Russia & Georgia - It's all about Oil & Gas

When the DREAM Act passes early next year, lets hope Congress does not include the military option like it did last October (07). It would be outrageous to tell DREAMers they have to fight Russia for oil and gas. If our government tries to convince us that this conflict is about freedom - then we will know for sure that they must think Americans are morons.

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Democracy Now
Friday, August 15, 2008

Russia-Georgia Conflict Fueled by Rush to Control Caspian Energy Resources

Human Rights Watch has accused both Russian and Georgian forces of killing and injuring civilians through indiscriminate attacks over the past week of fighting. Professor and author Michael Klare joins us to talk about how the Russian-Georgian conflict is largely an energy war over who has access to the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Caspian region...

we’ve poured hundreds of millions of dollars into beefing up the Georgian military. And this is unmistakable in the State Department and military Department of Defense justifications for arming the Georgian military, specifically to protect the BTC pipeline against sabotage and attack. So, looking into the Pentagon and State Department documents, there’s no question that this is about energy security, not about democracy or human rights or the other justifications that have been given...

I believe that the Russians have always been resentful of this effort by the United States to bypass Russia...it is the ambition of the Russian leadership, especially Vladimir Putin, to dominate the flow of oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, so they could maximize the profit and the political advantage of dominating the flow of Caspian energy to Europe. And by building these alternate pipelines, the US is trying to undercut Russia’s political and economic power in Europe. That’s what this is about. It’s a geopolitical contest between the US and Europe for—between the US and Russia for influence in Europe.

So, by clinging to these enclaves, this is Russia’s insurance policy, I guess you could call it, or veto power, over the American strategy, because they’re saying, “From our positions in these enclaves, we can sever those pipelines whenever we want,” which is exactly what they attempted to do this week. They did in fact bomb or attack the pipelines. And what they’re saying to the Europeans is, “You can build pipelines through Georgia, but we can snap them whenever we want.” And I think that the message that they’ve been sending to the Europeans is, “Don’t think that you could build more pipelines through Georgia and they’ll be safe. They’ll never be safe.”

...what’s underway in Europe is an effort headed by the EU to try to get under the thumb of Gazprom’s dominant role in the delivery of natural gas. Gazprom now delivers something like one-fourth of Europe’s natural gas. And if Gazprom has its way, it will double the amount of natural gas it supplies to Europe.

This has many Europeans and the United States deeply worried, because it kind of undercuts NATO’s independence. So, under American prodding, Europe has plans to build an alternative energy natural gas system called Nabucco, after the opera by Verdi, and this would go right through Georgia. And I think one of the major objectives of Russia’s incursion into Georgia is to say to the European leadership, “Your ideas about Nabucco are futile, because we can smash the Nabucco system anytime we want.”

Michael Klare, [is a] defense analyst for The Nation, director of the Five College Program for Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst. His latest book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.

for link to complete interview click here