QUOTE(jeffmoskin @ Aug 17 2008, 07:57 AM)
Putin has been looking for an excuse to put a toll-booth up on the new silk road that runs through Tiblisi.
Here is a much better analysis:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20538.htman excerpt -
"JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, talk to us about the pipelines and the energy aspect that has received almost very little attention in all the coverage of the Russian-Georgia conflict.
MICHAEL KLARE: Well, I believe that this is what really underlies the conflict, and it has to do with the fact that the US has eyed the Caspian Sea, which lies just to the east of Georgia, as an energy corridor for exporting Caspian Sea oil and gas to the West, bypassing Russia. And this was the brainchild of Bill Clinton, who saw an opportunity, when the Soviet Union broke apart, to gain access to Caspian oil and gas, but he didn’t want this new energy to flow through Russia or through Iran, which were the only natural ways to export the energy.
So he anointed Georgia as a bridge, to build new pipelines through Georgia to the West. And it was he who masterminded the construction of the BTC pipeline, which is now the outlet for this oil, with new pipelines supposedly following for natural gas. And he chose Georgia for this purpose and also built up the Georgian military to protect the pipeline, and Russia has been furious about this ever since. And I think that’s the reason that they have clung so tightly to Abkhazia and South Ossetia ever since.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re not hearing very much about this conflict, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to the area—I mean, the energy oil politics behind this conflict.
MICHAEL KLARE: No, but if you study very closely the history of US ties to Georgia, it’s unmistakable. Even under the Clinton administration, when Eduard Shevardnadze was the president of Georgia, who was hardly a paragon of democracy, President Clinton said that we need Georgia as an energy ally of the United States. And that was the basis on which the US forged a military alliance with Georgia.
And since then, we’ve poured hundreds of millions of dollars into beefing up the Georgian military. And this is unmistakable in the State Department and military Department of Defense justifications for arming the Georgian military, specifically to protect the BTC pipeline against sabotage and attack. So, looking into the Pentagon and State Department documents, there’s no question that this is about energy security, not about democracy or human rights or the other justifications that have been given.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, how would the two breakaway provinces affect this battle? Does the pipeline run through one or either of them?
MICHAEL KLARE: No, they run very close to South Ossetia, in particular, and I believe that the Russians have always been resentful of this effort by the United States to bypass Russia. Now, previously to this effort by the Clinton administration, subsequently embraced by the Bush administration, to establish bypass pipelines, previous to that, all of the pipelines from the Caspian Sea ran through Russia, of course formerly the Soviet Union, ran through Russia to Europe.
And it is the ambition of the Russian leadership, especially Vladimir Putin, to dominate the flow of oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, so they could maximize the profit and the political advantage of dominating the flow of Caspian energy to Europe. And by building these alternate pipelines, the US is trying to undercut Russia’s political and economic power in Europe. That’s what this is about. It’s a geopolitical contest between the US and Europe for—between the US and Russia for influence in Europe.
So, by clinging to these enclaves, this is Russia’s insurance policy, I guess you could call it, or veto power, over the American strategy, because they’re saying, “From our positions in these enclaves, we can sever those pipelines whenever we want,” which is exactly what they attempted to do this week. They did in fact bomb or attack the pipelines. And what they’re saying to the Europeans is, “You can build pipelines through Georgia, but we can snap them whenever we want.” And I think that the message that they’ve been sending to the Europeans is, “Don’t think that you could build more pipelines through Georgia and they’ll be safe. They’ll never be safe.”
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Michael, as you mentioned in one of your recent articles, the Russian leadership is as tied to its energy infrastructure as the present Bush administration is to the energy infrastructure here. President Medvedev is a former head of Gazprom, isn’t he?
MICHAEL KLARE: Yes, exactly. And what’s underway in Europe is an effort headed by the EU to try to get under the thumb of Gazprom’s dominant role in the delivery of natural gas. Gazprom now delivers something like one-fourth of Europe’s natural gas. And if Gazprom has its way, it will double the amount of natural gas it supplies to Europe.
This has many Europeans and the United States deeply worried, because it kind of undercuts NATO’s independence. So, under American prodding, Europe has plans to build an alternative energy natural gas system called Nabucco, after the opera by Verdi, and this would go right through Georgia. And I think one of the major objectives of Russia’s incursion into Georgia is to say to the European leadership, “Your ideas about Nabucco are futile, because we can smash the Nabucco system anytime we want.”