EURASIAN CROSSROADS: THE CAUCASUS IN US-NATO WAR PLANS
Rick Rozoff (USA)
en.fondsk.ru
09.04.2009
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 ca mpaign 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 Cen tral 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.20The 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 na tion 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 battleground20of 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 theatersecurity
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.) =0 D 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 (ne ar 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, c ould 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 urg ent, 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
Declarat ion, 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=2 0natural 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
befor e 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.
On 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-regi onal 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 th rough 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, Co mmand 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,’ Rogozin20said, 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)=0 D
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.
_______________ Source
(1) United States European Command, April 6, 2009
(2) Trend News Agency, April 3, 2009
(3) Georgi an 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
ge/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