugglers' coves carved out of broader states, Yugoslavia and Serbia, for the sole purpose of serving as military and black market transit points.

NATO's latest additions, Albania and Croatia, belie in every particular NATO's and the United States' claims of the Alliance epitomizing alleged Euro-Atlantic values and a new international "union of democracies." Croatia, still beset by fascist nostalgia and risorgimento, is guilty of the worst permanent ethnic cleansing in post-World War II Europe, that of the US-directed Operation Storm of 1995 which drove hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other ethnic minorities out of the country. Albania is another crime-ridden failed state which played a key role in assisting the second worst irreversible ethnic cleansing in modern Europe, the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Roma, Gorans, Turks and other non-Albanians from Kosovo since June of 1999. (At the recently concluded NATO 60th anniversary summit Croatian President Stjepan Mesic boasted that his nation would contribute to NATO operations with its "war experience.")

After the US and NATO brought what they triumphantly designate as peace and stability to the former Yugoslavia, they moved the battleground eastward toward the Black Sea and the Caucasus. Bulgaria and Romania were ushered into NATO in 2004 and Ukraine and Georgia were placed on the fast track to follow them.

With Turkey already a long-standing member of the Alliance, Russia is the only non-NATO and non-NATO candidate nation on the Black Sea.

Georgia is the major objective in this drive east as its western flank is the Black Sea and its eastern is Azerbaijan, whose eastern border is the Caspian Sea.

The South Caucasus is the land route from Europe to Asia in the east and to Iran and its neighbors - Iraq, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan - to the south.

It is at the center of a strategy that alone ties together the three major wars of the past decade - Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) - and that aims at preventing regional economic, security and infrastructural development cooperation between Russia, Iran, China, India and Turkey in the same Balkans-to-Asia Silk Route area.

As it was insightfully described by a Pakistani analyst recently, the current century is witnessing the final act in a drama that could be called the West versus the rest. The South Caucasus is the linchpin and the battleground of this geopolitical and historical denouement.

Yesterday the American warship the USS Klakring, docked in the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi (capital of Ajaria, subjugated in 2004 by the US-formed new Georgian army), welcomed aboard former US-based President Mikheil Saakashvili to him "a chance to visit with the crew and discuss the importance of a strong United States-Georgia relationship."

The Klakring was "hosting visits and participating in theater security cooperation activities which develop both nations' abilities to operate against common threats...." (1)

What "common threat" was meant is not hard to discern. Its capital is Moscow.

The Georgian Defense Minister appointed to that role after last August's war with Russia, David Sikharulidze, said on the occasion that the arrival of the US warship - fresh from taunting Russia with a visit to Sevastopol where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based - represented "a guarantee for stability in the NATO space." (2)

Sikharulidze let a cat out of a bag that the Pentagon and the White House would have preferred remain there. The two latter hide their military expansion into the Black Sea and the Caucasus under the masks of "guaranteeing maritime security" and "protecting a new democracy from its hostile northern neighbor," but in fact Georgia is NATO's beachhead and bridge for penetration of a tri-continental expanse of territory the West has set its sights on.

The Georgian Defense Minister was well-groomed for his current role. Prior to being appointed to his post last December Sikharulidze attended advance courses at the US Navy's Justice School, the NATO SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) School at Oberammergau, and the NATO Defense College.

In a news column he wrote for a Georgian newspaper in early March Sikharulidze asserted "We will develop well-equipped, properly trained and rapidly deployable forces to defend Georgia and to meet our international obligations. Our capabilities and tactics will be designed to meet a considerably superior force."

The considerably superior force in question doesn't need to be named.

To assist Georgia in preparing for a - larger, more decisive - showdown with Russia, he said, "To enhance this effort, we look forward to the arrival of an expert team from NATO's Allied Command Transformation."

Just as importantly, he added that "as NATO seeks alternative routes to Afghanistan, we understand our strategic responsibility as gateway to the East-West corridor. Georgia will provide logistical support to NATO, opening its territory, ports, airfields, roads and railroads to the alliance."(3)

Georgia's appointed role in providing the US and NATO with land, sea and air routes for the dangerously expanding war in South Asia will be taken up in more detail later. As to its defense minister's allusion to NATO's Norfolk, Virginia-based Allied Command Transformation (ACT) being tasked to assist the Pentagon in preparing the nation's armed forces for a confrontation with a "considerably superior force," on the very day Sikharulidze's article appeared, the Commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command and Supreme Allied Commander Transformation for NATO, Gen. James Mattis, met with him and his commander in chief Saakashvili to plot "prospects for Georgia's stronger cooperation with NATO" shortly after the release of a "document entitled The Defence Minister's Vision 2009 that was made public on February 17 [and which stated that] one of the defence ministry's priorities is to 'adjust the Georgian armed forces with NATO standards.'"(4)

The day before the release of the Defence Minister's Vision 2009, the Georgian defense chief welcomed the NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia Robert Simmons to "discuss" it. Whether Simmons bothered to have the document translated into Georgian beforehand was not mentioned.

Simmons also briefed Sikharulidze on the Annual National Program NATO had bestowed on Georgia on December 2, 2009 (a parallel arrangement was made with Ukraine), less than three months after Georgia's attack on South Ossetia and war with Russia and following the launching of the NATO-Georgia Commission on September 15, barely a month after the war ended. (Washington signed a US-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership on January 9, 2009.)

The same month, February of this year, the Joint Staff of the Georgian Armed Forces announced that it was "conducting a formal process to derive Lessons Learned from the August 2008 war," which would confirm that "one of the main priorities of Georgia's foreign and security policy is integration into NATO....From this standpoint, improving NATO interoperability and compatibility with a view to developing NATO-standard deployable forces is an important GAF priority" and that "A team from NATO's Allied Command Transformation will advise on this effort," as it later did.(5)

On March 30, the day before the USS Klakring arrived in Georgia, so did the Pentagon's second major commander, General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He met with President Saakashvili and Defense Minister Davit Sikharulidze and inspected the "town of Gori, according to the Georgian MoD [Ministry of Defence], and visit[ed] the Gori-based first infantry brigade and the first artillery brigade."(6)

Gori was occupied by Russian forces at the end of last August's war and Cartwright's tour of inspection was a blunt message to Moscow. And to Saakashvili and his defense minister. One of confrontation with the first and uncritical support to the other.

During Cartwright's visit Saakashvili reminded him - and Russia and the world - that "Recently, I have met with General Petraeus [Commander of US Central Command] who also spoke highly of the Georgian army's prospects....Earlier, we trained our army for police and peacekeeping operations and not for large-scale military actions."(7)

What the Georgian strongman was alluding to was that the US was transitioning its American-made army from war and occupation zone training in NATO interoperability to preparations for "homeland defense" aimed at Russia.

During the meeting with the Pentagon's number two commander he reminded listeners and readers that "Since 2001, Georgia [has performed] peacekeeping missions in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. However, in August last year during the Russian aggression there were withdrawn the last 2,000 Georgian soldiers from Iraq.

"Earlier, Georgia declared its readiness to send 300 soldiers to Afghanistan."(8 )

And: "'Earlier we were preparing the army for police peacekeeping operations, but not for large-scale military action," Saakashvili stressed, expressing confidence that the Georgian army "will continue to grow both quantitatively and qualitatively and will be equipped with all necessary weapons."(9)

At the time of Georgia's attempt on August 7, 2008 to advance its armored columns to the Roki Tunnel which connects South Ossetia to the Russian Republic of North Ossetia, thereby blocking off Russian reinforcements and capturing some 1,000 Russian peacekeepers - a humiliation for Russia in the eyes of the world had it succeeded - the US flew the 2,000 Georgian troops in Iraq (near the Iranian border, the third largest foreign contingent) on American military transport planes back to Georgia, a move that were the situation reversed, say in a hypothetical conflict between the US and Mexico, would have been treated as an act of war by Washington.

That airlift began the process of shifting battle-ready Georgian troops from supporting US and NATO operations abroad to what six years of the US Train and Equip Program and comparable NATO assistance had intended them for: War with Russia.

"Cartwright said that the United States will train the Georgian armed forces, with the main focus of the training being 'the defence of Georgia.'"(10)

What the "defense of Georgia" entailed was spelled out by Saakashvili, while Cartwright nodded approbation:

"Our struggle continues and it will end after the complete de-occupation of Georgia's territory and expelling the last soldier of the enemy from our country. I am absolutely sure of that."(11)

Cartwright added, "I want to say that you have a very good army and we know what they have done.

"We are glad that we will continue to cooperate with them in the future as well. Our strategic partnership is very important."

He also "highlighted that after the August war it became easier to understand the Georgian armed forces's training priorities and what new types of equipment were needed for defending the homeland."(12)

The point wasn't, could not be, missed in Moscow and "Russia sent a strong warning to the United States Thursday [April 2] about supporting Georgia in the U.S. ally's efforts to rebuild its military following last year's war.
"The Foreign Ministry said helping arm Georgia would be 'extremely dangerous' and would amount to 'nothing but the encouragement of the aggressor.'"(13)

A Russian news source reported "Turkey provided the Georgian Army, Air Force and Special Forces with unspecified military equipment, shortly after Georgia was visited by a high-ranking US General on Monday" in addition to having previously provided "60 armoured troop-carriers, 2 helicopters, firearms with ammunition, telecommunication and navigation systems and military vehicles worth $730,000," and that "more armour, Pakistan-manufactured missiles, speedboats and other ammunition is planned for delivery in the near future."(14)

Days later at the NATO Summit in Strasbourg the Alliance complemented the Pentagon's enhanced support of Georgia.

NATO reiterated its intention to absorb Georgia - and Ukraine - "when the countries fall in line with the alliance's standards." (15)

Among the bloc's "standards" are two preconditions for full membership worth recalling: The absence of territorial conflicts and of foreign (non-NATO) military forces in candidate countries. Abkhazia and South qualify doubly as "problems that must be resolved" as does the Crimea in general and the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol in particular with the Ukraine.

Hence Saakashvili, flanked and coached by the Pentagon's second-in-command, fulminating about the "complete de-occupation of Georgia's territory and expelling the last soldier of the enemy from our country."

In line with this plan, the Strasbourg summit issued a statement that "NATO will continue supporting the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of the South Caucasus countries and Moldova," and "NATO declares its deep concerns over the unsettled conflicts in the South Caucasus countries [Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh] and Moldova [Transdniester]."(16)

NATO Spokesman James Appathurai, in issuing the mind-boggling declaration that the Alliance wouldn't tolerate "spheres of influence" in post-Soviet space, stated: "We consider that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are integral part of Georgia. The issue of the territorial integrity is a very serious problem. NATO always supports the territorial integrity of countries." (As to the last sentence, see references to Kosovo and Montenegro above.) (17)

Georgia returned the favor by vowing to turn the Sachkhere Mountain Training School into a Partnership for Peace [NATO] Training Center and by hosting the annual NATO South Caucasus Cooperative Longbow/ Cooperative Lancer exercises beginning on May 3 with troops from twenty three nations.

The importance of Georgia, and of its neighbor Azerbaijan, is assuming heightened, indeed urgent, value for two not unrelated reasons: The activation of trans-Eurasian energy projects intended to knock Russia out of petrochemical sales and transit to Europe and the escalation of the war in South Asia.

At the 60th anniversary Summit, within the general framework of Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's demand that "The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, now more than ever, must hold together to solve some of the world's most pressing problems," was a renewed pledge to "protect Europe's energy security."

The main focus of the summit, however, was to formalize plans for the large-scale escalation of the war in Afghanistan and now in neighboring Pakistan.

Plans for unprecedented Western-dominated oil and gas pipelines from the eastern end of the Caspian Sea through the South Caucasus and the Black Sea north to the Baltic Sea and further on to all of Europe - and for the hub of that nexus, Turkey and the South Caucasus, to connect with more pipelines emanating from the Middle East, North Africa and eventually the Gulf of Guinea - have been addressed in some detail in an earlier article, Global Energy War: Washington's New Kissinger's African Plans.(18)

But a brief overview may be in order.

In October of 1998 United States Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson officiated over a meeting with the heads of state of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to launch the Ankara Declaration, a formalization of plans for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline to run for 1,768 kilometers from the Caspian to the Mediterranean.

It was planned to be the world's longest fully functioning oil pipeline as the Soviet and Comecon era Friendship Pipeline (4,000 kilometers) was already in decline and moreover was to be supplanted by extension of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project through Ukraine to Poland and the Baltic Sea, the Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk route.

The last-named was agreed upon in May 11, 2007 by the presidents of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan and a special envoy of the president of Kazakhstan.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was brought on line two years earlier in an inauguration attended by then US Energy Secretary Samuel Brodman and the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The presence of Kazakh officials at the two above events is significant because although the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline commences in Azerbaijan at the western end of the Caspian and ends at Turkey's Mediterranean coast, the successor to the 1994 "Contract of the Century" signed by major American and British government and oil company officials with Azerbaijan envisioned since its inception that oil from fellow Caspian nations Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan would be run under the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and be shipped further west and north.

As early as 1996 the US planned to import natural gas to Europe from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan through a submarine pipeline in order to circumvent Russia and Iran. The trans-Caspian gas pipeline would parallel its oil counterpart as the current Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum land natural gas pipeline does the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil one and would link up with the trans-Caspian submarine gas pipeline described at the beginning of this paragraph.

Part of this vast trans-continental corridor is the proposed Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway, the foundation of a much-touted "China to Great Britain" line.

The major NATO states, the US and EU members, are also working on the Nabucco pipeline, which is planned to transport natural gas from Turkey to Austria, via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. It will run from Erzurum in Turkey where the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline ends. Again the strategy is to circumvent Russia and Iran.

Furthermore, the West is pursuing a "strategic view to see the Arab Gas Pipeline, which links Syria to Egypt via Jordan, extended to Turkey and Iraq by some time this year. This, in turn, would link to the 30bcm-per year Nabucco pipeline, connecting the EU to new gas sources in the Caspian Sea and Middle East."
(19)

Last year "EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner met representatives of the Mashreq countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria), Iraq and Turkey on May 5 in Brussels to discuss the finalisation of the Trans-Arab gas pipeline, promote its role as a future supplier of the EU backed Nabucco project and encourage the full participation of Iraq in regional energy activities, including as a partner in the Trans-Arab project.

"The Trans-Arab pipeline, which currently runs from Egypt through Jordan to Syria, has a capacity of 10 bn cm per year. The pipeline, which will be interconnected with Turkey and Iraq by 2009, will provide a new transport route for gas resources from the Mashreq region to the EU." (20)

Recent discussions have included not only Egypt but Algeria as intended partners in this arrangement, which would extend the web of pipelines from the eastern extreme of the Caspian Sea to a nation that borders Morocco, on the Atlantic Ocean.

Wherever the oil and gas may originate - from the Western border of China to a few hundred kilometers distance from the Atlantic Ocean - they are to converge in Turkey and the South Caucasus. Though however indispensable a role Turkey plays, it is entirely dependent on Caspian Sea oil and gas being shipped through the Caucasus for its importance in grander schemes.

As a Greek analyst commented this past February, this elaborate energy nexus is anything other than a merely economic proposition:

"Making inroads into Central Asia to access the oil and natural gas resources in this region would give the US a strategic advantage in the Eurasian Corridor, and if Middle East oil was added to this mix, control of the direction of the world economy....The success of Washington's East European and Balkan-Caucasus-Central Asia strategies would have led to the encirclement of Russia, with a chain of military and economic links with countries stretching from the Baltic States and the former [Soviet Union] satellites in East Europe, via the Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia, to the borders of China."(21)

This confirms revelatory admissions by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (and former Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy) Matthew Bryza last June that "Our goal is to develop a 'Southern Corridor' of energy infrastructure to transport Caspian and Iraqi oil and gas to Turkey and Europe" and, to transition to the war in South Asia, "The East-West Corridor we had been building from Turkey and the Black Sea through Georgia and Azerbaijan and across the Caspian became the strategic air corridor, and the lifeline into Afghanistan allowing the United States and our coalition partners to conduct Operation Enduring Freedom." (22)

If the inextricable connection between the fifteen-year development of energy and transportation corridors by NATO states from Europe to Central Asia and the current "reverse flow" (the expression used for the short-lived transit of Russia oil through the Odessa-Brody pipeline before Kiev's ever-obedient Western clients put a halt to it) of NATO men and materiel to Central Asia and to the Afghan-Pakistani war front still appears unsubstantiated, US Navy Captain Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for the US Transportation Command, in speaking of the new American administration's plans for the massive escalation of the greater Afghan war, has put doubts to rest in saying, "[O]ne route...could involve shipping supplies to a port in Georgia on the Black Sea. Supplies would then be moved overland through Georgia to Azerbaijan, by ship across the Caspian to Kazakhstan and then south through other Central Asian countries to Afghanistan.

"The routes already exist. The facilities already exist. What we're talking about is tapping into existing networks and using a variety of military and contractor commercial enterprises to facilitate the movement of materiel supply, non-lethal supplies and everything else that is needed in Afghanistan through these existing commercial routes." (23)

The routes are about to be tested on a scale not previously used. In 2003, two years after the "lightning victory" of October of 2001, there were 10,000 US and allied NATO troops in Afghanistan. The following year there were 12,000. At the beginning of this year there were as many as 55,000 troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) - 23,000 US soldiers and the rest from NATO, Partnership for Peace, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and "Asian NATO" states - and 28,000 American forces attached to Operation Enduring Freedom. (The exact figures are difficult to arrive at. Some sources list 38,000 US and 32,000 NATO troops without specifying how many US servicemen are assigned to which command.)

The White House has pledged another 30,000 combat troops and an additional 4,000 trainers for this year (with more to join them in 2010 already being mentioned) and NATO offered 5,000 more at its summit three days ago. If all the numbers are accurate, there may soon be 122,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan later this year. A tenfold increase in five years.

Ongoing attacks on NATO supply lines and depots in Western Pakistan and the closing of the Kyrgyz airbase at Manas to US and NATO forces will complicate the planned Iraq-style surge in Afghanistan and against targets in Pakistan.

Om March 31 US Central Command chief General David Petraeus met at the Pentagon with the defense ministers of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to plan the logistics for his attempt to replicate the Iraq "surge" in Afghanistan, only this time with hostilities also raging in neighboring Pakistan, a country with a population almost three times that of Iraq and Afghanistan combined and with nuclear weapons.

The war theater is ever widening and the vortex is pulling in more and more regional and extra-regional actors. In addition to enmeshing the five Central Asian states, initially through transit and overflight commitments, NATO with ISAF has troops from some 45 nations serving under its command.

Never before have armed units from so many nations been deployed for a war in one country. Even Hannibal's motley contingents in the second Punic War were not as diverse nor was their composite provenance anywhere near as far-ranging.

The troops come from four continents and the Middle East. And the South Caucasus. After a visit from NATO's Caucasus and Central Asia representative Robert Simmons last June Azerbaijan announced it was doubling its troop deployment to Afghanistan. Georgia's Saakashvili recently boasted of writing US President Barack Obama to offer him more forces for the war.

"I have already stated this to General Cartwright, as before to the U.S. political leadership. I wrote about this to President Obama and we are ready to develop our relations in this direction." (24)

A year earlier "Georgia had filed an application with NATO, making a proposal to send its contingent to Afghanistan, considering that "to settle the situation in Afghanistan is one of the main issues for the whole world".(25)

Azerbaijan, like Georgia, is being built up as a forward operating base for action in the Caspian and into Afghanistan.

"NATO is going to ship supplies to Afghanistan via Poti-Baku-Aktau container trains through TRACECA [Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia] corridor, Azerbaijan, said Arif Asgarov, Chairman of Azerbaijan State Railways Company." (26)

In less than two weeks Azerbaijan is going to host the NATO Regional Reply - 2009 eight-day command and field exercises with troops from the US, Bulgaria, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania,Turkey and Ukraine.

Yesterday it was announced that US officials would arrive in the capital of Azerbaijan and that "maritime security, the results of US assistance, as well as work done within the Caspian Security Program added to the Working Plan of Military Cooperation are to be focused on at the meeting until April 10." (27)

Later this month a delegation from the Pentagon's European Command will visit Azerbaijan and "will hold meetings with the leadership of Azerbaijani armed forces and will attend the Bilateral Cooperation Planning Conference" and "discuss reports on the work done within the military cooperation program and details of working plan for US-Azerbaijani military cooperation in 2009-2010." (28)

Azerbaijani troops are participating in the NATO Cooperative Marlin/Mako 2009 exercises starting today. The Marlin drills are maritime Command Post Exercises focused on the NATO Response Force concept; the Mako drills are planned and conducted by Joint Force Command Naples, Italy.

The combined exercise is aimed at providing "familiarisation with NATO organisation, Command and Control structures and clear understanding of NATO doctrine and to enhance the mutual interoperability between NATO and Partnership for Peace (PfP) /Mediterranean Dialogue Countries (MD) and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) nations, focusing on the NATO led operations with partners." (29)

Lastly, high-ranking Azerbaijani officers are to attend the NATO Partnership for Peace Silk Road General/Admiral workshop in Turkey in June, one which featured 104 generals and admirals from 49 countries last year and whose purpose this is to "discuss the security, military-political situation in the world, security of the transportation infrastructure, energy security and expected threats." (30)

Azerbaijan offers the US and NATO direct access to the Caspian Sea and to transport routes from the west for the deployment of troops, armor and warplanes and for the transfer of the same from Iraq to Afghanistan.

It borders northwest Iran on the Caspian and like Georgia can be used for attacks on that nation whenever the West orders it to permit the use of its territory and airbases for that purpose.

Last September Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said that "Russian intelligence had obtained information indicating that the Georgian military infrastructure could be used for logistical support of U.S. troops if they launched an attack on Iran.

"'This is another reason why Washington values Saakashvili's regime so highly,' Rogozin said, adding that the United States had already started 'active military preparations on Georgia's territory' for an invasion of Iran."(31)

Other Russian sources affirmed that Russia's defeat of Georgia last August preempted a planned attack on Iran, and commentators in the Caucasus have speculated that had Saakashvili succeeded in South Ossetia not only would he have immediately turned on Abkhazia but Azerbaijan would have launched a similar assault on Nagorno-Karabakh which would have led to Armenia certainly, Turkey probably and Iran possibly being dragged into a regional conflagration.

As to Western plans for Armenia, NATO has made incremental progress in integrating it through the Partnership for Peace and its own Individual Partnership Action Plan, but the nation remains a member of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization and would first have to be weaned from the latter to be a likely candidate for an Alliance Membership Action Plan or an equivalent of Georgia's and Ukraine's Annual National Program.

The European Union's Eastern Partnership program, however, may be designed as a way of cutting through this Gordian knot, as with two fellow former Soviet republics "there are serious hopes in Ukraine and Georgia that the EPP will be one more step towards their integration with NATO and the EU as it requires that partner countries coming closer to adopting the mutual values of NATO and the EU."(32)

Early this year the former Indian diplomat and journalist M K Bhadrakumar synopsized the role the US intends for its South Caucasus surrogates to play:

"The US is working on the idea of ferrying cargo for Afghanistan via the Black Sea to the port of Poti in Georgia and then dispatching it through the territories of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. A branch line could also go from Georgia via Azerbaijan to the Turkmen-Afghan border.

"The project, if it materializes, will be a geopolitical coup - the biggest ever that Washington would have swung in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus. At one stroke, the US will be tying up military cooperation at the bilateral level with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

"Furthermore, the US will be effectively drawing these countries closer into NATO's partnership programs."(33)

Just as the intensified and interminable war in Afghanistan and its extension into Pakistan provide the testing ground and training camp for a NATO global army, so the US and its allies are employing it to achieve military and political and economic objectives far broader that their limited stated goals. In the middle of the far-reaching swathe of Eurasia the West plans on thus acquiring lies the South Caucasus.

Notes

(1) United States European Command, April 6, 2009
(2) Trend News Agency, April 3, 2009
(3) Georgian Daily, March 10, 2009
(4) Itar-Tass, March 10, 2009
(5) Georgian Daily, February 24, 2009
(6) Civil Georgia, March 30, 2009
(7) Interfax, March 30, 2009
(8 ) Trend News Agency, March 30, 2009
(9) Trend News Agency, March 30, 2009
(10) The Messenger (Georgia), April 1, 2009
(11) Civil Georgia, March 31, 2009
(12) The Messenger, April 1, 2009
(13) Associated Press, April 2, 2009
(14) Russia Today, April 1, 2009
(15) Russian Information Agency Novosti, April 4, 2009
(16) Trend News Agency, April 4, 2009
(17) Azeri Press Agency, April 3, 2009
(18) Stop NATO, January 2009 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/36874
(19) Russian and Eurasian Security, March 30, 2009
(20) Neurope.eu, May 12, 2008
(21) Oil, War and Russia, George Gregoriou; Greek News, February 2, 2009
(22) U.S. Department of State, June 24, 2008
(23) Agence France-Presse, February 6, 2009
(24) Trend News Agency. March 30, 2009
(25) Itar-Tass, March 31, 2009
(26) Azeri Press Agency, April 2, 2009
(27) Azeri Press Agency. April 6, 2009
(28) Azeri Press Agency, March 31, 2009
(29) NATO International, Cooperative Marlin 2009
(30) Azeri Press Agency. March 29, 2009
(31) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 9, 2009
(32) The Messenger, March 31, 2009
(33) The Day After (India), January 2, 2009

Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Eurasian Corridor: Pipeline Geopolitics and the New Cold War
by Michel Chossudovsky
August 22, 2008

"The Silk Road Strategy (SRS) constitutes an essential building block of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.
The SRS was formulated as a bill presented to the US Congress in 1999. It called for the creation of an energy and transport corridor network linking Western Europe to Central Asia and eventually to the Far East.
The Silk Road Strategy is defined as a "trans-Eurasian security system". The SRS calls for the "militarization of the Eurasian corridor" as an integral part of the "Great Game". The stated objective, as formulated under the proposed March 1999 Silk Road Strategy Act, is to develop America's business empire along an extensive geographical corridor.
While the 1999 SRS legislation (HR 3196) was adopted by the House of Representatives, it never became law. Despite this legislative setback, the Silk Road Strategy became, under the Bush Administration, the de facto basis of US-NATO interventionism, largely with a view to integrating the former Soviet republics of the South Caucasus and Central Asia into the US sphere of influence.
The successful implementation of the SRS required the concurrent "militarization" of the entire Eurasian corridor from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier bordering onto Afghanistan, as a means to securing control over extensive oil and gas reserves, as well as "protecting" pipeline routes and trading corridors. The invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 has served to support American strategic objectives in Central Asia including the control of pipeline corridors. Afghanistan border onto Chinese Western frontier. It is also a strategic landbridge linking the extensive oil wealth of the Caspian Sea basin to the Arabian Sea.
The militarization process under the SRS is largely directed against China, Russia and Iran."

The ongoing crisis in the Caucasus is intimately related to the strategic control over energy pipeline and transportation corridors.

There is evidence that the Georgian attack on South Ossetia on August 7 was carefully planned. High level consultations were held with US and NATO officials in the months preceding the attacks.

The attacks on South Ossetia were carried out one week after the completion of extensive US - Georgia war games (July 15-31st, 2008). They were also preceded by high level Summit meetings held under the auspices of GUAM, a US-NATO sponsored regional military alliance.

War in Georgia Time Line

July 1-2, 2008 GUAM Summit in Batumi, Georgia.

July 1, "US-GUAM Summit" on the sideline of the official GUAM venue.

July 5 -12, Russian Defense Ministry hold War Games in the North Caucasus region under the codename "Caucasus Frontier 2008".

July 9, 2008 China and Kazakhstan announce the commencement of construction of the Kazakhstan-China natural gas pipeline (KCP)

July 15-31, The US and Georgia hold War Games under the codename Operation "Immediate Response". One thousand US servicemen participate in the military exercise.

August 7, Georgian Ground Forces and Air Force Attack South Ossetia

August 8, Russian Forces Intervene in South Ossetia.

August 14, 2008 Signing of US-Polish Agreement on the stationing of "US Interceptor Missiles" on Polish Territory

Introduction: The GUAM Summit Venue

In early July 2008, a regional summit was held in the Georgian city of Batumi under the auspices of GUAM

GUAM is a military agreement between Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, first established in 1997. Since 2006, following the withdrawal of Uzbekistan, GUAM was renamed: The Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM.

GUAM has little to do with "Democracy and Economic Development". It is a de facto appendage of NATO. It has been used by the US and the Atlantic Alliance to extend their zone of influence into the heartland of the former Soviet Union.

The main thrust of GUAM as a military alliance is to "protect" the energy and transportation corridors, on behalf of the Anglo-American oil giants. GUAM countries are also the recipients of US-NATO military aid and training.

The militarization of these corridors is a central feature of US-NATO planning. Georgia and Ukraine membership in NATO is part of the agenda of controlling the energy and transport corridors from the Caspian Sea basin to Western Europe.

The July 1-2, 2008 GUAM Summit Batumi meetings, under the chairmanship of President Saakashvili, focused on the central issue of pipeline and transportation corridors. The theme of the Summit was a "GUAM – Integrating Europe’s East”, from an economic and strategic-military standpoint, essentially with a view to isolating Russia.

The presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Ukraine (respectively Ilham Aliyev, Mikheil Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko) were in attendance together with the presidents of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus. Moldova's head of State flatly refused to attend this summit.

Map No 1: Georgia

Undermining Russia

The GUAM Summit agenda focused on undermining Moscow's influence in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. The Polish President was in attendance.

US-NATO installations in Eastern Europe including the Missile Defense Shield are directly related to the evolving geopolitical situation in the Caucasus. Barely a week after the bombing of South Ossetia by Georgian forces, the US and Poland signed an agreement (August 14) which would allow the US Air Force to deploy US "interceptor missiles" on Polish soil:

"... As military strategists have pointed out, the US missiles in Poland pose a total existential threat to the future existence of the Russian nation. The Russian Government has repeatedly warned of this since US plans were first unveiled in early 2007. Now, despite repeated diplomatic attempts by Russia to come to an agreement with Washington, the Bush Administration, in the wake of a humiliating US defeat in Georgia, has pressured the Government of Poland to finally sign the pact. The consequences could be unthinkable for Europe and the planet. " (William Engdahl, Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War, Global Research, August 15, 2008)

The "US-GUAM Summit"

Barely acknowledged by the media, a so-called "US-GUAM Summit" meeting was also held on July 1st on the sidelines of the official GUAM summit venue.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Merkel met both GUAM and non-GUAM delegations behind closed doors. Several bilateral meetings were held including a Poland GUAM meeting (during which the issue of the US missile defense shield on Polish territory was most probably addressed). Private meetings were also held on July 1st and 2nd at the residence of the Georgian President.

US-Georgia War Games

Barely two weeks following the GUAM Summit of July 1-2, 2008, US-Georgian military exercises were launched at the Vaziani military base, outside Tbilisi,

One thousand U.S and six hundred Georgian troops began a military training exercise under Operation "Immediate Response". US troops included the participation of the US Air Force, Army, Marines and National Guard. While an Iraq war scenario had been envisaged, the military exercises were a dress rehearsal for an upcoming military operation. The war games were completed on July 31st, a week before the onset of the August 7th Georgian attacks on South Ossetia.

Troops from Ukraine and Azerbaijan, which are members of GUAM also participated in Operation "Immediate Response" Unexpectedly, Armenia which is an ally of Russia and a staunch opponent of Azerbaijan also took part in these games, which also served to create and "train and work together" environment between Azeri and Armenian forces (ultimately directed against Russia).

Brig. Gen. William B. Garrett, commander of the U.S. military’s Southern European Task Force, was responsible for the coordination of the US-Georgia war games.

Russia's War Games in the North Caucasus

Russia began large-scale military exercises involving some 8,000 military personnel, some 700 armored units and over 30 aircraft ( in the North Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation on July 5th. (Georgian Times, July 28, 2008)

The Russian war games were explicitly carried out in response to the evolving security situation in Abhkazia and South Ossetia. The exercise, dubbed "Caucasus Frontier 2008", involved units of the 58th Army and the 4th Air Force Army, stationed in the North Caucasus Military District.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman acknowledged that the military exercises conducted in the Southern Federal District were being carried out in response to "an escalation in tension in the Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian conflict zones,...[and] that Russia’s North Caucasian Military District was ready to provide assistance to Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia if needed.” (Georgian Times, July 28, 2008, RIA-Novosti, July 5, 2008)

These units of the North Caucasian Military District (Army and Air Force) were subsequently used to lead the Russian counterattack directed against Georgian Forces in South Ossetia on August 8th.

Pipeline Geopolitics

A central issue on the GUAM-NATO drawing board at the July GUAM Summit in Batumi, was the Odessa-Brody-Plotsk (Plock on the Vistula) pipeline route (OBP) (see Maps 3 and 4), which brings Central Asian oil via Odessa, to Northern Europe, bypassing Russian territory. An extension of OBP to Poland's port of Gdansk on the Baltic sea is also envisaged.

It should be noted that the OBP also links up with Russia's Friendship Pipeline (Druzhba pipeline) in an agreement with Russia.

Washington's objective is ultimately to weaken and destabilize Russia's pipeline network --including the Friendship Pipeline and the Baltic Pipeline System (BPS)-- and its various corridor links into the Western Europe energy market.

It should be noted that Russia has established as part of the Druzhba pipeline network, a pipeline corridor which transits through Belarus, thereby bypassing the Ukraine. (See Maps 2 and 3 below)

The Baltic Pipeline System (BPS) also operated by Russia's Transneft links Samara to Russia's oil tanker terminal at Primorsk in the Gulf of Finland. (See map below) It carries crude oil from Russia's Western Siberian region to both North and Western European markets.

Another strategic pipeline system, largely controlled by Russia, is the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). The CPC is a joint venture arrangement between Russia and Kazakhstan, with shareholder participation from a number of Middle East oil companies.

The Baltic Pipeline System (BPS) is tied into the Atyrau-Samara (AS) pipeline, which is a joint venture between Russia's Transneft and Kazakhstan's national pipeline operator, KazTransOil. The AS pipeline in turn links up with the Russia-Kazakhstan Caspian Petroleum Consortium (CPC), which pumps Tengiz crude oil from Atyrau (Western Kazakhstan) to the CPC’s Russian tanker terminal near Novorossiysk on the Black Sea.

On July 10, 2008, barely a week following the GUAM Summit, Transneft and KazTransOil announced that they were in talks to expand the capacity of the Atyrau-Samara pipeline from 16 to 26 million tons of oil per year. (RBC Daily, July 10, 2008).

The GUAM Transportation Corridor

The GUAM governments represented at the Batumi GUAM Summit also approved the further development of The GUAM Transportation Corridor (GTC), which complements the controversial Baku Tblisi Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. The latter links the Caspian Sea basin to the Eastern Mediterranean, via Georgia and Turkey, totally bypassing Russian territory. The BTC pipeline is controlled by a oil consortium led by British Petroleum.

Both the GTC and the BTC corridors are protected militarily by GUAM and NATO.

The GTC corridor would connect the Azeri capital of Baku on the Caspian sea to the Georgian ports of Poti/ Batumi on the Black Sea, which would then link up with the Ukrainian Black sea port of Odessa. (And From Odessa, through maritime and land routes to Western and Northern Europe).

Map No 2: Strategic Pipeline Routes. BTC, Friendship Pipeline, Baltic Pipeline System (BPS), CPC, AS

Map No. 3. Russia's Druzhba pipeline system

Map No 4 Eastern Europe. Plock on the Vistula

The Baku Tblisi Ceyan (BTC) Pipeline

The BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum and inaugurated in 2006 at the height of the war on Lebanon, has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is now linked, through an energy corridor, to the Caspian sea basin:

"[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, " (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)

Map No 5. The Baku, Tblisi Ceyan pipeline (BTC)

Pipeline Geopolitics and the Role of Israel

Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia. Not surprisingly, Israel has military cooperation agreements with Georgia and Azerbaijan.

While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will "channel oil to Western markets", what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel. In this regard, an underwater Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel's main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.

The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are far reaching.

What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel's Tipline, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, 26 July 2006)

Map No 6. Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline

America's Silk Road Strategy: The Trans-Eurasian Security System

The Silk Road Strategy (SRS) constitutes an essential building block of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.

The SRS was formulated as a bill presented to the US Congress in 1999. It called for the creation of an energy and transport corridor network linking Western Europe to Central Asia and eventually to the Far East.

The Silk Road Strategy is defined as a "trans-Eurasian security system". The SRS calls for the "militarization of the Eurasian corridor" as an integral part of the "Great Game". The stated objective, as formulated under the proposed March 1999 Silk Road Strategy Act, is to develop America's business empire along an extensive geographical corridor.

While the 1999 SRS legislation (HR 3196) was adopted by the House of Representatives, it never became law. Despite this legislative setback, the Silk Road Strategy became, under the Bush Administration, the de facto basis of US-NATO interventionism, largely with a view to integrating the former Soviet republics of the South Caucasus and Central Asia into the US sphere of influence.

The successful implementation of the SRS required the concurrent "militarization" of the entire Eurasian corridor from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier bordering onto Afghanistan, as a means to securing control over extensive oil and gas reserves, as well as "protecting" pipeline routes and trading corridors. The invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 has served to support American strategic objectives in Central Asia including the control of pipeline corridors. Afghanistan border onto Chinese Western frontier. It is also a strategic landbridge linking the extensive oil wealth of the Caspian Sea basin to the Arabian Sea.

The militarization process under the SRS is largely directed against China, Russia and Iran. The SRS, called for:

"The development of strong political, economic, and security ties among countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia and the West [which] will foster stability in this region, which is vulnerable to political and economic pressures from the south, north, and east. [meaning Russia to the North, Iraq, Iran and the Middle East to the South and China to the East] (106th Congress, Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999)

The adoption of a neoliberal policy agenda under advice from the IMF and the World Bank is an integral part of the SRS, which seeks to foster "open market economies... [which] will provide positive incentives for international private investment, increased trade, and other forms of commercial interactions". (Ibid).

Strategic access to South Caucasus and Central Asian oil and gas is a central feature of the Silk Road Strategy:

"The region of the South Caucasus and Central Asia could produce oil and gas in sufficient quantities to reduce the dependence of the United States on energy from the volatile Persian Gulf region." (Ibid)

The SRS is also intent upon preventing the former Soviet republics from developing their own economic, political and military cooperation ties as well as establishing broad ties up with China, Russia and Iran. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, Montreal, 2005).

In this regard, the formation of GUAM, which was launched in 1997, was intended to integrate the former Soviet republics into military cooperation arrangements with the US and NATO, which would prevent them from reestablishing their ties with the Russian Federation.

Under the 1999 SRS Act, the term "countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia" means Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. (106th Congress, Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999).

The US strategy has, in this regard, not met its stated objective: Whereas Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia have become de facto US protectorates, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Belarus are, from a geopolitical standpoint, aligned with Moscow.

This extensive Eurasian network of transport and energy corridors has been defined by Washington as part of an American sphere of influence:

"In the Caspian-Black Sea Region, the European Union and the United States have concentrated on setting up a reliable logistics chain to connect Central Asia with the European Union via the Central Caucasus and Turkey/Ukraine. The routes form the centerpiece of INOGATE (an integrated communication system along the routes taking hydrocarbon resources to Europe) and TRACECA (the multi-channel Europe-Caucasus-Asia corridor) projects.

The TRACECA transportation and communication routes grew out of the idea of the Great Silk Road (the traditional Eurasian communication channel of antiquity). It included Georgian and Turkish Black Sea ports (Poti, Batumi, and Ceyhan), railways of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, ferry lines that connect Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan with Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea/Lake (Turkmenbashi-Baku; Aktau-Baku), railways and highways now being built in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China, as well as Chinese Pacific terminals as strategically and systemically important parts of the mega-corridor." (See GUAM and the Trans-Caspian Gas Transportation Corridor: Is it about Politics or Economics?),

The Kazakhstan-China Natural Gas Pipeline (KCP)

Barely a few days following the GUAM Summit in Batumi, China and Kazakhstan announced (July 9, 2008) the commencement of construction work of a 1,300-kilometer natural gas pipeline. The inaugural ceremony was held near Kazakhstan's capital Almaty.

The pipeline which is to be constructed in several stages is expected to start pumping gas in 2010. (See silkroadintelligencer.com, July 9, 2008)

"The new transit route is part of a larger project to build two parallel pipelines connecting China with Central Asia’s vast natural gas reserves. The pipes will stretch more than 7,000 kilometers from Turkmenistan, cross Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and enter China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. Uzbekistan started construction of its part this month while Turkmenistan launched its segment last year." (Ibid)

Map No 7. Kazakhstan-China natural gas pipeline (KCP)

China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) which is the leading operator of the consortium, "has signed deals with state oil and gas firms of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan giving them 50 percent stakes in their respective parts of the pipeline."

The KPC pipeline project encroaches upon US strategic interests in Eurasia. It undermines the logic of America's Silk Road Strategy. The KPC is part of a competing Eurasian based transportation and energy strategy, largely dominated by Russia, Iran and China.

Competing Eurasian Strategy protected by the SCO-CSTO Military Alliance

The competing Eurasian based corridors are protected (against US-NATO encroachment) by two regional military alliances: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)

The SCO is a military alliance between Russia and China and several Central Asian former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran has observer status in the SCO.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which plays a key geopolitical role in relation to transport and energy corridors, operates in close liaison with the SCO. The CSTO regroups the following member states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Of significance, since 2006, the SCO and the CSTO member countries have conducted joint war games and are actively collaborating with Iran.

In October 2007, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding, laying the foundations for military cooperation between the two organizations. This SCO-CSTO agreement, barely mentioned by the Western media, involves the creation of a full-fledged military alliance between China, Russia and the member states of SCO/CSTO. It is worth noting that the SCTO and the SCO held joint military exercises in 2006, which coincided with those conducted by Iran. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats, Global Research, August 2006)

While remaining distinct from an organizational standpoint, in practice, these two regional military alliances (SCO and SSTO) constitute a single military block, which confronts US-NATO expansionism in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Full Circle

The US-NATO protected SRS Eurasian transport and energy corridors, are slated to link Central Asia to the Far East, as outlined in the Silk Road Strategy. At present, the Eastward corridors linking Central Asia to China are protected militarily by the SCO-CSTO.

In terms of Washington's global military and strategic agenda, the Eurasian corridors contemplated under the SRS would inevitably encroach upon China's territorial sovereignty.The proposed US-NATO-GUAM pipeline and transportation corridors are intended to connect, at some future date, with the proposed transport and energy corridors in the Western hemisphere, including those envisaged under the North American Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

The Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is to North America what the Silk Road Strategy (SRS) is to the Caucasus and Central Asia. They are strategic regional constructs of America's business empire. They are the building blocks of the New World Order.

The SPP is the result of a similar process of strategic planning, militarization and free market economic integration, largely based on the control of strategic resources including energy and water, as well as the " protection" of energy and transportation corridors (land and maritime routes ) from Alaska and Canada's Arctic to Central America and the Caribbean basin.

Author's Note: This article has focused selectively on key pipeline corridors with a view to analyzing broad geopolitical and strategic issues.
An examination of the overall network of Eurasian pipeline corridors would require a far more detailed and comprehensive presentation.