Caspian Watch #7: President Aliyev’s Visit Should Translate into the ‘Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship’
Caspian Watch #7: President
Aliyev’s Visit Should Translate Into The
‘Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship’
(Washington, D.C.): The past ten day’s
events made one thing, as Richard Nixon
used to say, perfectly clear: The
“Great Game” is on once again
in the strategically critical and
increasingly turbulent Caspian Sea Basin.(1)
In previous eras, that term has been
used to describe the periodic struggles
in this region between great powers
competing for territory, resources and
influence. The stakes are today higher
then ever before. By some estimates, the
Caspian Basin is the locus of between 100
and 200 billion barrels of oil and
natural gas deposits that could total
more than those of the North Sea and
Alaska’s North Slope combined. Figured
conservatively at today’s prices, this
equates to between two and four trillion
dollars worth of exploitable hydrocarbon
assets — a figure that does not include
the tens of billions of dollars that will
ultimately be invested in the region for
the infrastructure needed to extract and
transport these resources.
You Can’t Tell the Players
Until very recently, official
Washington has been on the sidelines of
the momentous contest taking place to
shape, if not control, the destiny of the
Caspian Basin. In its absence, Russia,
China and Iran have been jockeying for
position. Russia, in particular, has been
employing every tool at its disposal —
from financial incentives (including
bribes) to violent intimidation (notably,
via the arming of proxy forces to
destabilize or coerce those in the
region) to realize Moscow’s goal of
dominating the exploitation of Caspian
oil.
Perhaps the most egregious
example of such intimidation has been the
assistance which Russia has provided to
Armenian military operations against
neighboring Azerbaijan and the contested
Azerbaijani enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Thanks to copious quantities of
everything from Russian-made small arms
to deadly missiles, Armenia has wrested
substantial territory from Azerbaijan
while imposing enormous economic hardship
on a nation ill-equipped to contend with
the needs of hundreds of thousands of
refugees.
These actions have afforded Russia
leverage on the one oil-rich nation in
the Caspian Basin intent on pursuing a
pro-Western course. Azerbaijan has made
clear its desire to do business with
American petroleum firms and has sought
repeatedly to develop cordial diplomatic
and military ties with the United States.
Here too Russia’s machinations in Armenia
have proved helpful to the Kremlin:
Citing the conflict between Azerbaijan
and Armenia, the politically
well-connected Armenian-American
community has prevailed on successive
U.S. Congresses to bar the provision even
of direct humanitarian assistance to Baku
— something for which a pariah state
like North Korea is eligible.
Where’s Washington?
The Clinton Administration’s reflexive
deference to Moscow has only slowly begun
to give way to an appreciation that an
economically successful, pro-Western and
secular Muslim state in Azerbaijan is in
the U.S. interest, even if it is not
in the Kremlin’s. As a result, none
other than the chief architect of
Clinton’s Russo-centric policy, Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott,
was heard last week emphasizing the
importance of improved American ties with
Azerbaijan, calling for the repeal of the
legislation (Section 907 of the Freedom
Support Act of 1992) that effectively
makes impossible any direct U.S.
involvement with Azerbaijan and warning
Russia against “infringement on the
independence of its neighbors.”
Secretary Talbott’s speech was only
one of the indications that Washington is
finally awakening to what is at stake in
the Transcaucasus and Caspian Basin. Senator
Sam Brownback, chairman of the
Foreign Relations Mideast subcommittee
(Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs),
recently traveled to Baku and returned
determined to recast U.S.-Azerbaijan
relations. Within the past few days, the
Senator: introduced a Sense of the Senate
resolution calling for a more balanced
American policy toward the southern
Caucasus and Central Asia; made a major
address of his own on the subject at the
Heritage Foundation; and convened
important hearings into U.S.
geopolitical, strategic and economic
interests in the region. Forceful
testimony taken from, among others,
former Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger, is expected
shortly to result in further legislative
recommendations for corrective action.
Perhaps most importantly, the
Administration has finally seen its way
clear to invite President Aliyev to make
an official visit to Washington,
complete with a luncheon with Mr.
Clinton. It can only be hoped that this
occasion will mark the beginning of what
Bogart once called “a beautiful
friendship” — replete with more
active U.S. leadership in ending the
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict,
alleviating its counterproductive
repercussions for relations between this
country and Azerbaijan and introducing a
new, and far more engaged, American
policy in the region.
Such a policy is all the more
necessary in the wake of the Clinton
Administration’s deplorable announcement
on Monday that it would have no objection
to the construction of a $1.6 billion
pipeline to carry natural gas from
Turkmenistan to Turkey via Iran. This
step will not only unmistakably signal an
American willingness to ease Iran’s
international isolation under
circumstances in which that is still most
ill-advised. It will also serve to
facilitate Teheran’s ambition to
penetrate and exercise influence over the
Caspian Sea Basin.
The Bottom Line
The United States needs to bend every
effort to finding the means to bring the
oil and gas resources of the Caspian Sea
Basin to market through routes that will
not enrich the Iranians, or, for that
matter, the Russians or Chinese, and that
are not subject to possible coercive
manipulation by such powers. The
obvious place to start is by forging a
strong strategic partnership with
Azerbaijan — the best hope that an
independent, pro-Western state will
survive the current, deadly iteration of
the Great Game — and nurturing regional
arrangements that will permit its
hydrocarbon assets to transit safely to
Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, via
Georgia.
– 30 –
1. For more on this
strategically important part of the
world, see some of the Center’s
additional output in its Caspian
Watch series of papers: Caspian
Watch #6: Weinberger Issues Timely Alert
Against Interest Group’s Hijacking of
U.S. Caspian Policy (
May 1997); Caspian Watch #5:
Senator Byrd Takes the Lead in Securing
US Access to 200 Billions of Barrels of
Oil in the Caspian Sea (
February 1997).
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