---ooO-(_)'Spammer
2008-08-19 18:22:09 UTC
Russia's Return Bites the Neocons' Grand Energy Scheme in the Ass
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com. Posted August 19, 2008.
You have to ask what were they smoking over at the Pentagon and the CIA when
they thought they could control Russia's close neighbor.
The feeble American response to Russia's assertion of power in the Caucasus
of Central Asia was appropriate, since our claims of influence in that part
of the world are laughable. The US had taken advantage of temporary
confusion in Russia, during the ten-year-long post-Soviet-collapse interval,
and set up a client government in Georgia, complete with military advisors,
sales of weapons, and even the promise of club membership in the western
alliance known as NATO. These blandishments were all in the service of the
Baku-to-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which was designed specifically to drain the
oil region around the Caspian Basin with an outlet on the Mediterranean,
avoiding unfriendly nations all along the way.
At the time this gambit was first set up, in the early 1990s, there was some
notion (or wish, really) among the so-called western powers that the Caspian
would provide an end-run around OPEC and the Arabs, as well as the Persians,
and deliver all the oil that the US and Europe would ever need -- a foolish
wish and a dumb gambit, as things have turned out.
For one thing, the latterly explorations of this very old oil region --
first opened to drilling in the 19th century -- proved somewhat
disappointing. US officials had been touting it as like unto "another Saudi
Arabia" but the oil actually produced from the new drilling areas of
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the other Stans turned out to be
preponderantly heavy-and-sour crudes, in smaller quantities than previously
dreamed-of, and harder to transport across the extremely challenging terrain
to even get to the pipeline head in Baku.
Meanwhile, Russia got its house in order under the non-senile, non-alcoholic
Vladimir Putin, and woke up along about 2007 to find itself the leading oil
and natural gas producer in the world. Among the various consequences of
this was Russia's reemergence as a new kind of world power -- an energy
resource power, with the energy destiny of Europe pretty much in its hands.
Also, meanwhile, the USA had set up other client states in the ring of
former Soviet republics along Russia's southern underbelly, complete with US
military bases, while fighting active engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, if this wasn't the dumbest, vainest move in modern geopolitical
history!
It's one thing that US foreign policy wonks imagined that Russia would
remain in a coma forever, but the idea that we could encircle Russia
strategically with defensible bases in landlocked mountainous countries
halfway around the worldÂ…? You have to ask what were they smoking over at
the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSC?
So, this asinine policy has now come to grief. Not only does Russia stand to
gain control over the Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline, but we now have every
indication that they will bring the states on its southern flank back into
an active sphere of influence, and there is really not a damn thing that the
US can pretend to do about it.
We could have spent the past ten years getting our own house in order --
waking up to the obsolescence of our suburban life-style, scaling back on
the Happy Motoring, reconnecting our cities with world-class passenger rail,
creating wealth by producing things of value (instead of resorting to
financial racketeering), protecting our borders, and taking the necessary
measures to defend and update our own industries. Instead, we pissed our
time and resources away. Nations do make tragic errors of the collective
will. The cluelessness of George Bush is nothing less than a perfect
metaphor for the failure of a whole generation. The Boomers will be
identified as the generation that wrecked America.
So, as the vacation season winds down, this country greets a new reality. We
miscalculated in Western and Central Asia. Russia still "owns" that part of
the world. Are we going to extend our current land wars there into the even
more distant and landlocked Stan-nations? At some point, as we face
financial and military exhaustion, we have to ask ourselves if we can even
successfully evacuate our personnel from the far-flung bases in Uzbekistan
and Kyrgyzstan.
This must be an equally sobering moment for Europe, and an additional reason
for the recent plunge in the relative value of the Euro, for Europe is now
at the mercy of Russia in terms of staying warm in the winter, running their
kitchen stoves, and keeping the lights on. Russia also exerts substantial
financial leverage over the US in all the dollars and securitized US debt
paper it holds. In effect, Russia can shake the US banking system at will
now by threatening to dump its dollar holdings.
The American banking system may not need a shove from Russia to fall on its
face. It's effectively dead now, just lurching around zombie-like from one
loan "window" to the next pretending to "borrow" capital -- while handing
over shreds of its moldy clothing as "collateral" to the Federal Reserve.
The entire US, beyond the banks, is becoming a land of the walking dead.
Business is dying, home-ownership has become a death dance, whole regions
are turning into wastelands of "for sale" signs, empty parking lots, vacant
buildings, and dashed hopes. And all this beats a path directly to a failure
of collective national imagination. We really don't know what's going on.
The fantasy that we can sustain our influence nine thousand miles away, when
we can't even get our act together in Ohio is just a dark joke. One might
state categorically that it would be a salubrious thing for America to knock
off all its vaunted "dreaming" and just wake the fuck up.
James Howard Kunstler is the author of the World Made by Hand.
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com. Posted August 19, 2008.
You have to ask what were they smoking over at the Pentagon and the CIA when
they thought they could control Russia's close neighbor.
The feeble American response to Russia's assertion of power in the Caucasus
of Central Asia was appropriate, since our claims of influence in that part
of the world are laughable. The US had taken advantage of temporary
confusion in Russia, during the ten-year-long post-Soviet-collapse interval,
and set up a client government in Georgia, complete with military advisors,
sales of weapons, and even the promise of club membership in the western
alliance known as NATO. These blandishments were all in the service of the
Baku-to-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which was designed specifically to drain the
oil region around the Caspian Basin with an outlet on the Mediterranean,
avoiding unfriendly nations all along the way.
At the time this gambit was first set up, in the early 1990s, there was some
notion (or wish, really) among the so-called western powers that the Caspian
would provide an end-run around OPEC and the Arabs, as well as the Persians,
and deliver all the oil that the US and Europe would ever need -- a foolish
wish and a dumb gambit, as things have turned out.
For one thing, the latterly explorations of this very old oil region --
first opened to drilling in the 19th century -- proved somewhat
disappointing. US officials had been touting it as like unto "another Saudi
Arabia" but the oil actually produced from the new drilling areas of
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the other Stans turned out to be
preponderantly heavy-and-sour crudes, in smaller quantities than previously
dreamed-of, and harder to transport across the extremely challenging terrain
to even get to the pipeline head in Baku.
Meanwhile, Russia got its house in order under the non-senile, non-alcoholic
Vladimir Putin, and woke up along about 2007 to find itself the leading oil
and natural gas producer in the world. Among the various consequences of
this was Russia's reemergence as a new kind of world power -- an energy
resource power, with the energy destiny of Europe pretty much in its hands.
Also, meanwhile, the USA had set up other client states in the ring of
former Soviet republics along Russia's southern underbelly, complete with US
military bases, while fighting active engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, if this wasn't the dumbest, vainest move in modern geopolitical
history!
It's one thing that US foreign policy wonks imagined that Russia would
remain in a coma forever, but the idea that we could encircle Russia
strategically with defensible bases in landlocked mountainous countries
halfway around the worldÂ…? You have to ask what were they smoking over at
the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSC?
So, this asinine policy has now come to grief. Not only does Russia stand to
gain control over the Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline, but we now have every
indication that they will bring the states on its southern flank back into
an active sphere of influence, and there is really not a damn thing that the
US can pretend to do about it.
We could have spent the past ten years getting our own house in order --
waking up to the obsolescence of our suburban life-style, scaling back on
the Happy Motoring, reconnecting our cities with world-class passenger rail,
creating wealth by producing things of value (instead of resorting to
financial racketeering), protecting our borders, and taking the necessary
measures to defend and update our own industries. Instead, we pissed our
time and resources away. Nations do make tragic errors of the collective
will. The cluelessness of George Bush is nothing less than a perfect
metaphor for the failure of a whole generation. The Boomers will be
identified as the generation that wrecked America.
So, as the vacation season winds down, this country greets a new reality. We
miscalculated in Western and Central Asia. Russia still "owns" that part of
the world. Are we going to extend our current land wars there into the even
more distant and landlocked Stan-nations? At some point, as we face
financial and military exhaustion, we have to ask ourselves if we can even
successfully evacuate our personnel from the far-flung bases in Uzbekistan
and Kyrgyzstan.
This must be an equally sobering moment for Europe, and an additional reason
for the recent plunge in the relative value of the Euro, for Europe is now
at the mercy of Russia in terms of staying warm in the winter, running their
kitchen stoves, and keeping the lights on. Russia also exerts substantial
financial leverage over the US in all the dollars and securitized US debt
paper it holds. In effect, Russia can shake the US banking system at will
now by threatening to dump its dollar holdings.
The American banking system may not need a shove from Russia to fall on its
face. It's effectively dead now, just lurching around zombie-like from one
loan "window" to the next pretending to "borrow" capital -- while handing
over shreds of its moldy clothing as "collateral" to the Federal Reserve.
The entire US, beyond the banks, is becoming a land of the walking dead.
Business is dying, home-ownership has become a death dance, whole regions
are turning into wastelands of "for sale" signs, empty parking lots, vacant
buildings, and dashed hopes. And all this beats a path directly to a failure
of collective national imagination. We really don't know what's going on.
The fantasy that we can sustain our influence nine thousand miles away, when
we can't even get our act together in Ohio is just a dark joke. One might
state categorically that it would be a salubrious thing for America to knock
off all its vaunted "dreaming" and just wake the fuck up.
James Howard Kunstler is the author of the World Made by Hand.