Robert M. Cutler on Energy and Eurasia

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.

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.

First published in Central Asia - Caucasus Analyst, vol. 2, no. 18 (9 May 2001): 7-8. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler

SUMMARY: Earlier this month India's Prime Minister Atel Behari Vajpayee became only the second Indian head of government to visit Tehran since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the first in over seven years. At the head of a large delegation, he signed seven cooperation accords on energy, water, trade and science but sought to downplay efforts at bilateral defense cooperation.

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.

First published in Asia Times OnLine, 20 February 2003. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

Press reports have indicated that what separates the United States and Turkey in their negotiations [over conditions for American access to Turkish territory and facilities for military action against Iraq in 2003] the size and nature of the economic package wanted by Ankara. This is partly true, but it is not the whole story, and not even necessarily the most important part of the story. Military aspects of any Turkish incursion into northern Iraq and political aspects of northern Iraq's future are, rather, the more significant sticking points. Before discussing the latter, it is nevertheless useful background to review how the level of the economic package has recently increased.

First published in Asia Times OnLine, 05 March 2003. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler. Please see reprint info for information on rights.

Press reports, especially in North America, suggested that a deal between Ankara and Washington was just a question of money, using the metaphor of the bazaar to explain Turkish negotiating behavior. In the end, this description was shown to be ill-conceived and inaccurate. More was at stake than just the amount of money. Turkish leaders consistently said so, but no one in Washington seemed to hear them. The American administration also appeared to assume that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara could make its parliamentary deputies fall into line as easily as the Republican Party in the US can whip its congressmen and senators into supporting administration policy.

First published in Asia Times OnLine, 07 March 2003. Copyright © Robert M. Cutler.

The Turkish Grand National Assembly, in failing to approve the economic assistance package to be provided to Turkey by the US in return for American troops using Turkish soil for an attack on Iraq, also failed to authorize Turkey's army to enter northern Iraq. The Turkish constitution requires a parliamentary vote to send the country's armed forces outside its own borders. With this not being approved, the dynamics of the impending war have changed.

When US President George W. Bush was in India this month, he caused a flurry of commentary, especially in the Indian media, by appearing to lift long-standing American objections to the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan to India. "Our beef with Iran is not the pipeline," he said in Islamabad. "Our beef with Iran is the fact that they want to develop a nuclear weapon ... We understand that you [Pakistan] need to get natural gas, and that is fine."

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.

English original of the text in press, in Kurdish, in the Erbil news-weekly Gulan

Question: What is your point of view on Iraq's near-term future? Will U.S. policy fail? And if so, will Iraq be divided?

Answer: The U.S. policy succeeded in removing Saddam Hussein, which was very important to the Kurds in Iraq. But further U.S. policy will fail if it seeks to destroy the secular and socially progressive aspects of the Iraqi culture, which include health care delivery, high literacy rates, education for girls as well as boys, etc.