A new dividing line in Europe

[Lucas Corso]

A new dividing line in Europe
By M K Bhadrakumar

The widespread perception is that in the remaining two years of the George W Bush presidency of, the "realist" Condoleezza Rice-Robert Gates team is shifting US foreign policy from confrontation to the diplomacy of engagement.

But this apparent shift to diplomacy is in fact merely a tactical change largely necessitated by the predicament of Iraq. The Christian Science Monitor posed a sharp question this week: "Has the administration forsaken its vision of America's aggressive role in the world?"

Is it the climbdown that former Bush administration hardliner John Bolton says it is? Or, as some officials at the State Department and elsewhere insist, is the administration simply harvesting the produce of long-tilled soil?

The fact is, if one were to look at the tempo of US-Russia relations, the apparently fading influence of Vice President Dick Cheney or the prospect of the team of Secretary of State Rice and Defense Secretary Gates dominating Bush foreign policy doesn't seem to make much difference.

On the contrary, the prospect is that with these two hardline Russia experts at the helm of the State Department and the Pentagon respectively, the chill in US-Russia relations is only likely to deepen. Washington stoutly resists a Russian re-entry into the Middle East and seeks to exercise its monopoly of conflict resolution in the region. It insists that the autonomous Kosovo province of Serbia should be granted independence; it refuses to pay heed to Russian sensitivities over missile-defense deployments in central Europe.

Last week, the US Senate passed legislation calling for direct assistance to Georgia and Ukraine for their membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, completely disregarding the Russian objections to NATO's expansion into the territories of the former Soviet Union.

The US pursues an aggressive policy aimed at rolling back Russian influence in the Caucasus, Caspian and Black Sea regions. Most important, it has largely succeeded in making Russia's relationship with the European Union hostage to the fault lines appearing in the geopolitics of the Eurasian region.

The fault lines are so worrisome that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while addressing a meeting of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council in Moscow last Saturday, said, "We support a comprehensive approach to problems of stability in the Euro-Atlantic area, and we can develop informal interaction on all complicated issues within the Russia-EU-US framework."

Moscow counts on 'Old Europe'

Washington's sustained effort to re-establish its trans-Atlantic leadership over Europe in the post-Cold War era has run into difficulty primarily on account of Russia's refusal to be cast into a confrontational mood vis-a-vis Europe as much as the refusal of the European states to behave toward Russia with a herd mentality.

Moscow remains constructively engaged with the major European powers despite the obstacles that have appeared in the conclusion of a new pact that is to replace the 1997 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), which is to expire this year.

A new Russia-EU pact only can provide a legal base for elevating their cooperation, especially in such pressing areas as energy. But Poland is doggedly blocking the EU from holding talks with Russia despite the recognition in Brussels that negotiations are inevitable. Even if a new PCA is finally negotiated, there looms a final hurdle in the nature of the mandatory ratification of any such treaty by all of EU's member states. The pro-US countries of "New Europe" may not easily permit the development of a pragmatic relationship between the EU and Russia.

Moscow faces an additional handicap insofar as the leadership of "Old Europe" is itself in a state of transition. Russian President Vladimir Putin had excellent personal relations with Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and Britain's Tony Blair. These European leaders had by and large set the tone of the EU's relations with Russia during the recent years. But uncertainty lies ahead.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has shown that she has a distinctively different approach toward Putin's Russia as compared with her predecessor Schroeder. She may not be "anti-Russian", but she definitely is not wedded to Schroeder's concept that Russia deserves special treatment. She spoke harshly when Russia's recent energy spat with Belarus surfaced. "It is unacceptable," Merkel rebuked the Kremlin, "when there are no consultations about actions of this type. That always destroys trust."

Such directness was almost unprecedented in EU-Russia relations. Yet the undercurrents of European politics are such that when Merkel meets Putin this weekend in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, that will be their sixth "summit" since she became chancellor in November 2005. Nothing can speak more eloquently about the significance of German-Russian relations.

Trade between Germany and Russia touched US$40 billion last year and German investments in Russia during the first nine-month period in 2006 alone amounted to $2 billion. Poland is visibly uneasy about a new German-Russian axis in central Europe. And that, in turn, gives impetus to Warsaw to move still closer to Washington. Writing in the Washington Post recently, Poland's defense minister until last month, Radek Sikorski, called for a "new security partnership" between the US and the countries of central Europe.

"Our American colleagues say not to worry, that NATO will protect us, but rhetorical assurances are too easy ... Poland is haunted by the memory of fighting [Adolf] Hitler alone in 1939 while our allies stood by. Never again will we allow ourselves to be egged on by paper guarantees not backed by practical means of delivery.

"Therefore, if relations with Russia are to deteriorate because of the proposed missile base [US deployment of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic], the United States must demonstrate that it will do for Poland what it is doing for Japan ... Placing the main operating base of allied ground surveillance in central Europe would also reassure the region that its countries are truly NATO territory. Finally, the United States should tell NATO how it intends to include the Central European base in the alliance's missile-defense architecture," Sikorski wrote.

Sikorski's words suit Washington's goals. Indeed, after the decision to make the missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, Washington has already approached Kiev about the establishment of a US station in Ukraine and, furthermore, is planning yet another base in the Caucasus, possibly in Georgia. The Ukrainian Parliament sought a report from the government on Wednesday on the issue.

Public opinion in Ukraine doesn't favor missile-defense deployments. However, the pro-US Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, is hedging. "It's a multi-layered discussion and every layer must be discussed," he told the Russian media, while reminding the Kremlin that "it is a sovereign right of any nation to form its defense and security policy".

Again, preparations are under way for the deployment of a powerful US military radar in the Kazbegi district of Georgia, close to the Russian border, and another radar system is to be located in the Georgian-Ossetian region. Russian reaction to any USdeployments of missile defense in Ukraine or Georgia has been predictably very sharp. Lavrov warned on Wednesday, "Deploying the missile shield to cover the Caucasus, Ukraine and other countries bordering on Russia contradicts Russia's approach to security."

Germany has the most to lose if the US presses ahead with the unfolding strategy to create a standoff with Russia in central Europe and the midriff of Eurasia. Berlin cannot be faulted in perceiving that Washington's strategy can only shackle Germany once again to a Cold War-like straitjacket of confrontation with Russia.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote, using exceptionally strong language, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonnatagszeitung newspaper, "A missile-defense system should be neither a cause of nor a pretext for a new arms race ... Are we returning to the period of the confrontation between blocs and the accumulation of US and Russian missiles?"

Right across the spectrum of political opinion, German politicians are questioning the US strategy of containing Russia. Merkel raised the issue during her visit to Warsaw last week. Curiously, in contrast with the muted British response to the US deployments in central Europe, France's Chirac too has been forthright, saying, "We should be very careful about encouraging the creation of a new dividing line in Europe, or a return to the order of the past."

But the Rice-Gates team in Washington doesn't appear to be deterred by the profound disquiet in Europe over the US strategy of forestalling any alignment of Russia to Europe and European structures. Yet Washington holds several cards with which to disrupt the development of a pragmatic relationship between Russia and Europe in the coming months.

The unresolved Balkans question

The trickiest of these concerns the future of Kosovo, the breakaway province of Serbia. Russia's opposition to Kosovo's independence pits it against the US, NATO and especially Germany. The heated exchanges at the United Nations Security Council meeting this week called to discuss the plan by the special envoy of the UN secretary general on Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, reveal that the Kosovo issue may be a minefield in Russia's relations with Europe.

Russia's stance is that it is premature to determine Kosovo's status without fully taking into account the opinion of the government in Belgrade and the various ethnic groups in Kosovo. Underlying this is the Russian disquiet over the profound implications of the UN Security Council endorsing the principle of national self-determination. Moscow is apprehensive that the so-called "frozen conflicts" on the post-Soviet territory might aspire to emulate Kosovo's example.

Washington insists, however, that Kosovo's independence is an imperative if the province is not to erupt into ethnic conflict and violent secessionism. Richard Holbrooke, assistant secretary of state in the Bill Clinton administration, who negotiated the Dayton Accords, recently warned in apocalyptic terms: "If Moscow vetoes or delays the Ahtisaari plan, the Kosovar Albanians will declare independence unilaterally. Some countries, including the United States and some Muslim states, would probably recognize them ... Bloodshed would return to the Balkans. NATO, which is pledged to keep peace in Kosovo, could find itself back in battle in Europe."

To be sure, Washington is finessing the Kosovo issue as the single biggest international test for Putin this year. It has thrown the gauntlet at the Kremlin. To quote Holbrooke, "If Russia blocks the Ahtisaari plan, the chaos that follows will be Moscow's responsibility and will affect other aspects of Russia's relationship with the West ... European security and stability - and Russia's relationship with the West - are on the line."

The resilience of Russia's ties with Europe, which Putin has assiduously cultivated during his seven years in power, is being directly put to test. Washington derives particular satisfaction that Russia and Germany find themselves taking different perspectives on the Kosovo independence issue, and that the issue can pit Russia against NATO as a whole.

Even shrewder has been the US attempt to inject religion into the issue by insinuating that Russia is blocking the emergence of a Muslim country on the map of Europe. It is particularly awkward for Russian interests to be cast in this juncture as an Orthodox Christian country supporting another country that is co-religionist and harboring "anti-Islamic" sentiments. (Serbia is also an Orthodox Christian country.)

Holbrooke said, "Moscow's point about protecting 'fraternal' Slav-Serb feelings is nonsense. Everyone who has dealt with the Russians in the Balkans, as I did for several years, knows that their leadership has no feelings whatsoever for the Serbs." On the other hand, Russia faces the prospect of being thrown out lock, stock and barrel from the Balkans if it proves unable to withstand the US pressure on the Kosovo-independence issue.

To wrap up the success story in the Balkans conclusively and to consolidate it by relating it to the tentative successes so far in the Caucasus (wooing Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia), the US needs to develop a comprehensive regional policy toward the Black Sea region. But there are other complicating factors.

Among the littoral states of the Black Sea, Russia and Turkey share a commonality of interests in keeping foreign powers out of the region - an outlook that has "anti-American" implications. Furthermore, the US has to contend with its roller-coaster relationship with Turkey during the past four years since the Iraq invasion in March 2003.

Moscow anticipates that it is only a matter of time before Washington begins to work on the complex interplay of Russian and Turkish interests (a backlog of history) by projecting Turkey as a regional hub for the movement of oil and gas from the Middle East and Central Asia to Europe. Thus the US has backed several pipeline projects bypassing Russian territory, which would envisage Turkey as the conduit for energy supplies transported from east to west.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is the most celebrated case. Two other projects on the table are the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum (BTE) gas pipeline, which will run parallel to the BTC, and the Nabucco pipeline that will connect Caspian/Central Asian/Iranian gas via the Turkish gas network to Europe through Romania, Hungary and Austria.

Simultaneously, with US encouragement, Turkey has been progressively tightening the screws on Russian tanker traffic through the straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles on the pretext of environmental factors but in effect compelling Russia (and Kazakhstan) eventually to reroute Caspian oil via the bypass pipeline of BTC running through Turkey.

From the US point of view, the developing Great Game over the pipelines in the Black Sea region holds the potential to isolate Russia strategically from the EU, as the BTC, BTE and Nabuccoin essence aim at reducing Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies.

Thus, at the end of the day, Russia finds itself falling back on its famous energy weapon to break out of the web of containment that the US is weaving around it. A three-pronged Russian energy offensive seems to be in the making, which is hugely ambitious in scope and is fraught with deep significance for the geopolitics of Eurasia, and Russia's relations with the EU in particular.

Russia punctures US containment

There are three emerging dimensions to the developing Russian energy strategy. First, Russia is pressing ahead with the trans-Balkan oil pipeline known as the Burgas-Alexandroupolis project, envisaging the construction of a 280-kilometer pipeline from the Bulgarian port of Burgas on the Black Sea to Greece's Alexandroupolis on the Aegean.

Russian state companies will hold a 51% stake in the project, with Bulgaria and Greece holding 24.5% each. The project includes two sea terminals - one in Burgas able to unload 150,000-tonne tankers from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, and the second in Alexandroupolis for 150,000-300,000-tonne-tankers.

The $1 billion project has significant implications. First, Russia has blunted the heavy US pressure on Bulgaria and Greece not to go ahead with the project. More important, the readiness of the two allies of the US not to pay heed to Washington's demarche and instead to proceed to cooperate with Russia reveals that the US agenda of evolving a Euro-Atlantic approach to the energy dialogue with Russia is not a fait accompli - at least, not yet.

That leaves considerable scope for Moscow to work on the energy-security concerns of the European countries at the bilateral level, which would incrementally help harmonize the overall climate of Russia-EU partnership in the course of time. (The EU has issued a formal statement welcoming the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline project despite its potential to enhance Russia's profile in the European energy market.)

Second, Russia is positioning itself through the Burgas-Alexandroupolis project as a major supplier of energy for the countries of southeastern Europe. This frustrates the US regional policy to build up a tier of countries in southeastern Europe, which work closely with the US efforts to isolate Russia in the Black Sea region. (Putin pointedly drew attention to the implications of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis project for "global security".)

Third, the Russian project frustrates the US attempt to dictate the primacy of the BTC as the key transportation route for Caspian oil to the Western market. It preempts the US attempt to pit Russia against Turkey in the Black Sea region.

Fourth, Russia intends to make the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline a virtual extension of the main 1,510km Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) that already connects the oilfields in western Kazakhstan with the oil terminal at Novorossiisk (which currently handles 90% of Russia's oil exports).

Russia is now likely to work on increasing the CPC's capacity. Russia hopes to have this pipeline system linking CPC with Burgas-Alexandroupolis to be used by Kazakhstan primarily for the export of oil from its massive Tengiz and Kashagan oilfields. In other words, Kazakhstan will continue to depend on Russian pipelines for the export of the bulk of its oil to the Western market despite the sustained US attempts to persuade Astana to bypass Russian pipelines.

The BTC currently pumps 300,000 barrels per day of Caspian crude but expects to carry 500,000bpd by next year, half of which is expected to come from Kazakhstan. That country needed a lot of persuasion last year at the level of Bush and Cheney to route part of its oil exports through the BTC. The coming into being of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline deals a body blow to the BTC's expectations of attracting more quantities of Kazakh oil. (The BTC's long-term economic viability has always been in doubt.)

The multibillion-dollar expansion of Tengiz oilfield is expected to double its production by the end of this year. The Kashagan oilfield is expected to come online shortly thereafter. Inputs of Kazakh oil become critical for BTC within less than a decade, but an expanded CPC pipeline connecting the flow of Kazakh oil via the Black Sea into the Russian-controlled Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline works to the detriment of the BTC. Somehow, at one stroke, Russia seems to have knocked the bottom out of the US strategic calculations in sponsoring the BTC.

A spectacular chapter in the Great Game seems to be nearing its epitaph. In geopolitical terms, Russia's strategy to keep Kazakhstan within its sphere of influence gets reinforced substantially. Significantly, immediately after the signing of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline project on March 15, Putin met with Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev in Moscow on Sunday and Monday and held detailed discussions over the prospects of enhanced cooperation between the two countries in the energy sector. After their talks, Nazarbayev poured cold water on the Western media reports in recent months speculating that Kazakhstan was moving away from Russia's sphere of influence toward the US camp.

He asserted at a press conference on Monday in the presence of Putin, "We are not competitors in the oil-and-gas sector, we are partners. Russia has resources and so has Kazakhstan. The fact that in 2006 alone Kazakhstan transported 43 million tonnes of oil through Russian territory - and there were 50 million tonnes in total - acts as proof of this. Kazakhstan exported 24 billion cubic meters of gas through Russia. We have major joint ventures in the Caspian shelf - ventures with a 50% stake. These projects are planned for decades to come."

Putin on his part stressed that particular attention was paid at the summit with Nazarbayev to "transporting energy resources, developing innovative projects and creating joint ventures in the fuel and energy sector". (Putin also revealed, inter alia, that despite open expressions of reservation by the US State Department, Kazakhstan would participate in a joint venture with Russia for establishing a uranium-enrichment center in Russia.)

Finally, the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline will divert the Caspian oil volumes necessary to the Odessa-Brody pipeline in Ukraine. (Poland and Ukraine were hoping to have direct access to Caspian oil via the Odessa-Brody pipeline.) That is to say, the attempts by Ukraine and Poland (one "New European" and another aspiring "New European") to have direct access to Caspian energy bypassing Russia will remain a pipe dream.

This has serious implications for a range of issues in the geopolitics of central Europe and Eurasia. Broadly, it gives scope for Russia incrementally to build up the sinews of a relationship in the fullness of time with Poland on the basis of energy cooperation as well as to ensure that Ukraine will not gravitate to the US.

Almost as dramatic as the signing of the agreement on the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline on March 15 has been the announcement coinciding with it in Budapest that the Hungarian government has decided to go ahead with the Russian proposal to extend the Blue Stream undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey. The project envisages that Russian gas will flow to Turkey and to the Balkans and onward to Hungary. Moscow offered to the Hungarian government that Russian gas company Gazprom would use Hungary as the hub of its operations in central Europe.

Again, the Hungarian announcement sidestepped the vigorous efforts by the US for the past one year to kill the Russian proposal, which aims at enhancing Moscow's profile as the energy supplier in the Balkans and central Europe.

'Gas OPEC' and 'Energy Club'?

Meanwhile, behind a thick fog of ambivalent and often contradictory statements, Moscow seems to have been pressing ahead with the idea of forming a "gas OPEC", a cartel of major gas-producing countries along the lines of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Putin had first mooted the idea in 2002, but Moscow quickly backtracked in the face of stiff opposition from Western countries. Last month, Iran revived the idea and alarm bells once again started ringing in Western capitals. Russia once again took a public stance shrouded in ambiguity.

But it appears that at the meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, scheduled to take place in Qatar on April 9, there is a likelihood of the world's biggest gas-producing countries - Russia, Iran, Qatar, Algeria and Venezuela - agreeing on the formation of a gas cartel. Certainly, a gas cartel cannot be identical in function and mission to OPEC. For one thing, comparing the gas industry to oil production is very difficult and hardly any parallels to OPEC can be drawn. Besides, infrastructures in the gas industry (such as pipelines and gas holders) serve a far greater role than oil extraction. On top of all that, pricing in the gas industry is based on long-term liabilities.

Nonetheless, what Russia could hope to achieve through a "gas OPEC" is to coordinate with the other gas-exporting countries in the world gas market without getting into a rigid cartel-like arrangement. The fallout can be very significant. If a "gas OPEC" takes shape, Gazprom will move one step closer to its stated objective of reaching every gas outlet in the European countries. Besides, the US strategy of the EU countries reducing their dependence on Russian gas supplies will take a severe beating.

The geopolitical implications are self-evident. The Russian daily Kommersant was no doubt exaggerating when it commented that with a "gas OPEC" under its belt, "politically, Russia will be able to dictate any terms it wants in Europe. And the EU will be totally dependent on Moscow's political will and will have almost no leverages of its own left." But as with all such exaggerations, this one holds a kernel of truth insofar as Moscow will gain much more maneuvering space in the pursuit of its partnership with the EU without having to face constant interference by the US in the architecture of Russia-EU relationship, as is happening now.

But the EU is also increasingly figuring as a direct rival to Russian interests in central Asia. In the face of the EU's robust diplomacy in the past year or two to woo the Central Asian energy-producing countries, Moscow is stepping up its campaign for forming an "energy club" (also called the "Asian Energy Strategy") under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The proposal aims at creating a special body of the main energy-producing and energy-consuming countries within the SCO so as to have SCO-level oil and gas production and transportation projects and a coordinated price policy. (The SCO countries control 23% of world's oil, 55% of natural gas and 35% of coal.)

Clearly, the Russian move aims at countering the ongoing EU efforts (backed by Washington) to seek long-term energy-supply contracts with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and to promote a string of pipelines from Central Asia to Europe circumventing Russia. The estimation in Brussels is that Central Asia is in a position to supply as much as 10% of the EU's gas requirements.

The EU drive toward the Central Asian region has lately begun causing disquiet to Russia. The Great Game is at once obvious. An expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Edmund Herzig, noted, Central Asia "is an important - and potentially very important - region for European energy security if we are looking to diversify sources of energy supply. It's a region that sounds and feels very remote from us. But, as Europe marches eastward, it gets progressively closer." He pointed out that Central Asia is already practically in the "near vicinity" of Europe.

Washington's strategic objective will be to pit the EU as a tough opponent for Russia in the Central Asian region. The US think-tank Stratfor recently summed up the calculus: "Though it is Kazakhstan's newest suitor, Europe has the cash, technology and desire for non-Russian resources to push for more projects with Kazakhstan - giving the Kremlin a tough fight in the energy sector and for Astana's affections."

If bluster ever played a role in the Great Game, Stratfor was likely indulging in one. The recent Russian initiatives on the energy front show that Moscow is determined to remain one step ahead of Washington, no matter what stratagem the latter draws up in the Russian back yards in the Eurasian region stretching from the Balkans to the Caucasus and Central Asia.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including

ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

Source: Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News - A new dividing line in Europe

It's even more clear that there is a complex and strong strategy from the U$ (throught puppet states like Poland, Czech Repulic and Georgia) to avoid at any cost a full partnership between Europe and Russia.
This full partnership will finally lead to the expulsion of the U$-Uk from the Eurasia and to a fully indipendent Europe, finally able to role as a big player in the world...