Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, June-July 2000 Grand Strategy By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor
The Great Game for OIL EXCERPT During the last quarter of the 20th Century, in the aftermath of the oil crisis of the mid-1970s, the United States Government has relentlessly sought to ensure control over the key energy resources feeding the US and Western markets. . . . It has since the mid-1970s continuously engaged in a series of undeclared wars, as well as the declared Gulf War of 1990-91, in order to ensure the West's access to, and hegemony over, the key energy resources of the Persian Gulf, and, more recently, Central Asia and the Caspian Sea Basin (commonly known as "The Persian Gulf of the 21st Century"). . . . In the 1990s, Russia and the US were once again facing each other over energy resources, this time in the quest for the access to the resources of the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia. And once again, the US was - and is, as the 21st Century dawns - encouraging its allies to support the irregular Islamist forces fighting the Russians, while providing strategic and diplomatic umbrella, and reviving radical militancy in the process. In all three cases, the US sought to intervene and manipulate the geo-strategic struggle between Russia (Soviet Union) and militant Islamism in order to ensure the West's control over regional oil and gas resources. The US intervention has always been on the side of Islam, and the US's primary instruments of confronting Russia have been radical Muslim forces - either Islamist mujahedin (in the cases of Afghanistan and Chechnya) or radical-revolutionary Ba'athism (in the case of the Iran-Iraq War) - even though these US-supported militants have always been virulently anti-US. . . . Part Two . . . . Meanwhile, the US under the Reagan Administration was appropriately preoccupied with meeting the growing Soviet threat. During the 1980s, Washington was paying close attention to the Soviet military buildup and growing capabilities worldwide to the point of examining all world events through the prism of US-Soviet bipolarity. Consequently, all the unfolding in the developing world, if noticed by Washington at all, were reacted-to on the basis of their real, potential or imaginary contribution to the Soviet strategic posture. Hence the evolution of the Reagan Doctrine to "roll back" the USSR (as well as Cuba and Vietnam) from strategic locals in the Third World. In this context, the US and Western allies assisted a host of savory, not-so-savory and completely unsavory characters such as the Afghan mujahedin, Saddam Hussein, Angola's Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement, as well as the Nicaraguan Contras. The complex character of, and inherent problems with, these "freedom fighters" were known but essentially ignored in Washington because they were "rolling back" the "Evil Empire."In the Reagan Administration's Washington, nobody really bothered about the long-term ramifications of the US-assisted empowerment of these "freedom fighters" over their countries. . . . .The early 1990s saw the end of the Cold War and the ensuing US assertion as "World Leader" through intervention in the intra-Arab crisis in the Persian Gulf which became the US-dominated Gulf War and the intervention in the collapse of Yugoslavia which led to US direct military intervention and to the still unfolding fratricidal wars and seething hatred throughout the Balkans. . . . President Clinton's so-called foreign policy has taken the quest for instant political gratification to extremes. For the Clinton White House, two subjects dominate US "foreign policy" - cheap oil and cheap consumer goods - in order to increase popularity among average Americans, irrespective of corruption scandals and other mayhem. . . . The quest for cheap oil means the dominance of "Muslim interests" over US policy vis-a-vis any "cause" involving Muslims such as the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Hence, the Clinton Administration did its utmost to ensure that Bosnia-Herzegovina would became a Muslim state, and bombed the civilian-economic infrastructure of Yugoslavia to empower the Kosovo Albanians. . . . NATO's expansion eastward (despite US President George Bush's commitment to Soviet Pres. Gorbachev that NATO would not advance beyond a unified Germany) and subsequent meddling in the Baltics and Caucasus raise a credible doubt as to the end of confrontationalism in Europe. Moreover, the US interventionist policy in the Balkans, particularly the demonization of the Serbs, touched a raw nerve over the viability of the US "clash of civilizations" doctrine in which the Eastern Churches are on the "wrong side" of the divide. . . . Washington is once again seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces. The US crossed the line in mid-December 1999, when US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahedin from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. . . . Washington's motivation is oil pipeline politics and the economy. Essentially, Washington is determined to deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism, the political fallout of media accusations of Russian war crimes. . . . And so, in the Summer of 2000, the Clinton Administration keeps fanning the flames of the Islamist jihad in the Caucasus through covert assistance, tacit encouragement of allies to actively support the mujahedin, as well as the orchestrating of an intense media campaign against Russia and its conduct in Chechnya. The Clinton Administration's obsession with short-term gains, including the escalation in the Caucasus, cannot alter the overriding trends affecting the long-term and vital interests of both the United States and Russia. As a result, it is important for both Washington and Moscow to re-examine the basic premise of their relations. . . . - - - - - Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy is published by the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), Alexandria VA 22320. www.StrategicStudies.org - - - - - I
