Major power rivalries in Eurasia

President George W. Bush's “freedom agenda” could be defined as subversion, that is the attempt to undermine the structure of a foreign nation in order to attain regime change or political goals. Propaganda is a core element of subversive actions, and includes the dissemination of largely false material so as to discredit regimes abroad. 

 

This was the case 20 years ago in the build-up to the March 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was wrongly accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), or of having ties to Al Qaeda. Propaganda can be spread readily enough through the Western corporate media, as seen relating to Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia and so on. 

 

Most useful too in stoking unrest are US organisations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), National Democratic Institute (NDI), USAID, Freedom House, the Open Society groups of George Soros, and of course the CIA. 

 

Many of the above supported and funded the “color revolutions” which occurred in such states as Georgia (2003), the Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005). These either share a border with Russia or are former Soviet republics, nor is that a coincidence. The color revolutions were, quite plainly, a convenient means for the Bush administration to pursue their encirclement policy of Russia. 

 

For example in February 2005 the Wall Street Journal acknowledged that, in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, organisations like USAID, the NED and Soros' Open Society were funding the anti-government opposition there, a key instigator of Kyrgyzstan's “Tulip revolution”. In the preceding years, USAID alone had dispensed with hundreds of millions of dollars towards such activities. States like Kyrgyzstan were identified by president Bush as important not only to encroach upon Russia, but as a launching pad for US military offensives. 

 

From December 2001 the Americans started arriving in Kyrgyzstan, using the capital Bishkek as a logistics centre to support their invasion of Afghanistan. Washington was also trying to increase its presence in the highly-desired Caspian Sea and Black Sea regions, along with the surrounding areas further contested between Russia and the Western powers. 

 

Despite Washington interfering in territories like the Ukraine and Georgia, the Americans did not particularly wish to sow instability in the south Caucasus state of Azerbaijan, another former Soviet republic which borders Georgia to the north. In Azerbaijan the Americans needed a stable environment, because they had interests in oil infrastructure connecting the production fields of Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, into the deep water Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, in southern Turkey, which could receive tankers each carrying over 300,000 tons of oil. 

 

Baku had furnished Soviet Russia with at least 80% of its entire oil during World War II, which was crucial in the victory of the Red Army against Nazi Germany. Azerbaijan today still contains considerable quantities of oil, and its strategic importance remains clear. Azerbaijan shares an extensive shoreline with the Caspian Sea, while it is a vital energy route linking the Caucasus and Central Asia, as Zbigniew Brzezinski had highlighted when he was the US National Security Advisor (1977-81). Rather than dispatching American soldiers to safeguard Washington's goals in Azerbaijan, the Pentagon sent “civilian contractors” from private military companies like Blackwater. One of their central aims was to protect the Caspian Sea's oil and gas deposits, controlled historically by Russia to the largest extent. 

 

The Caspian Sea, the earth's biggest lake, is extremely rich in natural resources and “is one of the oldest oil-producing areas in the world” and “an increasingly important source of global energy production” according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA estimated in 2012 that the Caspian Sea and its environs contain proven oil quantities of 48 billion barrels, more than is present in either America or China. The US Geological Survey has calculated that the Caspian's real oil reserves are significantly greater than the proven quantities, containing perhaps another 20 billion barrels of undiscovered oil. 

 

In 2012 the Caspian region produced, on average, 2.6 million barrels of crude oil per day, amounting to about 3.4% of global supply. Much of the oil is extracted near the Caspian shorelines. Altogether, the Caspian's oil output is believed to have surpassed that of the North Sea, and exploratory oil drilling in the latter body of water dropped from 44 wells in 2008 to only 12 in 2014. Yet there are still 16 billion recoverable barrels of oil off the coast of the Scottish city of Aberdeen and west of the Shetland Islands further north. 

 

The US Energy Information Administration estimated that the Caspian Sea contains “probable reserves” of 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The US Geological Survey believes, on top of that, there is another 243 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas in the Caspian, most of which is located in the South Caspian Basin. Russia and its neighbour Kazakhstan have controlled the biggest part of the Caspian. 

 

At the Fourth Caspian Summit convened in Astrakhan, Russia, on 29 September 2014, the five nations that share a coast with the Caspian Sea – Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan – decided unanimously they would uphold the security of the region, and prevent it from being penetrated by outside powers. This agreement sought to protect the heart of Eurasia from the expansionist NATO, in effect meaning the US, whose military presence in recent years has been significantly reduced in Central Asia. 

 

The agreement reached, at the Fourth Caspian Summit, closed off the Caspian Sea to president Barack Obama's designs. The US would find it difficult to advance in an area where it previously maintained close relations with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan since the 2001 military attack on Afghanistan, which was supported by NATO countries Germany, Britain, Italy and Canada. The US had distorted the role of NATO to become an offensive military instrument with vast reach. Among Washington's ambitions was to secure a presence astride the Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain ranges of Central and South Asia, along with the Caucasus. 

 

In May 2005 president Bush had visited the Georgian capital Tbilisi, having said that Georgia had become a “beacon of liberty”. Bush viewed control of the South Caucasus and Central Asia as vital to achieving victory in Afghanistan further east. Bush's White House had secured US military bases in Central Asia, such as in southern Uzbekistan, not far from Tajikistan, and Manas Air Base in northern Kyrgyzstan. 

 

Washington attempted to position its military power in the centre of Eurasia, particularly in Georgia and Azerbaijan, where NATO troops could be sent on to Afghanistan and Iraq. US military bases in Georgia would serve as a back-up for the Pentagon's bases in Turkey, a short distance from Georgia; while a US military presence in Azerbaijan would give the Bush administration the option of launching an attack on Iran, something which has long been discussed in Washington. 

 

Most American elites have since realised that an invasion of Iran would be highly risky and unlikely to succeed. The US military failed to overcome Iraq, a much smaller and weaker country than Iran. Indeed, Iraq, a largely defenceless nation, had been severely undermined by years of Western sanctions prior to the 2003 Anglo-American offensive. 

 

The successful 2008 Russian military intervention in Georgia reminded the West that the Caucasus, like the surroundings of the Black Sea and Caspian, is in Russia's sphere of influence. Moscow would not allow continued expansion by the Americans. Of the ex-Soviet republics Georgia had aligned itself most closely with the US, after the “Rose revolution” in late 2003, which had been supported by the Pentagon and bankrolled by US government-linked groups (NED, Freedom House, etc.) and billionaire Soros' Open Society. 

 

The unsuccessful 2008 Georgian attack on South Ossetia was planned by the US-backed regime of Mikheil Saakashvili – only after the Bush administration had sanctioned military action – according to Georgia's former Ambassador to Russia, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, who provided this testimony to the Georgian parliament. US vice-president Dick Cheney also informed the Georgian leader Saakashvili that “We have your back”, in the event of a conflict between Russia and Georgia. As it turned out, there was little the Americans could do. 

 

It can be recalled that the Soviet Union had not been beaten militarily by the US. Early this century Russia had 1.2 million troops in its armed forces, and possessed 14,000 nuclear warheads of which 5,192 were operational. The US, on the other hand, possessed 9,962 nuclear warheads in 2006, of which 5,736 were operational, and the US military had 1.3 million active service members. There is not much disparity between these figures and Russia possesses more than enough weaponry to compete with America. 

 

President Bush, as with his predecessor Bill Clinton, continued to needlessly provoke Russia. Shortly after taking office in 2001, Bush withdrew the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) which had been signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union, in order to implement the anti-missile defense system, and thereby reduce the threat of nuclear war. 

 

Bush continued his dangerous moves by establishing missile infrastructure in NATO states Poland and the Czech Republic, and led NATO to the frontiers of Russia by incorporating the Baltic states into the military organisation. Bush refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1996) along with modifications to the SALT 2 agreement on the reduction of strategic armaments. 

 

However, Russia could not be subdued as Germany has been, because the soil of Russia was never captured by foreign powers, as German terrain had been from 1945. Unlike Germany too, Russia is a resource-rich state located in a pivotal area of Eurasia. Russia has the ability to use its influence, furthermore, to dictate business deals with the European Union relating to important deliveries of oil and gas. The Europeans are much more dependent on the Russians than the other way around. 

 

Russia was growing stronger internally after the upheaval of the 1990s. In 1998 more than 35% of Russians were living below the poverty line; but by 2013 this figure had been reduced to 11%, a lower number than in the US where at least 15% of Americans were poverty-stricken in 2014. 

 

Russia has benefited from the high oil and gas prices in the international market, and its industrial growth has risen sharply. Increasing too was Russia's domestic and foreign investment especially in the automobile industry, which rose by 125%, while the country's GDP grew by 70% placing Russia among the world's largest economies.

 

U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Oil and natural gas production is growing in Caspian Sea region”, 11 September 2013

 

Andrew Cockburn, “The Bloom Comes Off the Georgian Rose”, Harper's Magazine, 31 October 2013