Caspian Sea
A new sphere of influence
By Brian
Becker
"For America the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. ...
Most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in
its enterprises and underneath its soil," wrote Zbigniew
Brzezinski, former United States national security advisor, in
a book published in 1997.
Brzezinski's comments are useful to keep in mind when
analyzing the current conflict raging in Chechnya. This
autonomous region, located in southern Russia, is at the pivot
of Europe and Asia.
Why is the Yeltsin regime in Russia carrying out its brutal
aerial assault against the separatist rebel movement in
Chechnya? Because the Russian government now fears that the
Pentagon and CIA are moving aggressively to grab the former
territories of the USSR, especially in the oil-rich Caspian Sea
area. This is the same government that has done so much to try
to please the United States capitalist establishment since it
dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991.
Chechnya and Dagestan, where fighting has raged for the last
four months, are territories close to the Caspian Sea. The Cas
pian has vast oil and natural gas deposits.
A consortium of 11 oil monopolies from the United States and
Europe have gained control of more than 50 percent of the
region's oil since the USSR was dissolved in 1991. The July 6,
1997, Washington Post described this process as the "last great
oil rush of the 20th century--targeted at a potential $4
trillion patch in Central Asia's Caspian Sea."
The Yeltsin government in Russia asserts that the United
States is stimulating, if not directly supporting, the Islamic
separatist movement in Chechnya.
"The national interests of the U.S. correspond to a scenario
in which an armed conflict is constantly smoldering in the
North Caucasus," Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said in
a recent news conference.
A few days later, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander
Avdeyev said at an international conference organized by the
Russian Diplomatic Academy that the country may be heading for
a direct conflict with the United States.
These were not accidental or isolated comments by Russian
officials. The United States has a "growing readiness to use
military force in its direct, most crude form at various levels
... the [U.S.] operations in Kosovo and Iraq only herald this
readiness. We must assume that it may extend to others,
including former Soviet, territories," said Anatoly Kvashnin,
the military head of the General Staff, in a speech to the same
conference.
The politics of an oil pipeline
Before the USSR was dissolved in a U.S.-backed capitalist
counter-revolution in 1991 the Caspian Sea was bordered on the
east, west and north by the Soviet Union. Now that its former
republics are formally independent, five countries border the
Caspian. These include Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Turkeminstan,
as well as Russia and Iran.
The United States government is now attempting to take
control over the Caspian Sea oil by transforming the
non-Russian former Soviet republics into virtual colo nies and
grabbing control over the vast oil and gas resources that were
once used to fuel socialist construction in the Soviet
Union.
"The prospects of potentially enormous hydrocarbon reserves
is part of the allure of the Caspian region," the United States
Energy Information Administration said in a December 1998
report. "New transportation routes will be necessary to carry
Caspian oil and gas to world markets," according to the
EIA.
Why is a new Caspian oil pipeline necessary? According to
the EIA, because "the existing pipelines were designed to link
the Soviet Union internally, and were routed through
Russia."
On Nov. 18, President Bill Clinton and Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson met with the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Tajik stan and Turkey to announce plans to construct a new $2.4
billion oil pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan, the
Mediterranean port in Turkey. The new pipeline entirely
bypasses Russia. It is calculated to turn the Caspian into an
"American lake."
Throughout the Cold War U.S. policy makers insisted that
they opposed Soviet socialism because it deprived people of
"personal liberty" and "stifled individual initiative in the
free market." But now it's easy to see that their hatred of the
USSR was based on it having prevented U.S. corporations from
exploiting the land and resources of the Soviet Union.
The imperialists want to weaken Russia for their own
reasons. But the Yeltsin regime's motives for the war in
Chechnya have nothing in common with the interests of working
people in the region. Yeltsin's grouping became the champions
of capitalist exploitation that, in turn, rapidly revived
national antagonisms.
The nascent bourgeois grouping among each nationality,
including in Chechnya, sought to dominate its "own home
market." The smaller republics have sought a new pact with
imperialism that comes at Russia's expense.
"The real reason for the [war in Chechnya] is the
annihilation of the socialist society," notes the Russian
Communist Workers Party in a recent statement. "Before, power
and law were directed toward the equality of people on a social
and national level. However, at present a society is being
built on the basis of overt inequality and property. This has
evoked the meanest tendencies amongst people, a cruel power
struggle, the separatism of national elites, and, centrally,
the principle of divide and conquer. ... The origins for this
bloody tragedy are the [Yeltsin] ruling regime and its policy
of restoring capitalism in Russia."
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