The greatest oil rush in decades occurred after Western oil companies had spent billions in exploratory and development costs in the Caspian Sea Basin. At least one major obstacle has frustrated businessmen and Central Asia politicians alike. The oil and gas pipelines must still be built along politically stable routes. The Caspian Sea Basin and Western oil companies expect to make piles of money, add several million barrels of oil a day to the current daily output of seventy million barrels, and help the struggling economies in the region. They include Georgia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Kazakhstan,and Turkmenistan, all of them having recently -- since 1991 -- established their independence from Russia. The stakes are huge. At current oil prices per barrel, the participants expect to sell some $4 trillion worth of oil and a very great deal from the sale of natural gas found in Turkmenistan.

The borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were a political hodge podge and senseless established by ethnic and/or linguistic disputes during the period from 1921 to 1991. During Stalin's life -- he died in 1953 -- Stalin killed off the Moslem intelligentsia and deliberately transplanted entire populations, drawing illogical borders in and importing huge minority populations in a region where the lack of natural frontiers had permitted volatile and arbitrary Soviet-drawn boundaries. The Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh was itself surrounded by vengeful Turkish clans. They are a symbol of the violence and genocide of the Turks in 1915; an estimated 600,000 Christian Armenians were killed by the Moslem Turks during World War I. The northern border of Armenia touches on the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. To the south, Armenia shares a border with Iran, and Azerbaijan to the east. A bigger problem was that less than half of the Azeri Turks lived in Azerbaijan; the rest lived in Iran to the south. In his recent book, The Ends of the Earth, Robert D. Kaplan put it this way:

In 1828, Russia made a deal with Persia that split Azerbaijan between them. This illogical frontier obviously had no historical or geographic meaning. In fact, the first flash point of the Cold War was here: In early 1946, Stalin tried to grab all of Azerbaijan up to Tabriz [in Iran] when President Truman forced him to withdraw to the international border. Azerbaijan's borders were merely a colonial fiction that had little to do with demographic and ethnic realities.

In this little corner of Transcaucasia, there are a few small countries spun off from the Soviet Union. Georgia is one of them, and a quarrelsome bees nest including Ossetia, Ingustia, Chechnya, Karachay-Cherkassia, Kabardino-Balkania, and Dagestan are the others. These petty principalities wouldn't matter, except to their inhabitants, and on the map of this area, they straggle along like snails on the back of Georgia.This country gained independence from Russia in 1991, even though Russian border guards still patrol Georgia's frontiers. Eduard Shevardnadze, formerly a Soviet minister of foreign affairs, is the president of Georgia; Tbilisi is its capital city. Ever since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia sought to direct its economy away from Russia and toward the West, and Turkey is now Georgia's main trading partner. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the only foreign organization with an office in Tbilisi. The IMF is the source of credits and foreign assistance. Georgia is already emerging as a transit route for Uzbek cotton, the first time Uzbekistan has been able get its cotton to foreign markets without crossing Russian territory.

Armenia & Azerbaijan

There are other problems. Rail and road links between Georgia and Russia have been cut, a casualty of instability in the breakaway Georgian province of Abkazia to the northwest of Tbilisi and the war in neighboring Chechnya which wants to break away from Russia. Abkhaz secessionists have a large area on the Black Sea. Without any foreign aid from the West, Shevardnadze was forced to agree that Russia might retain five military bases on its territory in exchange for help in regaining control over Abkhazia "Russia has a key to Abkhazia," Shevardnadze noted, and if it uses this key correctly, then it will get the bases. If Georgian territorial integrity is not restored, the agreement on Russian military bases will not be ratified by the Georgian parliament." Georgia now sees itself as a trading crossroad for Uzbek cotton and Caspian Sea oil. In early 1997, construction is scheduled to begin on a pipeline to carry oil from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea port of Supsa. For its part, Russia would like to formalize its presence in Georgia, thereby gaining more leeway under the East-West accord limiting conventional forces in Europe. The Abkhaz secessionists have not been the only source of instability. Armenia is still looking at the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave as essentially theirs. Geographically, this idea doesn't work; Armenia is an enclave within Azerbaijan. For their part, the Azeris were confronted with the problem of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave populated mainly by Armenians. Armenia is a Christian enclave surrounded by Islam. Moscow cannot be seen as favoring Armenia at the expense of Muslim ethnic constituencies. In Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the political movements in both did not begin as anti-Soviet, but initially included demands for the Kremlin to ensure the validity of their respective claims: in the case of Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh to be connected to it, and in the case of Azerbaijan to prevent this. It was the inability of the Kremlin to satisfy both that set the political movements in both republics on a path to independence. In July, 1997, Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a secret deal on the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, allowing a multinational force to monitor the performance of this agreement.

In 1989, Soviet authorities felt that scheduled elections in Baku, the Azerbaijanian capitol city would lead to the election of pro-Armenian candidates. And Gorbachev had sent a signal that violence paid by his failure to use force to protect civilians in the Azeri riots to expel Armenians. There were pogroms in which the Armenians were the victims, but that is what Soviet leaders wanted, a pretext for military intervention. Curiously, the same tactic was being used in Beijing in Tiananmen Square. There, students were the victims. In Baku, the Armenians were victims and had been ever since 1915. It seems clear that the pogroms had been organized for months before the local elections in Baku, and Moscow was aware of this. The pogroms needed only an event to flare up. A decision of the Armenian Supreme Soviet to incorporate Nagorno-Karabakh was the fuse. After brutally killing many Armenians in Baku, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet imposed a state of emergency in Baku and near the border with Iran. During this period, the Soviet Army systematically shot civilians and engaged in wanton acts of violence. The tanks and armored cars of the Soviet Army had to move barricades often defended by unarmed Azeri students. This sorry episode was not reported in the Western press. However, the official version put out by Mikhail Gorbachev's people blamed Azeri nationalism for the violence. President George Bush saw the intervention in Baku as justified by Gorbachev's "need to keep order." One needs to see these regional conflicts as the inevitable aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union beginning in 1989. Seven years later, the son of Azerbaijan's president, Gaidar Aliev, complained about Black January in 1993. Soviet troops attacked and killed many civilians in Baku. And in an interview published in the magazine Azerbaijan International, Ilhan Aliev noted that some million Azeris were refugees after the fighting over Armenia's dispute with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh.

Geopolitical changes on the periphery of the Soviet Union have been the main underlying causes of ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus. Just as in 191821, when the Caucasian conflicts followed the demise of Tsarist Russia, these have come on the heels of the weakening and then the breakup of the Soviet Union. Geopolitics is a function of the vital interests of states and societies. Thus, the Warsaw Pact served the purpose of preserving the social system as a counter to the NATO forces. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, these interests changed abruptly. Moscow had to adjust to the disappearance of Communist rule from the center. There were no more common ideological interests. It is no accident that ethnic groupings and autonomous republics of the periphery were the first to showcase the conflicts. Chechnya, for example, got more worldwide attention from the brutal intervention of Russian troops than ethnic or religious conflicts where different groups fought among themselves. The fighting between Georgia and the secessionist Abkhazia is an example of this type of conflict with Moscow always asserting its own version so as to retain its sphere of interest. In terms of Communist doctrine, the move toward independence of regional governments, even on the periphery is inconsistent with "Socialist unity," (friendship of peoples). At least one other regional difference produced armed hostilities in a geographically insignificant political district of the Soviet Union. Fighting between the Ingush and North Ossetian populations broke out in 1990. Ingush were a "punished people" from the days of Stalin. Large parts of the population were deported to Siberia, and the Ossetes were settled in their place adjoining Chechnya. Moscow, as it usually did, tried to satisfy both sides by calling for rehabilitation of Ingush deportees but made no provision for a welcome by the North Ossetes. Boris Yeltsin, then Chairman of Russia's Parliament, signed this law in 1991. It was criticized by political scientists, as being in contravention of Russia's constitution which stated that borders of the republics inside the Russian Federation could not be changed without the consent of the relevant subjects of the Federation. The same principle was incorporated in the Federative Treaty signed by the republics and regions of Russia in 1992. Later the Russian Parliament imposed a moratorium on border changes within the Federation until 1995. However, during his 1991 presidential election campaign, Yeltsin promised the Ingush to settle their problem by the end of that year, but Yeltsin never redeemed his promise to the Ingush. The virtual secession of Chechnya from Russia prompted members of the parliament to set up a separate Ingush Republic, and this dispute escalated to an acute stage. Moscow ordered action in the area, hoping that General Dzhokhar Dudaev of Chechnya might send troops to help the Ingush, thus giving Russian troops the opportunity of destroying the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic. Dudaev proclaimed neutrality. Then, acting on Yeltsin's orders, the Russians agreed to pull out of both Chechnya and the area claimed by the Ingush. By 1997, the dispute had not yet been resolved. Dudaev was killed in April, 1996. General Alexandr Lebed was sent to Grozny by Yeltsin and directed to negotiate a Russian troop withdrawal in early 1996. Lebed was visiting the United States in early 1997 to make his case for succeeding Yeltsin who was in poor health after heart surgery followed by pneumonia.

Moldova is not really located in the Caucasus, but it recently gained its independence from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and identified with Rumania. At the end of World War II in 1945, some 3 million Rumanians were geographically incorporated in the FSU. With the collapse of the Ceauauscu regime in December, 1989, these Rumanians opted for independence. In December, 1996, Petru Lucinschi , who promised to halt and reverse Moldova's economic decline, captured the presidential election by defeating the incumbent, Mircea Snegur, in a runoff election. Even within Moldova, secession crops up in the potential breakaway Trans-Dnieste region, along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. This area has been tense since a bloody 1992 conflict between ethnic Slav separatists and Snegur's troops. Snegur got about 46 percent of the vote in December, mostly from the Rumanian portion of the total population.

Contested Borders in the Caucasus, edited by Bruno Coppieters is available on the World Wide Web at www.vub.ac.be/POLI/ch0101.htm. Coppieters was of the opinion that "glasnost, with the conflicting decisions of republican bodies, backed by popular mobilizations, with the party un able to gratify the relevant ethnic groups, not only flouted the communist international doctrine (friendship of peoples), but made the party unable to govern. As the party was the cement binding together all of Soviet society and its institutions, the erosion of party rule -- led to the collapse of not just the party, but also the USSR itself. Subsequent experience, especially in the Caucasus, has shown, however, that in a state of disunion the peoples of the exist have had even less chance of reconciling their national demands."

Thus, republics on the western periphery of the Russian Federation are hotbeds of conflict. Belaurus is another. In November, 1996 Moscow attempted to forge a compromise between the nation's autocratic president, Alexander Lukashenko and his principal opponents. Lukashenko, a Stalinist and open admirer of Adolph Hitler, initiated a referendum process that if approved, would have given near absolute power, a step toward totalitarian power in the heart of Europe. A compromise was signed by the President, by their Speaker of the Parliament, and by the visiting Russian Prime Minister, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. No sooner had Moscow proclaim a diplomatic breakthrough than the Belaurus Parliament refused to ratify it on the ground that it left Lukashenko with too much power. Belaurus is simply another republic with conflicting interests. On the one hand, Moscow welcomed the ardently pro-Moscow policies of Lukashenko, but Moscow did not welcome the prospect of instability on Russia's doorstep. Lukashenko was not without power. He threatened that if Parliament did not ratify the compromise, he would consider the referendum expanding his powers as binding. The large majority of his votes came from rural areas, and many of the voters had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl in1986. President Yeltsin has treated Lukashenko gently to avoid endangering the federation endorsed by Yeltsin to please Russia's nationalists and Communists who argue strenuously that Yeltsin gave in to easily to NATO's expansion eastward.

The failure of the Russian Federation to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, at least in part, has led to some unpredictable problems. Nuclear power plants have a useful life of about forty years, and disposing of the highly radioactive waste has been neglected in parts of Russia. Slightly over ten years ago -- 1986 -- one of the four nuclear reactors at Chernobyl in Ukraine went into meltdown. The radioactive cloud that it generated contaminated some 40,000 square kilometers in Belaurus. Russia's three operating plutonium production reactors are over thirty years old and share design characteristics with the Chernobyl-style reactors, including the lack of a containment structure. When these power plants were first built, many of them were built in clusters, with three or four at each site. Chernobyl and Novovorenesh are two examples. Prior to 1987, 13 plutonium production reactors operated at three sites, Krasnoyarsk. Tomsk, and Chelyabinsk. Ten of these reactors have been shut down. In Russia, Gosatomnadzor (GAN) is the agency responsible for safety at nuclear fuel cycle facilities, including plutonium production reactors. The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM) is responsible for most nuclear-related activities in the entire country, including the nuclear weapons production complex and electricity generated by their power plants. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the discipline of operators at these facilities has significantly deteriorated according to one MINATOM official. He also said that the Soviet era emphasis on meeting production goals rather than maintaining safety had hampered efforts to improve safety. GAN inspectors do not have the legislative or other power to enforce compliance with official decrees of the inspectors, nor has GAN been adequately funded to carry out its mission. Furthermore, environmental concerns from Russia's waste disposal policies have received increasing international attention in recent years.

In 1993, for example, the government in Moscow released a report describing over three decades of Soviet era dumping of radioactive waste in the ocean. During this period, Soviet personnel dumped two reactor compartments without spent nuclear fuel into the Sea of Japan, and sixteen reactors into the Kara Sea, six of which had spent or damaged fuel. Without centralized control of nuclear facilities, some of the breakaway countries have no idea how many nuclear facilities are even located in their country. Nor is there anyone willing to disclose this sort of information. The possibility of nuclear theft is too much of a possibility. In fact, in countries like Chechnya, the devastation from two years of bombing and shelling has been almost total.

In his article published in Foreign Affairs for May/June, 1997, Michael Mandelbaum describes the Russo-Ukrainian border as a "flash point" and one of the [two]most dangerous spots on the planet. The other is the Straits of Taiwan. His description was given in terms of the Russia-China position at the end of the 20th century. Even though Moscow has recognized the independent status of Ukraine, it still asserts a claim to this territory with almost 1000 miles of a common boundary with Russia.

Within the last seventy years, Ukraine has had to endure territorial division mostly controlled in Moscow. In the period between 1922 and 1939, drastic efforts were made by the USSR to suppress Ukrainian nationalism. Ukraine suffered terribly from the forced collectivization of agriculture and the expropriation of foodstuffs from the countryside; the result was the famine of 1932 to 1933, when more than seven million people died. Just over twenty-seven years later, the People's Republic of China produced a carbon copy of this famine when over thirty million people died from starvation. Chinese peasants uncritically followed Russian scientific socialism and suffered accordingly under Communist rule. Following the Soviet seizure of eastern Poland in September 1939, Polish Galicia, comprising nearly 24,000 square miles, was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. When the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941 during World War II, Ukrainian nationalists hoped that an autonomous or independent Ukrainian republic would be established and governed by Germans. The Nazis, however, came as conquerors. Ukraine was retaken by the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1944. In the same year, parts of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were added to it, and the region of Ruthenia of Czechoslovakia was added in 1945. The Ukrainian SSR became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945. The Crimean region in Russia was added to Ukraine in 1954, a year after Joseph Stalin died. Communism collapsed in 1991, and the USSR ceased to exist. Ukraine became an independent republic in the same year.

After independence in 1991, political tensions developed in Ukraine over several domestic and international issues. Crimea, which was part of the USSR until 1954, became a source of contention between Moscow and Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine. Some of the ethnic Russians proposed secession from Ukraine. It succeeded only in changing the status of the Crimean oblast (county) to that of an autonomous republic. Crimea also issued a declaration of independence, which was rescinded in May, 1992. In the same month, however, the Russian Supreme Soviet declared the 1954 transfer of the Crimea null and void. The Russian Supreme Soviet also laid claim to the Crimean port city of Sebastopol, the home port of the 350ship Black Sea Fleet, despite an agreement to divide the fleet, which was signed by President Kravchuk and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in August, 1992. Other major issues dividing the two countries include the possession and transfer of nuclear weapons for treatment in accordance with various international treaties, delivery of Russian fuel to Ukraine, the division of Soviet assets and military and political integration within the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). In 1989, Ukraine had a population of 51 million people and is the second most populous country of the former Soviet Union. Its entire population recalls with fear the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. It is surprising that so little has been said about this even in 1996, its 10th anniversary.

The United States has a major interest in Ukraine. In the tripartite accord with Russia and Ukraine in January, 1994, under the terms of which Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union, the United States offered a very general security guarantee to Kiev. The American obligation to each has, implicitly, a nuclear dimension. Both Taiwan and Ukraine could have had their own nuclear weapons but both forswore their use in part at the urging of the United States. Now the United States may have to support Ukraine in the event it becomes the target of an armed attack.

This pact was not the end of nuclear issues. In 1991, three now independent states became nuclear powers after independence, Ukraine, Belaurus, and Kazakhstan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by that of its legal system, Russia and the United States tried to resolve most nuclear issues on an emergency basis, relying primarily on their own conceptions of security. Their shared conception may be summarized as follows: the Soviet Union's position as a nuclear state may be occupied by only one country, and that country is Russia. Hence, nuclear weapons must be withdrawn from the territories of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belaurus. The most convenient way to de-nuclearize these three republics has to be via START I, which provides for a 50 percent reduction of the former Soviet Union's strategic potential. The Lisbon Protocol of START I states that this 50 percent reduction shall consist of the weapons located on the territory of the three republics. Ukraine and Belaurus are adjoining states, each with sharply divergent views of nuclear security. Belaurus acceded to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty on July 22, 1993, while Ukraine became the indirect beneficiary of a treaty between Russia and the United States. Kazakhstan's position is still ambivalent. In late 1993, it and the United States held intensive negotiations. They resulted in the signing of a framework agreement on U.S.participation in, and financing of, the dismantling of Soviet SS19 ballistic missiles. Kazakhstan evidently has been more moderate that either Belaurus or Ukraine. The reason seems fairly clear. For years, it has opposed the Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk. No other country in the world has had to endure as many nuclear tests as Kazakhstan: 459 nuclear explosions were carried out on Kazakh soil, 113 of them in the atmosphere. The People's Republic of China directly east of its border with Kazakhstan, has conducted a large but unknown number of nuclear tests at Lop Nor in Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan). Even before its independence from Moscow, Kazakhstan's leadership had repeatedly raised the issues of the test ban and China's status as a signatory to it.

Grozny, Chechnya's capital city, is a patchwork of burnout buildings and rubble. There is still no running water, and people line up for hours to fill buckets from standpipes in the cluttered streets. With the urban destruction from two years of shelling by Russian troops, the Chechen people still managed to hold an election on January 27, 1997. There were sixteen candidates, and all of them supported independence from Russia. Aslan Maskhadov won handily, leading his closest opponent, Shamil Basayev, with enough votes to eliminate a runoff election in February. Basayev, a military hero, led the deadly hostage raid on a Russian hospital in Budyonnovsk in June, 1995. Maskhadov negotiated and signed the agreement with Russia in August, 1996. The only important issue during the campaign was the fact that crime had run out of control in Chechnya. Neither of the two leading candidates had much to say about just how crime might be brought under control. Were the bandits and thugs put to work rebuilding Chechnya's infrastructure they would not have time to run around waving guns and stealing. Another feature of the country's economy is oil. However, the pipelines used to carry it were converted into a tangled mass of steel by a war lasting two years.

Had Russia not signed a peace agreement with Chechnya in August, 1996, it would not have been able to join the Council of Europe. This is an international association of forty states which are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.. The Council of Europe's main arm is the European Court of Human Rights with offices in Strasbourg, France. The Council of Europe is not connected with the European Union, but all EU members are signatories to the Convention. In 1993, the Council had good reason to hold in camera meetings in Chechnya; Russia's brutal intervention in the internal affairs of that beleaguered country troubled Mde Leni Fischer, president of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly. In December, 1996 she affirmed the Council's right to hold such hearings. "Human rights violations are never an internal affair." she said. Russia had applied for membership in the Council of Europe. Its application was held up pending an investigation of human rights violations in Chechnya. Mde Fischer added that "the Assembly's favorable opinion on Russia's request for membership was largely based on Russia's specific commitment to find a peaceful solution to the Chechen crisis." The so-called Dagestan Agreement was signed by Aslan Maskhadov, General Alexandr Lebed, and Vladimir Lukin, advisor to Lebed and Chairman of the Russian Parliamentary delegation. For very much the same reason, the application of Belaurus for membership in the Council of Europe was put on hold. The constitution drafted for the referendum in Belaurus fell far short of the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights. As of January, 1997 the Belaurus membership application had not been approved by the Council of Europe. In fact, there is even a possibility that Belaurus may decide to rejoin Russia.

Chechnya had held free elections monitored by representatives of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They were fair, according to a consensus opinion of the monitors in late January, 1997. The Council of Europe may have to reconsider its admission of Russia, if that country now decides to ignore its agreement of August, 1996. In that agreement Russia agreed it would not raise the issue of sovereignty over Chechnya for five years from the date of the Dagestan Agreement. In fact, Russia has been using Chechnya's secession as a pretext for retaining control of the pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea Basin to Europe. While some of the oil field's equipment may have been destroyed by Russia's shelling of targets during its brutal shelling of Chechnya, major oil companies have been in the wings ready to finance construction of new pipelines bypassing Iran -- Clinton Administration objections -- and Russia. This route could allow dockside loading of oil using a Turkish site on the Mediterranean Sea with tanker loading facilities, e.g. Ceyhan or Iskanderum. A pipeline to either one would eliminate passage of tankers through the Black Sea and the always possible oil spill on Turkey's front door. The majors are patient, because they have to be. The water level in the Caspian Sea has increased by about two meters in the last twenty years. As a result, most of the oil wells in the Caspian Sea Basin are flooded by water runoff. There are other consequences. Questions of mineral rights are arising, and treaties that have been painstakingly negotiated are being invalidated by changes in sea level.

Just next door is the Aral Sea lying partly in Uzbekistan and partly in Kazakhstan. Eons ago, it was the fourth largest body of water in the world. Today, in 1997, there is virtually nothing left of it. The Aral Sea is a closed system and gets its water from two rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Daraya. However, there is no outflow of water; a great deal of it, is lost by evaporation Water from the rivers just mentioned has been diverted to irrigate land for cotton, a major export crop. After the Soviet Union replaced the Russian Tsar, traditional agricultural practices were destroyed by Soviet collectivization, and Soviet planners sought products that could be exported for hard currency.

They placed cotton high on the list, and the Soviet Union became a net exporter of cotton in 1937. Change accelerated in the 1950s, as Central Asia farmers irrigated agriculture, expanding and mechanized the entire process. The Kara Kum Canal opened in 1956, diverting large amounts of water from the Amu Darya into the desert of Turkmenistan, and millions of acres came under irrigation after 1960. After that year, the level of the Aral Sea began to drop, while diversion of water continued to increase. Gradually the seabed became exposed and dried out. Winds picked up an estimated 43 million tons of sediments laced with salts and pesticides, with devastating health consequences for surrounding regions.

In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union planned and began construction of a canal to carry water from Siberia to the Aral Sea. It was abandoned by Mikhail Gorbachev, and some authorities said it was planned to fail. Even after its cancellation, water meant for the Aral Sea continued to be diverted for agriculture. Critics of the canal said the diversion continued because cotton was the only cash crop in the region. Soviet obsession with central planning and the bottom line caused the impending death of the Aral Sea. The only way money may be useful in dealing with the consequences of environmental disaster is from the sale of oil and gas to Europe. In 1994, there was a meeting of the countries of the region, and not enough of them had contributed the share they had promised a few years earlier. The San Diego State University has organized the Central Asia Research and Redemption Exchange to study what might be done to restore the Aral Sea area, but hardly anyone is counting on concrete results from countries just learning to vote in free elections. In the meantime, some 75,000 people had lost their livelihood; some were fisherman, and some were farmers. The remaining water is too saline to drink, and there has been no commercial or other fishing since 1982. Russia's environmental record in the Caucasus amounts to criminal indifference. There is no reason to believe it will be any better when oil and gas are the two commodities are transported by pipeline via Chechnya or via the Black Sea. Turkey has adopted regulations covering tanker passage through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The passage through the Bosporus Channel is too narrow for big oil tankers; there are four sharp right-angle turns and a 250,000 ton oil tanker simply could not negotiate passage without closing this channel for at least three days. As a matter of interest, revenues from the Suez Canal have declined for the last ten years, and the big tankers choose to take the route around the Cape of Good Hope rather that the expense, risk, and delay of using the Suez Canal. It's not deep enough for the 250,000 ton tankers.

On March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez rammed the rocky Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound spilling 240,000 barrels of petroleum in those pristine waters. The final cleanup costs were in excess of $2 billion. Other spills were not as large as this one, but French and Spanish residents have done more than their share of cleanup in well-publicized disasters of oil tankers. Environmentalists don't have to look too far for evidence of degradation. In 1922, for example, oil was discovered in Venezuela. By 1929, it was producing 135 million barrels a year, thereby enriching President Juan Vicente Gomez beyond belief. Then Standard of Jersey developed a new approach to drilling wells under water. In no time at all, Lake Maracaibo was a textbook example of what not to do to prevent environmental degradation. All the lake's fish were dead or dying. A spectator could stand at the entrance to Lake Maracaibo and see the evidence of water pollution from the long lines of oil well towers to the south of this entrance. Environmental pollution is not the only practice for which the major oil companies could be and have been criticized. All the majors had marketing problems, so they used price cuts to enter a market. In 1959, Standard of Jersey made a unilateral price cut without consulting Middle East countries whose oil was being sold. Naturally, the price cut reduced national revenue, and the rulers were furious. Out of this rage, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC) was formed with only one objective, to defend the price of oil. OPEC on balance, was a colossal failure, and it has more or less disappeared in terms of fixing the price at which its member companies could sell their oil. Oil was discovered in Algeria and Libya, and prices of oil fell sharply. The supply of oil was far greater than the demand, and the rulers of Iran and Iraq were more interested in revenue than seeing OPEC flex its muscles. Furthermore, OPEC was never designed to deal with major oil fields about to go online.

In October, 1995 representatives of the world's major oil companies gathered in London to see the latest find from the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan had oil since the turn of the century, but its output was never developed to use deep drilling over water. In fact, the oilfields near Baku were set afire in 1908 to prevent Russia's Tsar from seizing them. Today, oil experts are openly stating that the oil in the Caspian Sea Basin greatly exceeds the reserves publicly disclosed. The reserves are conservatively estimated at 125.5 billion barrels. And the one pipeline already in place runs through Chechnya and north to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Chevron Corporation reported oil discoveries in Kazakhstan with eventual output of 700,000 barrels per day. British Petroleum and Amoco found wells in both the Chirag and Azeri fields, and it estimates at least 4.5 billion barrels in these two fields, and other fields remain untapped but with very large reserves of oil. According to a member of Clinton's National Security Council, "The Caspian and Kazakh basins are going to be the major source of world energy in the twenty-first century. The reserves are up there with the Persian Gulf." Presi dent Clinton made it quite clear that no pipeline route would be allowed to run through Iran, nor would any partner in the consortium sell any of its interest to Iran. Recently, however, the Clinton Administration has changed its position on Iran and will probably not oppose the construction of a pipeline through a part of Iran ending in Turkey. Both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan had huge natural gas reserves, some say in excess of 18 trillion cubic meters.

To develop these oil and gas resources, the majors and Azeri entrepreneurs have put a consortium together, the Azerbaijan International Operating Consortium (AIOC). The Azeri, Chirag, and Deep-Water Gunashli fields have a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with seven countries: British Petroleum (17.1267 percent ), Pennzoil (US 4.8175 percent), Exxon (US 8.0006 percent), Unocal (US 10.0489), Amoco (US 17.01 percent), Delta (Saudi Arabia 1.68 percent), TPAO (Turkey 6.75 percent), Itochu (Japan 3.9205 percent), Statoil (Norway 8.5633 percent), Lukoil (Russia 10 percent), SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic 10 percent), and Ramco 2.0825 percent).

A different group has been formed to develop the Karabakh Prospect: AGIP (Italy 5 percent), Pennzoil (US 30 percent), SOCAR (7.5 percent), Lukhoil (7.5 percent), and LukAGIP (50 percent). The latest prospect to receive parliamentary approval in Azerbaijan was the Shah Deniz Prospect. British Petroleum and Statoil (51 percent), TPAO 9 percent), National Iranian Oil Co. (10 percent), Elf (France 10 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), and SOCAR 10 percent). Some of the same oil companies are developing fields in the South China Sea. Chevron is the largest such company.

Both the major oil companies have expressed real concern for the security and environmental consequences of exporting oil either by pipeline or tanker via the Black Sea. There are oil ports on the Black Sea but only one route for tankers to follow in getting oil to the Western markets: through the Turkish straits to the Mediterranean Sea. The straits consist of three connected bodies of water. The first is the Bosporus, the narrow channel from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and the third is the Dardanelles.

The Bosporus is the crux of the matter. Passage through it is difficult, in both nautical and legal terms. Supertankers may use the route only by prior agreement. Ship's captains or pilots have to navigate a 17.5mile passage between the Black Sea and the heart of Istanbul which involves four right-angle bends. At Kandili, where there are two tight bends in just a few hundred yards, the waterway between Europe and Asia is just 2,200 feet wide. Since there are some 4,000 ship movements in the strait every day, this passage requires prodigious effort. Even with medium-sized tankers, the waterway has to be closed for almost three hours. For a tanker of 250,000 tons, a supertanker, the waterway must be closed for much longer. Thus, in addition to the snail's pace of tankers, they all face the danger of a collision and an oil spill. The Black Sea is already seriously polluted, and Turkey seems determined to prevent further degradation of its waters. The Montreux Convention of 1936 makes the straits international waterways, and the Constantinople Convention of 1889 also makes the straits open to all vessels. However, the size of the tankers is quite limited because of the height limit of 58 meters. Furthermore, no real supertanker may possibly transit the Bosporus without the real danger of running aground because of its draft. These daunting issues are not the end of the problem. Like China, Turkey has a minority problem. The Kurds live in southeastern Turkey, and any pipeline through disputed territory might be sabotaged by rebellious Kurds.

China is a major player in this game. It too, has unruly tribal dissidents on its borders in Xinjiang. China's remarkable growth rates required huge new energy sources and promised to revolutionize the economics of oil. China is now a net importer of oil, and it needs huge finances to develop its Karamay and Tarim basin oil fields. In November, 1993 China became a net importer of oil, and its trade deficit ballooned to 600,000 barrels a day by the end of 1996. Kent Calder's article in the March/April 1996 Foreign Affairs, entitled Asia's Empty Tank offers more detail, but the need for oil in huge amounts exists. Unless China is willing to rely on synthetic gas as Adolph Hitler did during World War II, it may have to resort to other means to ensure a reliable supply of oil. The first move in this great game was an agreement in August 1997 between China and Kazakhstan to build a pipeline some 1,300 miles to a destination in China's Xinkiang Province or even further east.

In late April, 1997, Chinese officials signed agreements with General Motors calling on that company to manufacture about 100,000 cars per year. It's unfortunate that a country already so burdened with problems arising out of pollution decided to create more; it had a golden opportunity to avoid the need to build highways, filling stations, and refineries to service a growing flood of cars. China could have opted for French, German, or Japanese high-speed trains to various cities, instead of highways and the urban sprawl associated with the automobile.

Beijing is not concerned with environmental degradation from the automobile; the arrival in China of General Motors and other American companies merely feeds China's dollar reserves. The vindication by force of its interest in Taiwan would unquestionably bring military confrontation with the United States. However, the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 declares that the United States expects the future of Taiwan to be settled peacefully and that any effort to decide it by force would be of "grave concern" to the United States. For the time being, China seems willing to rule Taiwan from Beijing and occasionally flex its muscles as it did when the Taiwanese president accepted an invitation to visit the United States and his old college in 1996. President Clinton did not hesitate to send two carrier forces to the Straits of Taiwan as China conducted "live fire" exercises during the elections on Taiwan. Clinton has seemed more cautious recently. He saw the Dalai Lama in Washington, but along with other officials not known for their anticline policies. However, in no case should the United States appear indifferent to the safety or the independence of Taiwan. The proper American goal is the continual deferral of any change in Beijing's view of Taiwan as a wayward province it will eventually reclaim.

In the meantime, Azerbaijan has problems with its neighbors. In Volume 143, No. 59 of the Congressional Record for May 8, 1997, Senator Robert Byrd described one of them. Entitled American Interests in the Caspian Sea Region, Senator Byrd stated in part:

Mr... Byrd. Mr... President, American involvement and interests in the Caspian Sea Region, have been increasing recently. While this region is new on the political map of American policy makers, in that the newly sovereign nations there were formerly Republics under the rule of the former Soviet Union, they represent very substantial new opportunities for the United States. From the point of view of energy reserves, the tremendous hydrocarbon resources which are available for development in the region are of world-class potential. The extent of the resources which apparently exist, particularly in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan could well serve as an long term alternative to Western dependence on vulnerable supplies of Persian Gulf oil...

Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act enacted in 1992 reduces the assistance the United States might offer to Azerbaijan It provides that U.S. assistance "may not be provided to the government of Azerbaijan until the President determines and so reports to Congress, that the government of Azerbaijan is taking demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh." Thus, the government of the United States may not provide financial support through the Export Import Bank or risk insurance via the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation (OPIC). Furthermore, Armenia can freely accept arms from Russia to use in its low level dispute with Azerbaijan. According to a letter to Senator Byrd, the Azerbaijan ambassador to Washington noted in part: "I would remind you about the one billion of an illegal arms shipment from unofficial sources in Russia [delivered] to Armenia," creating a strategic imbalance for my country. Signed by Hafiz M. Pashayev, Ambassador, on May 8, 1997.

Russia engages in these deceptions to ensure the continuance of the low level dispute with Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow has no interest in helping Western countries to ship oil out of the Caspian Sea basin via pipelines controlled by major Western oil companies. Control of the pipeline routes is a Moscow objective. Some authorities suggest this opposition springs from attempts by the United States to expand NATO.

Boris Yeltsin said with respect to the expansion of NATO: "Just a the document says, decisions are to be made only be consensus. If Russia opposes any decision, it will not be adopted." Clinton Administration officials deny that Russia has any such veto. In that case, Russia will drag its heels on ratification of Start II, the treaty that reduces the number of Soviet nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. Poland and the Czech Republic argue that Russia will be allowed to join NATO before them, while Clinton officials say that NATO expansion was only intended to stabilize Central Europe by admitting Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The Clinton proposed NATO expansion was and continues to be a major mistake. Instead of being admitted to NATO, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary should be satisfied with their membership in the NATO Partnership for Peace.

The Partnership for Peace began in 1994. As an initiative of the United States, the PFP existed to establish strong links between NATO and its new democratic partners in the former Soviet bloc. Some twenty-six countries have joined. It is obvious from a list of these countries that they would not be entitled to a security guarantee under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty of April 4, 1949 with the exception of those countries already members of NATO. Russia is a member of the PFP and NATO. They include Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belaurus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan Despite the right of any member to consult with NATO, its Secretary General has not yet dealt properly or at all with a serious dispute on its agenda, the civil war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. NATO was established in 1949 to serve as a defensive shield against Russia in Western Europe, and this treaty worked well to absolutely deter the first or any use of nuclear weapons. Russia has now refused to forswear a first use of nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice issued an Advisory Opinion on July 8, 1996 concerning the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The justices of the ICJ were unanimous in concluding "that any use of nuclear weapons contrary to Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter, and not vindicated by Article 51 [would be] unlawful." See 91 American Journal of International Law 64 (1997). In only one dispute, Armenia seems to have prevailed in 1992, when Congress enacted the Freedom Support Act.

On behalf of the Secretary of State, the report required by Congress was sent to Senator Byrd by letter of April 15, 1997. It stated in part that "This report to Congress addresses the request of the FY statement of managers accompanying the FY Foreign Operations bill as incorporated in P.L 104208. The Caspian Basin region is made up of the five littoral states of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. With the exception of Iran, these littoral states are all mem beers of the PFP. With potential reserves of as much as 200 billion barrels of oil, the Caspian region could become the most important new player in world oil markets over the next decade..."

A month earlier than the letter from Azerbaijan's ambassador, the State Department sent a letter to Senator Byrd dated April 15, 1997. In part, it read:

Dear Senator Byrd: On behalf of the Secretary of State, I am transmitting to you a report as requested by the Joint Exploratory Statement of the Committee of Conference accompanying the Foreign Operations Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997, as enacted in P.L. 104208, that contains a plan for action for the United States Government to assist and accelerate the earliest possible development and shipment of oil from the Caspian Sea region to the United States and other Western markets...

Resolution of regional conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya is also critical for successful and comprehensive energy development in the region. It is utterly absurd to allow one party to a dispute -- Russia in the civil war between Armenia and Azerbaijan -- to prolong that dispute by shipping arms unofficially to Armenia. Yet, that is exactly what Russia did. It seems obvious that Russia is trying to sabotage Start II as retaliation for expansion of NATO. Instead, Clinton should abandon the expansion proposal and substitute the Partnership for Peace in the interests of collective security. NATO was originally intended to deter nuclear war in Europe. The Partnership for Peace now includes every country in Europe -- Russia is a member. The Partnership fills the void in Central Europe, resolves disputes and provides troops for Nattered peacekeeping. American foreign policy should concern itself with reducing the number of nuclear weapons controlled by Russia. At least one of its former republics; Ukraine has already sold nuclear missiles to Libya and Russia has sold some to Iran. By midday, 1997 it was too late for Clinton to abandon the idea of enlarging NATO. However, he may want to consider positioning existing NATO forces closer to its southern flank. Defense planners argue that the gravest risks of future military conflict spring from myriad centers of instability along this flank. Turkey, for example, threatens Cyprus. Kurd dissidents within Turkey and Iraq are a threat to Turkey itself, and brush-fire disputes in Abkhasia, Armenia, and North Ossetia could turn into larger fires. The next war in this unstable area might grow out of explosive factors, such as economic difficulties, water shortages, religious fanaticism, or immigration. And the Mediterranean region supports the world's busiest shipping lanes; to keep oil flowing and commercial goods moving among the Western economies. Furthermore, at least one of the countries on NATO's southern flank still has nuclear weapons. Too many NATO forces are committed to Germany, an area where the Russian threat has all but vanished. Some of the 84,000 American forces in Germany as part of NATO might be better positioned in Azerbaijan.

The oil in Azerbaijan has now become a huge source of petroleum which Russia has been trying to control. No official estimates of oil reserves have been released, but the major oil companies -- mostly American -- are thought to be looking at 200 billion barrels in the Caspian Sea Basin. Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, once a seasoned Communist trained in the old Soviet Union, has now seen the wisdom of seeking hard commitments from Washington and the oil majors. During the 199294 war, Armenian troops seized some 20 percent of Azerbaijan, known as Nagorno-Karabakh and still occupy this region. An unnamed diplomat in Baku noted that "The reception Aliyev got in Washington would have been totally unthinkable even two years ago. The [high level meeting: President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen] certainly had an impact on the Armenians. They see Azerbaijan making very important gains in the West, and also enjoying a new closeness with Israel and therefore with the Jewish lobby in Washington. Either the Armenians make peace now or wait until Azerbaijan builds up its lobby and uses its oil money to build a powerful army, possibly one trained by the American military. In a few years this army is going to be strong enough to crush Armenia militarily, so it's in everyone's interest to negotiate a settlement [of the Nagorno-Karabakh] now." An American pipeline financed by the major oil companies seems even more certain to run through Turkey to Ceyhan, a port on the Mediterranean Sea and bypassing the Black Sea. Passage through the Bosporus is fraught with navigation hazards, and tankers still have the Dardanelles to navigate. If the route through Turkey is chosen, the choice will have been approved by the United States; the Clinton Administration will have agreed to help the Kurds of south central Turkey. President Clinton will have to redeem American promises to the Kurds going back to 1991 and even earlier.

Russia's President Boris Yeltsin has been frustrated by his own diehard financial people. And Western oil companies have become equally frustrated by roadblocks raised by the new Russian capitalists; they want the oil to remain in the ground so they can keep more of the oil profits for themselves. Western oil companies have begun to cut their Moscow staffs and redirect their attention to the Caspian Sea Basin, including Kazakhstan. In 1987, Russian oil production was about 12 million barrels a day, but it has now dropped to 6 million barrels per day in 1997. Victor Orlov, Russia's Minister for Natural Resources recently said that "without new financial support, Russia's oil production could drop to 3.6 million barrels a day. However, the sheer vastness of Russia and its harsh climate, its limited network of pipelines and the burden of outdated Soviet era technology have made oil development a herculean task. Pennwell's pipeline map for 1994 shows few pipelines to the Northern reaches of Russia. In Siberia, for example, the cost of drilling for and recovering slow-flowing oil is very high. Even so, Orlov's deputy argues that foreign companies are making a mistake in insisting that all of their new investments take the form of production-sharing agreements because of the difficulties and delays in arranging them. The major oil companies would rather wait. Amoco, for example, has put its Priobskoye project in central Siberia -- 4.5 billion barrels in reserves -- on hold. There were too many investors trying to divvy up the spoils and demanding more from Amoco. This bureaucratic mess has led the Western majors to move on the Caspian Sea.

Kazakhstan is a nuclear power by virtue of the fact that certain Soviet-made nuclear missiles are located in that country and have been ever since the years before the Soviet collapse in 1991. The United States could help terminate this status by persuading Kazakhstan to accede to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The United States and Russia have promised Kazakhstan they would guarantee the territorial integrity and security of Kazakhstan following the destruction of Soviet ballistic missiles and the elimination of nuclear-armed aircraft on Kazakh territory. To make matters more complicated than ever, Kazakhstan remains dependent on Russian oil, and Russia has been actively undermining Kazakh efforts to develop and export its own petroleum resources.

Listen to some classical Azerbaijani music. It's an excerpt of Gara Garayev singing Leyli and Majnun.

All contents © 1998 William M. Brinton