EURASIA: THE NEW GEOPOLITICS OF PIPELINES
Imran Khan
Eurasian Home Analytical Resource, Russia
Sept 6 2006
Political Research Officer at the Australian High Commission,
Islamabad, Pakistan
The end of the Cold War was epochal: A half-century of polarization
passed, leading to a new geopolitical maneuvering in Eurasia.
Imminently, the ‘end of a history’ was the beginning of another.
Energy pipelines now have a new influence on history, one of the
core variables of post-Cold War geopolitics. As ‘economic lifelines,’
pipelines determine the contours of international politics anew.
Consequently, this has culminated into a new paradigm in the
geopolitical history of Eurasia-the new geopolitics of pipelines.
Notwithstanding the shift in variables, the geopolitical landscape is
constant, and Central Asia is at its core. The region has promising
potential for energy supplies, and due to its geographic isolation,
it straddles the crossroads of Europe and Asia.
Boarding the lifeblood of the mechanized, modern scale economy,
energy pipelines are roadmaps to development-energy being the recipe
for growth, wealth and survival. Political scientists, economists,
strategists and lobbyists proclaim pipelines the missing link to
building peace or denounce them as the fault lines of waging wars.
This newsletter highlights two different scenarios-war or peace,
cooperation or contention, coordination or confrontation. What factors
render pipelines geopolitical forces? How do pipelines affect the
geopolitical parameters of Eurasia? How does the new geopolitics
affect the intricate balance of war and peace? And how do pipelines
lure states into cooperation or catalyze them into confrontation?
The New Geopolitics of Pipelines
In 1878, Bari’s Construction Company constructed the
Balakhany-Cherny-Gorod pipeline network between the twin
towns of the then-rudimentary Russian oil industry-Baku and
Grozny-for the Nobel Brothers Company. It was the first pipeline
network ever built in Eurasia. It was a saga of intrigues,
corruption and kickbacks involving government, labor forces,
lobbying groups and investing companies with interests at stake
[ lt.asp?LANG=EN]. The
pipeline gambit coincided with the imperial war of wits and wills
between Tsarist Russia and Great Britain – the Great Game – over trade
routes and turf. Arthur Connolly, an officer in the Bengal cavalry
and an avid chess player, coined the terminology in his Narrative of
an Overland Journey to the North of India in 1835.
Rudyard Kipling, a veteran great gamer, adopted the phrase in his
novel Kim in 1904.
The geopolitics of pipelines entered its second phase, when Churchill’s
‘Iron Curtain’ that had polarized the communist East and capitalist
West was raised in December 1991, following the changing of the guard
at the Kremlin. The geopolitics of pipelines began anew with the end of
the Soviet Union, referred to as the New Great Game thereafter. Ahmad
Rashid, in an interview with Steve Curwood, explicated:
‘In the last ten years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
there has been what I call a new great game between Russia, the
United States, China, Iran, the European companies, for control
of the new oil and gas resources that have been discovered in
the Caspian Sea and in the Caucuses and Central Asia. Now, this,
you know, it’s a two-pronged game, basically, between trying to
buy up oil fields and gas fields and also, of course, deciding
on what routes this energy can be exported. Because Central Asia
is totally landlocked, distances are huge, and the U.S. strategy
has been essentially to keep, new oil pipelines should not be
built through Russia and they should not be built through Iran.’
[ anpipe.htm]
The typology has become a cliche, depicting historical determinism
and eluding the real nature and scope of neo-geopolitics. It is
actually a watchword of the ongoing new geopolitics in and around
Central Asia. The great game analogy, whatever, is derogatory,
rendering the new geopolitics, that is, part of the overall power
politics in Eurasia. Notwithstanding, several variances and versions
of the great game have been reproduced and constructed: As ‘minor
game’, ‘little game’, ‘end game’ and even refuted as ‘not underway’
[Kathleen A. Collins and William C. Wohlforth, ‘Central Asia: Defying
‘Great Game’ Expectations,’ Strategic Asia 2003-04: Fragility and
Crisis, Eds. Richard J. Ellings, Aaron L. Friedberg and Michael
Wills, September 2003. Daniel L. Smith, Central Asia: A New Great
Game? Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), Washington, June 1996]. This
is however a replay of the epic quest of pipelines for energy security
and service once took place in the Caucasian-Caspian hinterland,
that is, the new geopolitics of pipelines.
To begin with, geopolitics is a ‘spatial phenomenon,’ fusing geography
with power politics. To Rudolf Kjellen, a Swedish geo-strategic genius,
it is ‘a political process of states’ territorial expansion.’ Peter
Taylor defines it as ‘a competitive pursuit of territory, resources
and geographical advantage’ [Mehdi P.
Amineh,’Towards Rethinking Geopolitics,’ Central
Eurasian Studies Review (CESR), theCentral Eurasian
Studies Society, vol. 3, no. 1, winter 2004
_1.html#Amineh].
Geopolitics thereby is a quest for power beyond a state’s borders,
i.e. the building of an empire. The new geopolitics is dynamic,
relating geography, geology, geo-economics and above all, politics
and geo-strategy, manifested in building-and-banning pipelines.
Focusing on energy or other aspects of power politics, the new
geopolitics is a prolongation of the geopolitics of energy, being
dubbed ‘energy imperialism.’ Thus, it can also be defined as new
energy imperialism that is an epic pursuit of petroleum-gas, profit,
power and prestige-the grand prize.
Given the power package at hand, routing pipelines turned into a
geopolitical fixation, inducing gruesome power suction in Eurasia. By
nature, the new geopolitics is seamless and fluid. It is non-zero
sum, too: In which a single power or player cannot take home all the
‘marbles.’ No single power can get a best end of the deal partially.
Every one maneuvers to secure a disproportionate share of the prize,
notwithstanding what means and measures they improvise-legislative
methods of monopoly, prohibitory regulations, regime changes, joint
ventures, economics sanctions, commercial aloofness, or pipeline
wars. A pipeline is not the sole end in neo-geopolitics but rather the
means to several ends. Thus, it is a great gambit for energy security,
economic development and power outreach.
Foremost, pipelines provide ‘sufficient, reliable and affordable’
energy. [Mark Malloch Brown, ‘Energizing Development,’ Global Energy
Report: Energy and Sustainable Development, First Magazine, 2002].
Transportation via pipelines is swift, persistent and frequent,
except in case of disruptions in times of war and acts of terrorism,
contrary to railway-and-road trunks or naval ships. Also, pipelines
establish an end-to-end supply line, imminently resulting in economic
integration: The consumer is depends upon the producer for energy
and the producer depends upon consumer for encashment of hydrocarbons.
The ‘mutual gain, mutual loss’ principle promises energy security
in the long run. Frequency of movement is another aspect of
pipeline-based energy transmission, and there is always the chance of
disruption, particularly in Eurasia. In addition, pipelining energy
is economically feasible, technologically possible, technically
preferable, logistically efficient and commercially cost-effective.
Dmitry Mendelejev, a Russian engineer and profounder of the pipeline
as an energy transportation agent, pontificated pipelines to be the
most feasible and reliable medium for supplying crude oil over long
swathes and stretches of territory. Pipeline infrastructure develops
and delivers energy from regions to countries that would otherwise
remain rather inaccessible both commercially and technically. However
the first ever pipeline snaked in America, appreciating the idea:
‘It was necessary, and even urgent, to put pipes and transport
through those pipes crude to vessels or refineries situated on
the sea.’ ‘It looks as if the Americans had overheard the idea:
they ran the pipes and built refineries not near the wells,
but where there were marketplaces, sales, and trade routes,’
Mendelejev responded. Russia too followed the American footsteps,
stretching out a network of pipelines across Eurasia by the late
1970s [ ?LANG=EN]. By
delivering energy resources, pipelines drive economic growth. Energy
is the incubator of economic development, source of peace and
prosperity. ‘There is no development without energy and without energy
there is poverty, resentment and frustration-a fertile breeding
ground for violence and extremism,’ asserts Mohamed ElBaradei,
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
[ 8_2006.html].
Efficient, sufficient and inexpensive energy supply is an essential
part of civilized living.
Furthermore, pipeline routing expands a state’s reach, access and
influence; it can curtail or contain without marching armies or
mobilizing force-although basing armies and waging proxy wars
along pipeline routes is a recurrent phenomenon. A pipeline
is actually a steel-cobbled cobweb, giving leverage on the
one end over the economy on the other, a stake in politics
and monopoly control over energy resources and flow-lines
[ x.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=99].
Dmitry Mendelejev, well ahead of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Halford
John MacKinder, propounded in 1863 that pipeline means to neutralize
geographic inaccessibility and narrow down physical isolation.
Pipelines cohere with the MacKinderite and Mahanite modules of
offsetting geographic immobility, spearheading a new transportation
system. Halford John MacKinder’s Heartland theory and Alfred Thayer
Mahan’s Rimland theory expounded two different approaches for
greater mobility-basically two different approaches to the conquest
of the world and the supremacy of world powers. The former emphasized
railways, the overland transportation, as the key to commanding Eurasia
and the world’s oceans. The latter proposed the navy as the means to
control over the world’s landmass. So are pipelines. Being the mode of
energy transportation, steel-gilded pipelines are stretchable across
landmass, across waterways, even both-overland, inland or underwater.
This factor is prominent in Eurasia, providing a foundation for
global leadership and command economy. ‘Eurasia is the center of
the world and he who controls Eurasia controls the world,’ contends
Zbigniew Brzezinski. [Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard:
American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Books,
New York, 1997]. At the crossroads of Eurasia, Central Asia is the
hinterland – essentially the chessboard – upon which the struggle
for Eurasian primacy continues to be played. And pipelines are the
gateways to landlocked Central Asia. Therefore, besides other things,
pipelines draw contours of geopolitics anew, constituting fault lines
of war and peace, cooperation and confrontation.
Central Asia is central to the new geopolitics, constituting ‘the
pivot’ or ‘the heartland’ of the Eurasian mainland: Partly for its
geology, partly for its geography. The wealth of energy accounts for
about 116 billion barrels (Bbbl) oil reserves: Kazakhstan, 50-Bbbl;
Turkmenistan, 34-Bbbl; Uzbekistan, 32-Bbbl. Natural gas reserves
are 484 trillion cubic feet (tcf) with 202-tcf proven and 232-tcf
possible reserves. (Kyrgyz and Tajik energy reserves are nominal
and commercially not viable). With this stock of energy reserves,
a geopolitical, geo-economic rush occurred to explore, expropriate
and export oil and gas throughout the world. The energy reserves of
Central Asia must be transported through pipelines, since they would
otherwise remain geographically stranded in a part of the world that
has no seashores and waterways. This is why neo-geopolitics quickly
started at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Moreover, the cast of actors is multiple. There are the geographic
bridgeheads or transit states like Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia and
Afghanistan that intermediate the energy poor and rich regions;
the geopolitical pivots such as Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, China,
Russia, Japan, the US, the EU and Britain that have the prowess and
will of pipeline and energy supremacy; then there are the pawns and
peripheries that complicate the geopolitics through shifting sides
and balances. These are non-state actors, ranging from national and
multinational companies to ethnic-nationalist separatist groups,
autonomous regions, warlords, drug barons and terrorist outfits.
For the stranded energy reserves of Central Asia, the perceivable
ramifications of the new geopolitics are twofold-atavistic and
optimistic. Evading tangible outcome, geopolitics may result in a
‘no war, no peace’ situation. ‘The result is stalemate,’ laments
Thomas R. Stauffer in his article Caspian Fantasy: the Economics
of Political Pipelines in The Brown Journal of World Affairs in
Summer-Fall 2000. ‘Much or most of the oil and gas from the Caspian
basin [Central Asia] may well remain orphaned for the foreseeable
future.’ Provided the nature of the geopolitics, deadlock is the most
likely scenario, continuing the status quo, allowing these natural
reserves to remain stagnant and delaying energy transportation from
Central Asia. Multiplication of pipelines is the second likely prospect
of geopolitics, increasing energy transportation manifold.
The competition that would result might open up the stranded wealth
of natural reserves to international markets and investors.
The New Geopolitics: Cooperation or Confrontation, War or Peace?
As the geopolitics of energy has been a great determinant of world
history and even civilizations, the new geopolitics of pipelines has
had a great influence on the geopolitical dispensation of Eurasia,
Central Asia in particular. These cross-border, crosscutting
transportation networks have spurred two divergent geopolitical
paradigms: There is either cooperation leading to lasting peace, or
confrontation culminating in war. The two paradigms are based upon
on a clash of interests. The succeeding paragraphs of the newsletter
describe the new geopolitics as a source of war and peace.
Endorsing Aristotle’s conception of politics as a social act
with an equal distribution of resources and social processes in
an amicable settlement of dispute, the constructivist, liberal
political economists argue that the new geopolitics is a source of
cooperative-plus-competitive distribution of energy. As pipelines are
built in cooperation, states and multinational companies collaborate
on pipeline projects to transit energy resources to their economies.
As energy security is an act in coherence, states coordinate policies
and plans to execute pipelines and related energy development
projects. Pipelines thus stand for the collective security of energy,
because these are multilateral delivery systems and transportation
agents built in coherence of varying interests of various stackers. A
pipeline network links together producer and consumer (and often
transit states that intermediate the two ends) with multinational
corporations in an energy development consortium, consequently evolving
a pipeline-based energy economy-the energy-revenue fix.
Founded on legal contracts and political conventions and financed
jointly, pluralist liberalists assert that pipeline projects are the
bedrocks of cooperation.
Emphasizing the pervasiveness of economics in political calculations,
the constructivist theorists second high politics (a fusion of military
and security issues) to low politics (a confluence of politics and
economics with other social considerations). Based on collective
security and mutual gain, pipeline economy orients state relations from
conflict to cordiality: ‘Every sale made and every deal reached across
international borders entails a resolution of conflict of interests,’
contends Joshua S. Goldstein in International Relations. The element
of mutual gain overrides individual gain in pipelining energy, thereby
putting economic nationalism on the backburner. The ‘modicum of trust
and confidence’ required in building pipelines harmonizes and pacifies
the dynamics of interstate relations as permanent confidence building
measures. These energy development infrastructures are geopolitical
‘overlays,’ encouraging resolution of border disputes, strengthening
security regime along and across the route.
The Principles of Political Economy by John Stuart Mill is a valuable
reference for explaining pipeline routing and the pipelining of energy
as factors that can pacify politics: ‘Commerce is rapidly rendering
war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests
which act in natural opposition to it . . .. The great extent and rapid
increase of international trade . . . [is] the principal guarantee
of the peace of the world’ [Cited in Robert A.
Manning’s Asian Energy Factor]. The European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) of 1951 is a notable precedent of commerce and
trade as politically integrative forces, which set the stage for the
once-warring states to confederate in the European Union. Pipelines
can also boost regionalism, relegating outmoded, primal conflicts.
This could also be so for the pan-Eurasian energy corridors and
blocs. The new geopolitics is thus an aberration rather than a
continuation of history.
The energy axis created forms a ‘security complex’ based on collective
energy security. Impending energy insecurity and the potential for
economic depression as energy resources reach their peak, states
jointly pursue energy security projects-and accomplish the security
margins of energy. Identifying national interests and concerns
reduces the likelihood of confrontation, thereby consolidating the
security regime: A regime in which the security of pipelines, taking
off energy from wellhead to threshold, is a primary objective. A
coordinated security mechanism and strategy consequently becomes the
cornerstone of a pipeline-based security nexus, interfacing Central,
Southern and Western Asia with the Far East, Eastern and Central
Europe, Caucasus and Siberia. Besides exercising the niceties
and nuances of diplomacy, the collective energy security concept
harmonizes instruments of military security to neutralize plots of
terrorism. Military coordination is a result of the insecurity of
the pipeline network and energy chokepoints. This vulnerability and
exposure to disruptions helps refine multilateral security mechanisms,
culminating in greater peace and security.
Contradicting the pluralist-liberalist assumption that pipelines and
energy development projects include cooperation for confrontation and
discredit Realpolitik, realist-rationalists consider energy resources
as strategic raw materials inseparable from the overall national
security scheme that simmer conflicts and catalyze wars. Therefore,
pipelines are geopolitical curses rather than cures.
New geopolitics primarily manifests the clash of interests rather
than the compatibility of interests. The rationale: The state
is a self-seeking, rational entity that desires maximum national
security and strength. Energy security is no exception. Pipelines
are conduits of energy security, nonetheless energy imperialism. As
asserted by Jean Radvanyi: ‘The struggle over transport routes
is linked to the struggle over the exploitation of resources’
[ ]. Therefore, energy security
cannot be collective or mutual and is the salient identification
of economic nationalism, pitting state against state. In other
words, every unit of energy security exacerbates one unit of energy
insecurity. Energy is the single greatest multiplier of state power.
States marshal conflicting attempts to appropriate the larger share,
if not the whole, of energy resources; rather than complying with
compatriots’ energy interests, the power package that pipelines endow
can lead to energy and pipeline wars. In this sense, energy security
comes through marginalizing the competitor. So cooperation over energy
security is transitory, placing states in a geopolitical gridlock in
the long run.
Retrospectively, pipelines are corridors of powers-a geopolitical
ambition of every state-enlarging the outward boundaries of state.
Pipelines are alternatives to the MacKinderite module of prevailing in
Eurasia and overpowering the sea powers. The rising, restless powers
clash and collide over pipelines for geopolitical ascendancy.
This factor is quite prevalent in Eurasia with a number of states
that seek to become regional powerhouses in a consolidating
command-and-control over the new ‘economic lifelines’ and lifeblood.
Furthermore, wars arising of causes other than energy or pipelines
are modified in their conduct and continuity by the control of energy
flow lines, the pipelines. Eurasia is replete with such causes. The
mega continent is a crucible, with a plethora of ethnic enclaves,
drug barons, political localism, disruptive nationalism, state and
trans-state terrorism, border disputes and resource wars. Hence,
pipelines only intensify these struggles, because players in the
new geopolitics manipulate these channels to their pipeline gambits
either as peacemakers, peacekeepers, war makers or war brokers, or
by stationing their armies along the pipeline pathways. Examples of
this are found in Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Caspian Sea
demarcation deadlock, Xingjian, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Balochistan.
In a state that has a wealth of natural resources, democratic
institutions can falter and dictatorship can flourish, allowing
dictators to consolidate power, destroy opposition, contravene laws
and disparage liberties. Corruption and erosion of institutions is
another result of the energy windfall coming forth with pipelines.
The whirlwind of wealth in the republics that inherited the pipeline
after the fall of the Soviet Union, where the Stalin-style personality
cult reigns, means compromising and complicating efforts to produce
more stable, peaceful, open and democratic governments and a new
world order. The new geopolitics culminates in a geopolitical paradox
with two poles. At one end, the energy producing states (CARs,
Russia and Azerbaijan) contend to keep the old ways going through
bribing, funding and fudging opposition into compromise. The energy
consuming states (EU countries, China and Japan) tolerated this in
order to keep the energy flowing into their burgeoning economies,
bartering democracy with dictatorship. At the other end, states
(US and Britain) plan regime changes and court color revolutions to
pave the pipeline pathways in the governance of poor, dissension-rich
Eurasian republics-Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Pipelining energy means tendering peace and trapping security.
The idealist’s pretension of pipelines as security ‘overlays’ is,
therefore, superfluous. These can rather prove to be the geopolitical
fault lines, escalating crises of a local nature into regional wars.
On the other hand, it could encourage polarization, increasing
volatility in South and Central Asia with a fluid political character.
The Bottom Line: Recommendations
Deadlock is out of question over the wealth of natural resources.
Energy security is symbiotic, constituting co-dependency between the
energy gusher and guzzler, creating an energy-revenue fix.
Consequently, pipelines are imminent for securing and servicing
energy supplies. Otherwise, these natural resources will remain
stranded, or only partially developed. First-generation pipelines,
including the CPC oil pipeline, East-West Kazakhstan-China pipeline,
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Turkmenistan-Iran pipeline are
in place or will be accomplished by 2007. The second generation of
pipelines, essentially natural gas pipelines, will become feasible
as soon as gas markets mature, energy demand pressure piles up and
the prices trajectory tips up.
However, the bottom line is that new geopolitics is a continuation
of power politics, precisely energy imperialism, by means other than
sheer war and sheer peace, intertwining proxy wars and peacekeeping.
It is a geopolitical pretension, a process orchestrated to secure
maximum energy security. The more contentious and conflagrant
the process becomes, the greater the chance of pipeline wars and
fissures. On the other hand, the more coherent and peaceful the
process remains, peace and stability increases with every pipeline,
rendering pipeline projects in peacemaking and confidence building.
New geopolitics has the potential of flattening the world by resolving
inter-and intrastate disputes, as well as inflating disputes into wars.
The constructivist liberalists view pipelines as conduits of peace and
cooperation. The realist rationalists, antithetically, see pipelines
as geopolitical corridors of powers. Prospecting peace in pipelines is
like playing the giddy goat. Peace in pipelines is a chimera. Peace
is not a byproduct of new geopolitics-the push and pull for pipeline
and power-but the result of a committed, well-intended peace process.
The new geopolitics is about collective security of energy rather
than containment of some states and appeasement of others. Such
a geopolitical paradox would generate wars and sustain disputes,
banning peace and confidence to consolidate.
Diplomacy and detente should become part and parcel of the new
geopolitical grand strategy co-opting intrigues and interventions,
conflating competition and cooperation, implying geopolitical consensus
rather contention. The new geopolitics can thence produce confidence
and reduce contentions.
Crisis management strategies should be evolved, managing disputes
from escalating into wars, culminating into a settlement of disputes.
To this end, the existing multilateral institutions such as the OECD,
ECO, SCO, EU, ASEAN and others should be vitalized for orienting
new geopolitics to containing wars from continuing the fractious and
fluid geopolitical paradigm.
Nevertheless, investment in pipeline projects should be conditioned
to economic liberalization, political reformation, institutional
democratization and constitutional liberalization in the chaotic and
corrupt developing economies. This would create real conditions for
peace. Otherwise, war will remain suspended on the horizon.
Finally, to optimize energy security, it should be made collective
and co-dependent. Containment policies will stir counter strategies,
damning geopolitical accommodation. Therefore, states should appease
to contemporaries’ energy security to increase their own energy
security. Changing or isolating regimes will only elongate the axis
of wars and wrangles.
Imran Khan is a Political Research Officer at the Australian High
Commission, Islamabad, Pakistan, and is a M. Phil Research Officer at
the Area Study Center (Russia, China & Central Asia), Peshawar. The
author has been Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at
Qurtuba University of Science and Information Technology, Peshawar,
and Associate Editor of The Dialogue-a quarterly journal. He has also
been associated with Future Events News Service (FENS).
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