Oct 06
19
Russia – Global Power Games
Reading Stephen Roach's frequent essays on global re-balancing covers a lot of the macro-economic issues of the day. But they tend not to cover some of the historical and geopolitical issues.
In this extremely interesting article the rise of Russia as the new superpower is presented along with why it is playing this way:
It is a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in why there is a war in Iraq, what Cheny, Bush and Rice are actually up to, and of course, why Putin is playing his cards the way he does. This is not about conspiracy – it is about strategy. And you can't understand the real reasons why things get done from reading the rhetoric on the front pages of the newspapers.
Here are some excerpts:
moves revolving around its geopolitical assets in energy—most notably
its oil and natural gas. It’s doing so by shrewdly taking advantage of
the strategic follies and major political blunders of Washington. The
new Russia also realizes that if it does not act decisively, it soon
will be encircled and trumped by a military rival, USA, for which it
has little defenses left. The battle, largely unspoken, is the highest
stakes battle in world politics today. Iran and Syria are seen by
Washington strategists as mere steps to this great Russian End Game.
………………..
The ‘Cheney Presidency,’ which is what historians
will no doubt dub the George W. Bush years, has been based on a clear
strategy. It has often been misunderstood by critics who had overly
focussed on its most visible component, namely, Iraq, the Middle East
and the strident war-hawks around the Vice President and his old crony,
Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld.
The ‘Cheney strategy’ has been a US foreign policy
based on securing direct global energy control, control by the Big Four
US or US-tied private oil giants– ChevronTexaco or ExxonMobil, BP or
Royal Dutch Shell. Above all, it has aimed at control of all the
world’s major oil regions, along with the major natural gas fields.
That control has moved in tandem with a growing bid by the United
States for total military primacy over the one potential threat to its
global ambitions—Russia. Cheney is perhaps the ideal person to weave
the US military and energy policies together into a coherent strategy
of dominance. During the early 1990’s under father Bush, Cheney was
also Secretary of Defense.
………………..
Khodorkovsky had been arrested just four weeks
before a decisive Russian Duma or lower house election, in which
Khodorkovsky had managed to buy the votes of a majority in the Duma
using his vast wealth. Control of the Duma was to be the first step by
Khodorkovsky in a plan to run against Putin the next year as President.
The Duma victory would have allowed him to change election laws in his
favor, as well as to alter a controversial law being drafted in the
Duma, ‘The Law on Underground Resources.’ That law would prevent Yukos
and other private companies from gaining control of raw materials in
the ground, or from developing private pipeline routes independent of
the Russian state pipelines.
Khodorkovsky had violated the pledge of the
Oligarchs made to Putin, that they be allowed to keep their assets–de
facto stolen from the state in the rigged auctions under Yeltsin–if
they stayed out of Russian politics and repatriated a share of their
stolen money. Khodorkovsky, the most powerful oligarch at the time, was
serving as the vehicle for what was becoming an obvious
Washington-backed putsch against Putin.
The Khodorkovsky arrest followed an unpublicized
meeting earlier that year on July 14, 2003 between Khodorkovsky and
Vice President Dick Cheney.
talks with ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, Condi Rice’s old firm, about
taking a major state in Yukos, said to have been between 25% and 40%.
That was intended to give Khodorkovsky de facto immunity from possible
Putin government interference by tying Yukos to the big US oil giants
and, hence, to Washington. It would also have given Washington, via the
US oil giants, a de facto veto power over future Russian oil and gas
pipelines and oil deals. Days before his October 2003 arrest on tax
fraud charges, Khodorkovsky had entertained George H.W. Bush, the
representative of the powerful and secretive Washington Carlyle Group
in Moscow. They were discussing the final details of the US oil company
share buy-in of Yukos.
………………..
In terms of the overall standard of living,
mortality and economic prosperity, Russia today is not a world class
power. In terms of energy, it is a colossus. In terms of landmass it is
still the single largest nation in land area in the world, spanning
from the Pacific to the door of Europe. It has vast territory, vast
natural resources, and it has the world’s largest reserves of natural
gas, the energy source currently the focus of major global power plays.
In addition, it is the only power on the face of the earth with the
military capabilities able to match that of the United States despite
the collapse of the USSR and deterioration in the military since.
Russia has more than 130,000 oil wells and some 2000
oil and gas deposits explored of which at least 900 are not in use. Oil
reserves have been estimated at 150 billion barrels, similar perhaps to
Iraq. They could be far larger but have not yet been exploited owing to
difficulty of drilling in some remote arctic regions. Oil prices above
$60 a barrel begin to make it economical to explore in those remote
regions.