Robert M. Cutler on Energy and Eurasia

Invited Speech to the Plenary Session "Caspian Sea Resources", Monaco Summit on Energy (Crans Montana Forum in Monaco sponsored by UNIDO). [Material from this speech was incorporated into the 1999 Global Governance article, "Cooperative Energy Security in the Caspian Region: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Development?"

First published in FSU Oil & Gas Monitor, No. 22 (9 March 1999): 7-8. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

Iran, Iraq, and Turkey continue to dominate energy developments in Southwest Asia. Current events make it imperative to assess the state of play in the region as a whole. This week's column analyzes the significance of recent developments for the former Soviet area.

FSU Oil & Gas Monitor, No. 34 (1 June 1999): 2. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

In the early 1990s, the Caspian oil exploration was like a high-ante, high-stakes game of poker with several rounds of draw and a large (but unknown) number of wild cards. A lot of the players frankly acted like cowboys shooting from the hip, and there was a lot of bluffing as well. It was, moreover, a "table stakes" game: if you couldn't meet the level of the bet when it came your turn to call, you had to clear out or find some kind of collateral, usually by signing an IOU to another player who would back you and split any winnings. This is why consortia were established: to pool resources and intelligence.

First published in Eurasia Insight, 06 December 1999.

This commentary provides background on Javakhetia, the ethnically Armenian region in southern Georgia, in order to establish that is not the next Karabakh and not another Abkhazia, and therefore neither flashpoint nor bottleneck for oil pipelines crossing the Caucasus from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Stability in Javakhetia is likely to continue, although in the long term there is a wild card: the Meskhetian Turks, a people deported by Stalin whose has been mandated to their homeland, which lies west of Javakhetia proper and east of Ajaria.

Dissatisfaction among ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan is growing. Many have left since the country gained independence, and those who remain are feeling increasingly frustrated and excluded by "Kazakhization" policies.
Emigration has caused a significant decline in Kazakhstan's overall population, far outpacing the higher birth rates of those remaining.

First published in Central Asia - Caucasus Analyst, vol. 2, no. 8 (12 April 2000): 7-8. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

SUMMARY: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrives April 14 in Kazakhstan, on the first leg of a week-long tour of Central Asia that will also take her to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The visit occurs against a backdrop of increasing Russian diplomatic activity in the region in the period since Vladimir Putin's appointment as Acting President by Boris Yeltsin and subsequent election in his own right. This coincidence opens speculation about United States-Russian relations in Central Asia and the directions Central Asian countries themselves will choose to chart their futures.

First published in Foreign Policy in Focus, December 2000, pp. 1-2. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

It is difficult to say what any new administration's policy will be by the end of the president's term of office. However, there are some clear indications of the broad outlines of U.S. policy toward Russia under the Bush administration as it prepares to take office. This policy will not seek to present a cooperative image of the relationship, as has been so under the outgoing administration. Instead it will have a more overtly "realist" or "realpolitik" approach and will concentrate in the first instance upon European security and controlling arms proliferation.

Ukraine's positioning makes it a natural bridge between East and West. A wise U.S. foreign policy would be one that is sensitive to Ukraine's function as a bridge between Russia and the Western military alliance.

First published in Foreign Policy in Focus, January 2001, pp. 1-2. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

A dangerous blind spot in the incoming administration's view of Russian affairs is its inadequate understanding of the significance of the newly independent states (NIS). The unanticipated consequences of such policy blindness are exemplified by developments in the 1990s in Belarus, formerly called Byelorussia--a country sandwiched between Russia and Poland--sharing a border with Ukraine to the south and with Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest.

First published in Foreign Policy in Focus, March 2001, pp. 1-2. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

The GUAM formation (Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova) had its origin in the 1996 round of talks implementing the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. The four countries found they had a common opposition to the stationing of Russian weapons on their territory. GUAM became GUUAM when Uzbekistan joined in April 1999. According to recent reports, the GUUAM countries intend, in spring 2001, to institutionalize their cooperation by forming a permanent international organization. This organization will have its own secretariat (probably in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine) and a small number of ancillary bodies but will have principally a coordinative function with no supranational authority. In response to this prospect, three schools of thought regarding GUUAM have begun to appear in Western, principally U.S., commentary and analysis.

First published in Central Asia - Caucasus Analyst 3, no. 14 (4 July 2001): 5-6. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

SUMMARY: Only days before the Putin-Bush meeting in Ljubljana, an even more significant meeting took place in Shanghai between Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, within the framework of the mechanism known until recently as the "Shanghai Five" or "Shanghai Forum". At the Shanghai meeting, Uzbekistan was welcomed as the institution's sixth full member. Documents were adopted bearing the titles, "Declaration of the Establishment of the 'Shanghai Cooperation Organization'" and the "Shanghai Covenant on the Suppression of Terrorism, Separatism and [Religious] Extremism". The name-change signals a move to establish a formal structure with a permanent secretariat in Shanghai, and to promote multilateral interministerial cooperation across a wide range of issue areas. It also signals, if one takes Beijing at its word, the incipient coalescence of a Sino-Russocentric geopolitical bloc in Asia. China's vision for such a bloc is to countervail any strategic vision that puts the United States at the forefront of twenty-first century global politics.

First published in Foreign Policy in Focus, 10 September 2001, pp. 1-4. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

[1366 words on the history of the conflict, profiles of major organizations involved, and proposed solutions with an evaluation of their prospects.]

First published in Foreign Policy in Focus, 15 October 2001. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

Earlier this month, a helicopter carrying members of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) was shot down after taking off from Sukhumi, capital of the secessionist region of Abkhazia. It crashed, killing all nine on board. At first glance, it might seem that some party to the secessionist conflict whether Georgian, Russian, or Abkhaz--was trying to take advantage of the world's attention being focused on Afghanistan, in order to pursue tactical, strategic, or political aims in Georgia. However, the situation is more complicated than that.

First published in Foreign Policy in Focus, 28 October 2001, pp. 1-4.
Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

[Summary of the history of the conflict from the 19th century, the role of the United States, proposed solutions and an evaluation of prospects for the conflict's settlement.]

First published in Foreign Policy in Focus, 11 November 2001, pp. 1-2. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

Just when it looked the Central Asian countries were facing the growing joint political hegemony of Russia and China in the region, the events of September 11 opened the door to an increased and indefinite-term U.S. military presence.

Transcript of radio interview, evening of 2 November 2002, with John Batchelor on "Batchelor & Alexander", WABC (New York).

First published in Central Asia - Caucasus Analyst, vol. 6, no. 18 (8 September 2004): 8-9. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

SUMMARY: The supergiant Karachaganak energy field, onshore in northwestern Kazakhstan, sends gas for processing over the Russian border to a processing plant in Orenburg operated by Gazprom. Production is slated to increase. The joint operators of the Karachaganak gas venture, BG and ENI, together with the Government of Kazakhstan, are considering building a plant on-site in Karachaganak to process the new volumes. Gazprom argues against this and is trying to offer incentives to send the gas instead to an expanded Orenburg plant. The eventual decision, coming soon, will have significant implications for how Kazakhstan's national pipeline system develops in the future.

Excerpt from Voice of America report by Barry Wood, "Russia Seeks to Rebuild Reputation as Reliable Energy Supplier" (4 April 2006):

Last January, Russia, unhappy with Kiev's shift to a western oriented foreign policy, threatened to quadruple gas prices for Ukraine and triggered supply disruption. Robert Cutler, an energy specialist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada says Moscow's action called into question its reputation as a reliable supplier. "The current presidential administration did something that no Soviet leadership ever did during the cold war. They cut off gas," he said.

Excerpt from Voice of America report by Luis Ramirez, "Politics of Oil Dominate Shanghai Summit" (16 June 2006):

Analysts say the United States has reason to watch closely for signs of anti-American sentiments at the SCO. Robert Cutler, a senior research fellow at Carleton University in Canada, says the underlying purpose of the organization is for Russia and China to assert their influence in Central Asia. He says this is especially true of China, with its bid to secure energy resources.

Excerpt from Voice of America report by Jela De Franceschi, "Playing Oil Politics in the Caspian Sea" (26 June 2006):

Robert Cutler, a senior fellow at the Institute of European and Russian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, agrees that Russia’s political and economic strength is growing. He says it was clearly demonstrated by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his recent response to the European Union's call to sign on to a multilateral commerce treaty.

"Harmonizing EEC-CMEA Relations: Never the Twain Shall Meet?," International Affairs 63, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 259-70.

This article reviews Soviet perspectives on the European Economic Community (as the European Union was then called) in the early 1970s and then covers subsequent developments between the two European blocs later in that decade and through the early and mid-1980s. This review culminates in an assessment, consecutively, of the legal, economic, and political aspects of EEC–CMEA relations as these stood in early 1987. The article then establishes four possibilities for future relations between the organizations and evaluates these possibilities. It concludes with an attempt to see into the more distant future. Key Eurocrats in Brussels aver that this analysis strongly influenced EEC policy towards East Central Europe in the late 1980s, while the Soviet empire in East Europe was dissolving but the USSR had not yet begun to disintegrate. It includes 23 explanatory and bibliographical notes incorporating sources and studies in English, French, Russian, and Polish.

First published in Asia Time OnLine, 28 February 2007. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

A significant indicator of Turkmenistan's future diplomatic and economic course is whether new President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov will undertake a rapprochement with Azerbaijan.