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Highlights
The Pipeline From Hell: Justin Raimondo
Quotable
I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them;
the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must
die.
- Mary Roberts Rinehart
May 27, 2005
The Pipeline From Hell
Oil and the War Party: the Caucasus connection
by Justin Raimondo
George W. Bush's arrival at the Moscow commemoration of V-E Day was preceded
and followed by open provocations. The stopover in Riga, Latvia's capital,
was a stinging reminder to the Russians that this former Soviet satellite
state, conquered by Stalin as a result of our "victory" in World War II, is
now ensconced in the NATO alliance - which stands ready to extend its
influence deep into the Eurasian heartland.
However, it was the visit to Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, that
stuck most painfully in the Russian craw. Aside from the historical and
cultural links that tie the Kremlin to the Caucasus, there are vital
economic interests at stake in the region - which Russia, starved for cash,
can ill afford to lose. The stakes were made clear on May 25, the day the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) was officially opened at a ceremony in
Baku, Azerbaijan, hosted by President Ilham Aliyev, and attended by the
presidents of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili of Georgia captured the spirit of the occasion as he exulted
that the BTC is a "geopolitical victory" for Caspian Basin nations - and we
have only to ask ourselves the question "A victory over whom?" before
Eurasia.net has the answer:
"Securing an independent energy export source will allow both Georgia and
Azerbaijan to more effectively resist geopolitical pressure exerted by
Russia, regional political analysts suggest."
Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is to see the BTC as a way
for an emerging alliance of Western interests to exert geopolitical and
military pressure on Russia.
The U.S., for its part, hailed the opening as a great victory for freedom
and prosperity in the region, and this was to be expected. The opening of
the BTC marks the culmination of a long-standing American project, begun by
Bill Clinton, and assiduously pursued by the U.S. government and its favored
corporate interests ever since. The idea was to pump in the huge Caspian Sea
oil reserves directly to Europe, short-circuiting a far easier route from
Azerbaijan through Iran and bypassing the Russians completely. Clinton set
up a special Caspian Sea oil task force in 1994, under Richard Morningstar,
but it was under a Republican administration particularly disposed to the
success of this scheme that the grand plan finally came to fruition. As I
wrote way back in 1999:
"For sheer clout in Establishment circles, the Azeri and Georgian lobbies
are hard to beat. Several prominent figures in the Bushian wing of the
Republican party stand to make a substantial profit through their
investments in companies doing business in the region, among them: James
Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Dick Cheney and John Sununu; the secretary of state,
national security adviser, secretary of defense, and chief of staff
respectively for George [Herbert Walker] Bush."
The power of the Caspian lobby in both parties was enough to direct the flow
of U.S. government subsidies, "loans," and diplomatic pressure toward the
day when the pipeline would finally be opened, and its inauguration marks a
new stage in the development of a Euro-American alliance that aims at the
encirclement of Russia.
In Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, the views of the Europeans and the
Americans are radically divergent, but when it comes to Eurasia and the
alleged rise of a Russian "threat," the old boys club of global bullies is
reunited with a passion. There is much reason to believe that the European
involvement in the recent color-coded revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and -
potentially - Belarus, is a lot more than they're usually given credit for,
and the OSCE has taken an aggressive stance against Russian "separatism" in
South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and other dissident Russian-speaking splinter
republics in the former Soviet Union. The Europeans need that Caspian oil -
remember the fuel-tax strikes that swept Europe and threatened to bring Tony
Blair and his fellow Euro-socialists to their knees? - and they would rather
not have it pass through Russian territory for both strategic and economic
reasons.
And so the Europeans and the Americans are playing what Rudyard Kipling
called "the Great Game" in the heartland of the Eurasian landmass,
outmaneuvering the Russian bear and domesticating the indigenous
"independent" republics - or else, as in the case of Georgia, replacing them
with suitably "democratic" rulers entirely dependent on U.S. aid and
political support.
For the scheme to work, it is necessary to bring peace to a region that has
rarely known it, and never less so than today. The political stability of
the post-Soviet order is seriously threatened - along with the huge
investment in the pipeline - by minority groups in the Caucasus that insist
on their right to national self-determination and stubbornly resist the
efforts of their new overlords in Tbilisi, Ankara, Baku, and Washington - to
integrate them into larger states.
The BTC pipeline snakes just a few miles from the troubled Nagorno-Karabakh
region, an enclave of Armenians in a sea of Azeris. Azerbaijan and Armenia
have long battled for possession of this strategically key region, and the
Nagorno-Karabakhians have managed to fight off the Azeris and do-gooder
Westerners intent on imposing a "peace" that compromises their independence.
Then there are the two independent republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
pockets of Russian-speakers who won't submit to the central authorities in
Tbilisi and have been similarly successful in fighting off all comers -
including the U.S.-trained-and-funded Georgian army.
The route of the pipeline embeds it deep under some of the most disputed
territory on the face of the earth, and this can only portend war. As much
as this administration warbles on about "free markets" and "free
enterprise," the crude mercantilism that constitutes the real economic
philosophy and foreign policy of our rulers means that one principle is
consistently followed when it comes to "defending" "American interests"
abroad: the costs and the risks are socialized, but the profits are
privatized. If American oil companies are due to make mega-profits in the
Caspian region, then the U.S. military will be doing guard duty along every
inch of the BTC pipeline, ensuring "stability" in a land of nomadic herders
and exporting "democracy" to a region formerly ruled by pashas, sultans, and
various and sundry dictators.
We are, in short, being set up for another major military intervention, and,
as I warned in November of 1999, both parties are in on it:
"All the elements for a major confrontation between nuclear-armed Russia and
the US are being put in place: not only the 'humanitarian' aspect of the
coming war with Russia, but also the developing 'national security'
rationale. With billions of dollars invested in the area, including untold
millions in U.S. government subsidies, the building of the pipeline has
suddenly become a matter of 'the national interest' instead of just certain
private interests.
"Big Oil has its champions in both parties, but Dubya is certainly that
interest group's Great White Hope for the White House. He has solid links to
the powerful and wealthy Azerbaijan lobby in Washington, which has been
unusually visible and active. As Robert C. Butler put it in a piece posted
on oilandgas.com: 'It is clear that if George W. Bush, son of the former
president and today governor of Texas, is nominated by the Republican Party
and elected, then the international energy consortia will have a new friend
in the White House and Azerbaijan will profit from the situation. Many of
the advisors whom Bush has chosen for his campaign have in the past been
either active advocates of close ties with Azerbaijan or have voted against
maintaining Section 907 restrictions on US assistance to the country.'"
Aside from the contentious terrain of Georgia, where a U.S.-backed "Rose
Revolution" installed a compliant satrap who has continued the dubious human
rights record of his predecessor, the BTC consortium has to deal with
instability in Azerbaijan, ruled over by absolute dictator Ilham Aliyev, the
playboy son of former KGB chieftain and longtime Azeri Maximum Leader Heydar
Aliyev. On the occasion of Papa Aliyev's death in 2003, the prognosis for
Aliyev the Lesser published on the CIA-connected Stratfor.com Web site
sticks in my mind:
"Ilham Aliyev lacks his father's charisma, political skills, contacts,
experience, stature, intelligence and authority. Aside from that he will
make a wonderful president."
Recent street protests in Baku by Western-backed "democratic" opposition
groups may be a harbinger of the future: if Western power-brokers decide
Aliyev is in any way unreliable, they could easily abandon him for a more
Saakashvili-like alternative.
In any event, no matter what color the exporters of "democratic" revolutions
choose for Azerbaijan - if they choose one at all - the coming confrontation
with a Russia that is supposedly sliding back into "authoritarianism" under
President Vladimir Putin is bound to escalate from here on out. We will be
hearing much much more about how Putin is really the second incarnation of
Stalin. The recent conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch
who stole entire industries, has already given rise to the charge that the
Russian leader is behind a supposed return of official anti-Semitism. Putin,
Stalin: see, they even sound the same! The Kremlin, according to this
scenario, is the world headquarters of a revived national socialism, and,
like the German variety, it's a danger to us as well as to the Russian
people.
Putin, we'll be told, is threatening the peace by his championing of all
those "racist" Russian-speakers who object to being lorded over by central
authorities in some distant capital. After all, what right have they to
rebel against regimes that have outlawed their language, their history, and
their very existence? "Russian revanchism" will become the neocons' favorite
alliteration. They've already taken up the Chechen cause, and they will be
joined in this holy crusade for politically correct multiculturalism and
"democracy" in the Caucasus by the same interventionist liberals who joined
the anti-Slav crusade against Serbia.
I've been covering the Caucasus and predicting it would be a future
battlefield pitting the U.S. and the Europeans against Russia since at least
1999: see here, here, here, here, here, and here - oh yeah, and also here.
(Yikes, there's more!) It's at times like this that weariness almost
overcomes me, and the prospect of repeating myself is most uninviting. There
is nothing new in any of this: the War Party's plans have been apparent from
the start. What is new, however, is this emerging Right-Left alliance of
warmongering "democratizers" unleashed on the hapless peoples of the former
Soviet Union. In faraway places with odd names, like Kyrgyzstan, the
ambitions - and fortunes - of both sides of the political spectrum meet and
merge in a harmonic convergence of interests and ideology.
United in their hatred of Putin and "authoritarian" Russia, the neocons and
the Clintonian liberals will be reunited at last, and can work hand-in-hand
as they did during the run-up to the Kosovo war. As powerful factions on the
"right" and the "left" position themselves to back a policy of Eurasian
aggression by the U.S. and its allies, and the encirclement of Russia
continues, the grand interventionist consensus is taking shape. The marriage
of transnational progressivism and internationalist neoconservatism - of
George Soros' Open Society Institute and the American Enterprise Institute -
will sanctify the rising American Imperium from all sides.
However, a realignment is also taking place on the other side - the
"isolationist" side. Anti-interventionist conservative Republicans have
found their voice and are even beginning to be heard in the halls of
Congress. On the Left, too, it isn't just Ralph Nader who is now speaking
out and becoming actively involved in the fight against interventionism.
Having been lied into war by the Republicans, antiwar liberals are less
likely - at least in many cases - to take the same guff from elected
Democrats.
Don't be deluded into thinking that the American people are so sick of the
Iraq war that they couldn't be whipped up into a renewed war hysteria by the
arrival of some novel "threat," the advent of some new Hitler substitute, a
looming bogeyman to scare them in between episodes of Desperate Housewives
and the latest "reality" show. Yet there is reason to hope that when it
comes to the Caucasus, the War Party might not have such an easy time of it.
For that, in large part, Antiwar.com - with its strategy of forging a solid
Left-Right anti-interventionist united front - can rightfully and proudly
claim the credit.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I had a great time on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! radio-TV broadcast,
commenting on the Larry Franklin spy case, and you can listen to what
someone who got up at 4:00 in the morning sounds like here.
I also have an article in The American Conservative, in the June 6 issue,
but my review of The Woman and the Dynano, Stephen Cox's fascinating
biography of Old Right author and columnist Isabel Paterson, is but a minor
addition to what is a blockbuster issue of TAC: Scott McConnell has a
wonderful account of the life and career of the late George F. Kennan.
Andrew Bacevich - author of the excellent recent book, The New American
Militarism - has a perceptive look at the messianic vision of Paul
Wolfowitz, with the apropos title of "Trigger Man." You won't want to miss
Anders Strindberg's piece on how the neocons are trying to muzzle anyone who
doesn't follow their Israel First line on the Middle East. William Lind on
"the case for mass transit" - I don't agree, but it's an interesting read -
and Nicholas von Hoffman on the vitiation of national sovereignty round out
35 pages of the best of the opinion magazines currently on the market.
You mean you haven't subscribed yet? Well, there's one way to fix that: by
clicking here. And you'd better hurry: I have a major piece on the Larry
Franklin spy scandal due to be published in an upcoming issue, and you won't
want to miss it.
- Justin Raimondo
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Highlights
The Pipeline From Hell: Justin Raimondo
Quotable
I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them;
the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must
die.
- Mary Roberts Rinehart
May 27, 2005
The Pipeline From Hell
Oil and the War Party: the Caucasus connection
by Justin Raimondo
George W. Bush's arrival at the Moscow commemoration of V-E Day was preceded
and followed by open provocations. The stopover in Riga, Latvia's capital,
was a stinging reminder to the Russians that this former Soviet satellite
state, conquered by Stalin as a result of our "victory" in World War II, is
now ensconced in the NATO alliance - which stands ready to extend its
influence deep into the Eurasian heartland.
However, it was the visit to Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, that
stuck most painfully in the Russian craw. Aside from the historical and
cultural links that tie the Kremlin to the Caucasus, there are vital
economic interests at stake in the region - which Russia, starved for cash,
can ill afford to lose. The stakes were made clear on May 25, the day the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) was officially opened at a ceremony in
Baku, Azerbaijan, hosted by President Ilham Aliyev, and attended by the
presidents of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili of Georgia captured the spirit of the occasion as he exulted
that the BTC is a "geopolitical victory" for Caspian Basin nations - and we
have only to ask ourselves the question "A victory over whom?" before
Eurasia.net has the answer:
"Securing an independent energy export source will allow both Georgia and
Azerbaijan to more effectively resist geopolitical pressure exerted by
Russia, regional political analysts suggest."
Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is to see the BTC as a way
for an emerging alliance of Western interests to exert geopolitical and
military pressure on Russia.
The U.S., for its part, hailed the opening as a great victory for freedom
and prosperity in the region, and this was to be expected. The opening of
the BTC marks the culmination of a long-standing American project, begun by
Bill Clinton, and assiduously pursued by the U.S. government and its favored
corporate interests ever since. The idea was to pump in the huge Caspian Sea
oil reserves directly to Europe, short-circuiting a far easier route from
Azerbaijan through Iran and bypassing the Russians completely. Clinton set
up a special Caspian Sea oil task force in 1994, under Richard Morningstar,
but it was under a Republican administration particularly disposed to the
success of this scheme that the grand plan finally came to fruition. As I
wrote way back in 1999:
"For sheer clout in Establishment circles, the Azeri and Georgian lobbies
are hard to beat. Several prominent figures in the Bushian wing of the
Republican party stand to make a substantial profit through their
investments in companies doing business in the region, among them: James
Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Dick Cheney and John Sununu; the secretary of state,
national security adviser, secretary of defense, and chief of staff
respectively for George [Herbert Walker] Bush."
The power of the Caspian lobby in both parties was enough to direct the flow
of U.S. government subsidies, "loans," and diplomatic pressure toward the
day when the pipeline would finally be opened, and its inauguration marks a
new stage in the development of a Euro-American alliance that aims at the
encirclement of Russia.
In Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, the views of the Europeans and the
Americans are radically divergent, but when it comes to Eurasia and the
alleged rise of a Russian "threat," the old boys club of global bullies is
reunited with a passion. There is much reason to believe that the European
involvement in the recent color-coded revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and -
potentially - Belarus, is a lot more than they're usually given credit for,
and the OSCE has taken an aggressive stance against Russian "separatism" in
South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and other dissident Russian-speaking splinter
republics in the former Soviet Union. The Europeans need that Caspian oil -
remember the fuel-tax strikes that swept Europe and threatened to bring Tony
Blair and his fellow Euro-socialists to their knees? - and they would rather
not have it pass through Russian territory for both strategic and economic
reasons.
And so the Europeans and the Americans are playing what Rudyard Kipling
called "the Great Game" in the heartland of the Eurasian landmass,
outmaneuvering the Russian bear and domesticating the indigenous
"independent" republics - or else, as in the case of Georgia, replacing them
with suitably "democratic" rulers entirely dependent on U.S. aid and
political support.
For the scheme to work, it is necessary to bring peace to a region that has
rarely known it, and never less so than today. The political stability of
the post-Soviet order is seriously threatened - along with the huge
investment in the pipeline - by minority groups in the Caucasus that insist
on their right to national self-determination and stubbornly resist the
efforts of their new overlords in Tbilisi, Ankara, Baku, and Washington - to
integrate them into larger states.
The BTC pipeline snakes just a few miles from the troubled Nagorno-Karabakh
region, an enclave of Armenians in a sea of Azeris. Azerbaijan and Armenia
have long battled for possession of this strategically key region, and the
Nagorno-Karabakhians have managed to fight off the Azeris and do-gooder
Westerners intent on imposing a "peace" that compromises their independence.
Then there are the two independent republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
pockets of Russian-speakers who won't submit to the central authorities in
Tbilisi and have been similarly successful in fighting off all comers -
including the U.S.-trained-and-funded Georgian army.
The route of the pipeline embeds it deep under some of the most disputed
territory on the face of the earth, and this can only portend war. As much
as this administration warbles on about "free markets" and "free
enterprise," the crude mercantilism that constitutes the real economic
philosophy and foreign policy of our rulers means that one principle is
consistently followed when it comes to "defending" "American interests"
abroad: the costs and the risks are socialized, but the profits are
privatized. If American oil companies are due to make mega-profits in the
Caspian region, then the U.S. military will be doing guard duty along every
inch of the BTC pipeline, ensuring "stability" in a land of nomadic herders
and exporting "democracy" to a region formerly ruled by pashas, sultans, and
various and sundry dictators.
We are, in short, being set up for another major military intervention, and,
as I warned in November of 1999, both parties are in on it:
"All the elements for a major confrontation between nuclear-armed Russia and
the US are being put in place: not only the 'humanitarian' aspect of the
coming war with Russia, but also the developing 'national security'
rationale. With billions of dollars invested in the area, including untold
millions in U.S. government subsidies, the building of the pipeline has
suddenly become a matter of 'the national interest' instead of just certain
private interests.
"Big Oil has its champions in both parties, but Dubya is certainly that
interest group's Great White Hope for the White House. He has solid links to
the powerful and wealthy Azerbaijan lobby in Washington, which has been
unusually visible and active. As Robert C. Butler put it in a piece posted
on oilandgas.com: 'It is clear that if George W. Bush, son of the former
president and today governor of Texas, is nominated by the Republican Party
and elected, then the international energy consortia will have a new friend
in the White House and Azerbaijan will profit from the situation. Many of
the advisors whom Bush has chosen for his campaign have in the past been
either active advocates of close ties with Azerbaijan or have voted against
maintaining Section 907 restrictions on US assistance to the country.'"
Aside from the contentious terrain of Georgia, where a U.S.-backed "Rose
Revolution" installed a compliant satrap who has continued the dubious human
rights record of his predecessor, the BTC consortium has to deal with
instability in Azerbaijan, ruled over by absolute dictator Ilham Aliyev, the
playboy son of former KGB chieftain and longtime Azeri Maximum Leader Heydar
Aliyev. On the occasion of Papa Aliyev's death in 2003, the prognosis for
Aliyev the Lesser published on the CIA-connected Stratfor.com Web site
sticks in my mind:
"Ilham Aliyev lacks his father's charisma, political skills, contacts,
experience, stature, intelligence and authority. Aside from that he will
make a wonderful president."
Recent street protests in Baku by Western-backed "democratic" opposition
groups may be a harbinger of the future: if Western power-brokers decide
Aliyev is in any way unreliable, they could easily abandon him for a more
Saakashvili-like alternative.
In any event, no matter what color the exporters of "democratic" revolutions
choose for Azerbaijan - if they choose one at all - the coming confrontation
with a Russia that is supposedly sliding back into "authoritarianism" under
President Vladimir Putin is bound to escalate from here on out. We will be
hearing much much more about how Putin is really the second incarnation of
Stalin. The recent conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch
who stole entire industries, has already given rise to the charge that the
Russian leader is behind a supposed return of official anti-Semitism. Putin,
Stalin: see, they even sound the same! The Kremlin, according to this
scenario, is the world headquarters of a revived national socialism, and,
like the German variety, it's a danger to us as well as to the Russian
people.
Putin, we'll be told, is threatening the peace by his championing of all
those "racist" Russian-speakers who object to being lorded over by central
authorities in some distant capital. After all, what right have they to
rebel against regimes that have outlawed their language, their history, and
their very existence? "Russian revanchism" will become the neocons' favorite
alliteration. They've already taken up the Chechen cause, and they will be
joined in this holy crusade for politically correct multiculturalism and
"democracy" in the Caucasus by the same interventionist liberals who joined
the anti-Slav crusade against Serbia.
I've been covering the Caucasus and predicting it would be a future
battlefield pitting the U.S. and the Europeans against Russia since at least
1999: see here, here, here, here, here, and here - oh yeah, and also here.
(Yikes, there's more!) It's at times like this that weariness almost
overcomes me, and the prospect of repeating myself is most uninviting. There
is nothing new in any of this: the War Party's plans have been apparent from
the start. What is new, however, is this emerging Right-Left alliance of
warmongering "democratizers" unleashed on the hapless peoples of the former
Soviet Union. In faraway places with odd names, like Kyrgyzstan, the
ambitions - and fortunes - of both sides of the political spectrum meet and
merge in a harmonic convergence of interests and ideology.
United in their hatred of Putin and "authoritarian" Russia, the neocons and
the Clintonian liberals will be reunited at last, and can work hand-in-hand
as they did during the run-up to the Kosovo war. As powerful factions on the
"right" and the "left" position themselves to back a policy of Eurasian
aggression by the U.S. and its allies, and the encirclement of Russia
continues, the grand interventionist consensus is taking shape. The marriage
of transnational progressivism and internationalist neoconservatism - of
George Soros' Open Society Institute and the American Enterprise Institute -
will sanctify the rising American Imperium from all sides.
However, a realignment is also taking place on the other side - the
"isolationist" side. Anti-interventionist conservative Republicans have
found their voice and are even beginning to be heard in the halls of
Congress. On the Left, too, it isn't just Ralph Nader who is now speaking
out and becoming actively involved in the fight against interventionism.
Having been lied into war by the Republicans, antiwar liberals are less
likely - at least in many cases - to take the same guff from elected
Democrats.
Don't be deluded into thinking that the American people are so sick of the
Iraq war that they couldn't be whipped up into a renewed war hysteria by the
arrival of some novel "threat," the advent of some new Hitler substitute, a
looming bogeyman to scare them in between episodes of Desperate Housewives
and the latest "reality" show. Yet there is reason to hope that when it
comes to the Caucasus, the War Party might not have such an easy time of it.
For that, in large part, Antiwar.com - with its strategy of forging a solid
Left-Right anti-interventionist united front - can rightfully and proudly
claim the credit.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I had a great time on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! radio-TV broadcast,
commenting on the Larry Franklin spy case, and you can listen to what
someone who got up at 4:00 in the morning sounds like here.
I also have an article in The American Conservative, in the June 6 issue,
but my review of The Woman and the Dynano, Stephen Cox's fascinating
biography of Old Right author and columnist Isabel Paterson, is but a minor
addition to what is a blockbuster issue of TAC: Scott McConnell has a
wonderful account of the life and career of the late George F. Kennan.
Andrew Bacevich - author of the excellent recent book, The New American
Militarism - has a perceptive look at the messianic vision of Paul
Wolfowitz, with the apropos title of "Trigger Man." You won't want to miss
Anders Strindberg's piece on how the neocons are trying to muzzle anyone who
doesn't follow their Israel First line on the Middle East. William Lind on
"the case for mass transit" - I don't agree, but it's an interesting read -
and Nicholas von Hoffman on the vitiation of national sovereignty round out
35 pages of the best of the opinion magazines currently on the market.
You mean you haven't subscribed yet? Well, there's one way to fix that: by
clicking here. And you'd better hurry: I have a major piece on the Larry
Franklin spy scandal due to be published in an upcoming issue, and you won't
want to miss it.
- Justin Raimondo
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress