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Abstract:Contents:
Turkey's enhanced geopolitical significance in the post–Cold War era is evident from an examination of the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) project for natural gas from Turkmenistan. This article looks at Turkmenistan's situation within the Turkey–Russia–Iran triangle, examines the negotiations among different stake-holders with a focus on the first half of calendar year 2000, and contextualizes the analysis in a series of interrelated regional and global contexts including South Asia and Central Asia. It emerges from the analysis, that among Russia, Turkey and Iran, Russia is the agenda-maker in Central Asian diplomacy and Iran is the agenda-taker. This makes Turkey the (potential) agenda-breaker. However, the degree of agenda-bending of which Turkey is capable, will be greatly limited by increased dependence on natural gas from Russia via the Blue Stream project. Ironically, much of this gas will likely be of Turkmenistani origin.
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The Cold War international system was a top-down hierarchy, but the post–Cold War system is a complex system. A complex system is a system whose overall behavior cannot be predicted from the behavior of its parts. For world politics, this means that middle powers and local particularities have become the principal driving forces in an international system that now self-organizes from bottom up. This characteristic developed under the cover of the Cold War. Now that superpower bipolarity has disappeared and the international system has become complex, the entire broad band of countries and regions from the Balkans to Xinjiang has become the focus of new sets of international and transnational networks of interdependence, the whole of which is impossible to reduce to the sum of its parts.[1] The end of the bipolar Cold War system has underlined the salience not only of new international regions, but also of new categories of international regions. For example, littoral basins have become more important. Also, regional international systems are more and more strongly linked together among themselves.[2] The connections between the Black Sea region and the Caspian Sea region provide ample example of these phenomena.
There are two principal reasons why these developments have occurred. First, in a complex system, which really is a network, communication becomes more important than
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Realpolitik control. The issues that come to the fore around littoral basins such as the Black Sea and Caspian Sea are precisely issues of communication in the broad sense: international public-policy issue areas such as ecological security, pollution control, and the regularization of waterborne trade. The well-known cases of international cooperation around the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea illustrate this as well. Second, the international political agenda now requires multilateral cooperation to solve these problems, because they are not zero-sum. They are indicators of the general movement towards enhancing "nontraditional" security regimes in regional international systems overall.[3]
A focus on questions of communications and flows (rather than territorial control) involving the two littoral basins of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea inevitably draws attention to energy export pipeline projects. Complex-system analysis draws special attention to undersea pipeline projects, because they unify elements of adjacent subregions in new ways that can alter the inherited balance of power Geopolitik.
From a complex-system perspective, the major regional players who do the most to contextualize any situation and to influence its evolution (without controlling it hegemonically) are the middle powers. In the central section of the extended Caspian/Black Sea meta-region, these powers are Turkey, Russia, and Iran. In the context of energy development, they all happen to be transport-holders.[4] A focus on the central and principal swathe of the Caspian/Black Sea meta-region thus highlights the Turkey's significance in the development of the architecture of the regional components of the emerging international system, and the relations among these components.[5]
This article focuses on Turkey's significance as reflected in one energy pipeline project in particular: the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) from Turkmenistan. As of this writing, the odds for the TCGP are not as good as they seemed in early 2000. That does not affect the argument developed here, because the purpose is to analyze the reconfiguration of this piece of the Caspian region, within the complex system of post–Cold War international relations. The first part of this article reviews Turkmenistan's situation within the Turkey–Russia–Iran triangle, from the standpoint of its natural resources and gas in particular. The second part of the article recapitulates and analyzes the negotiations, debates, and arguments among the different stake-holders concerned with the TCGP, focusing on the first half of calendar year 2000. Part three takes the insights from parts one and two, and contextualizes them in a series of interrelated local, regional, and global contexts. Part four, the conclusion, then focuses back in, on the relationship between Turkey and Turkmenistan in the circum-Caspian crucible, relying upon the re-integration of the multiplicity of contexts that are unpacked in part three.
Turkmenistan has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world, but since independence it has had trouble establishing regular outlets for its energy. The country's gas sales represent about two-fifths of its total exports. The main
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problem is that all of its major export pipelines run through Russia. Gazprom allowed Turkmenistan's gas into Western markets until 1993 when, realizing Turkmenistan was a potentially dangerous competitor in international markets, Gazprom in October closed export access to the West. Ukraine became the main consumer, accounting for over three-quarters of sales, with Armenia and Azerbaijan taking up most of the remainder. In the mid-1990s, Western interest in Turkmenistan focused on facilitating arrangements for Ukraine's payments of its debts to Turkmenistan for natural gas supplies. This was manifest, for example, in the attendance by high U.S. officials at talks in Ashgabat between Presidents Kuchma and Niyazov in November 1994. These talks rescheduled those debts to accommodate Ukraine's shortage of capital and its needs to concentrate on domestic economic development. However, payments problems became endemic and caused a crisis in Turkmenistan's export revenues. After Turkmenistatn halted deliveries to Ukraine in March 1997, canceling an agreement with Gazprom and Itera because the figure of $32 per 1000 cubic meters was too low, its gross domestic product for the year declined by a quarter and its trade deficit ballooned. In contrast to a production level of nearly 85 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in 1991, Turkmenistan produced only 13.2 bcm in 1998 and 23 bcm in 1999.[6] In the early 1990s, a project idea originated at a meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), to build a pipeline able to transport 15 bcm from Turkmenistan to Turkish markets, through Iran and southeastern Turkey. An international consortium comprising Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Turkmenistan was even formed in the early 1990s, but the required capital of $1.9 billion for the project was never found.
Ukraine is historically the largest consumer of Turkmenistan's gas but has endemic cash-flow problems. An outstanding debt of $100 million for previous deliveries was only recently settled. Mostly due to re-inaugurated imports from Ukraine, Turkmenistan's exports increased by two-thirds in the first half of 1999 by comparison with the same period in 1998, from 13.3 to 22.4 bcm. Still, Ukraine's inability to pay led Turkmenistan to seek other customers. That led to the December 1999 contract with Russia for 20 bcm in 2000, designed to take up the slack. For this contract, Russia's Gazprom maintained an offer with 70 per cent of the payment in barter and 30 per cent in cash. Turkmenistan insisted on $40–42 per 1000 cubic meters with 50 per cent payment in cash. A compromise was reached at $36 per 1000 cubic meters with 40 per cent in cash.
Turkmenistan projects total gas exports of 50 bcm by 2005 and 120 bcm by 2010. This quantity would require export routes other than the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) even if this were built and operating at full capacity by then. Turkey would receive a maximum of 20–30 bcm via the TCGP, and only 5 bcm in the first year. Turkmenistani gas already goes to northwestern Iran through a 30-inch diameter pipeline around the Caspian's southern shore. It is possible that this pipeline may be extended into Turkey, but it is not only the U.S. sanctions on Iran that prevent this. Although Turkey already imports gas from Iran, to U.S. dissatisfaction, the reason why it favored the TCGP project as
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opposed to the overland route around the south Caspian is that it does not wish to make itself vulnerable to political blackmail by allowing Teheran to control the taps of too many energy pipelines.
Turkey's demand for natural gas in 1999 was 12 billion bcm. Of this, just under four-fifths came from Russia. The remainder of Turkish imports in 1999 from Algeria as liquefied natural gas (LNG). Turkey projects a domestic need of 55.2 bcm by 2010 and 82.7 bcm in 2020. Even if domestic need does not rise that high, Turkey will easily find customers for re-export of any energy it does not itself consume. Given Turkey's dependence, the political rationale is not clear for Turkey's agreement with Russia on the Blue Stream project across the bottom of Black Sea. (This pipeline will be the deepest gas conduit in the world, well over a mile underwater in places, and seeks to deliver 16 bcm per year to Turkey over 25 years at full capacity.)
Turkmenistan's gas is important to Putin because Russia needs gas to make up for the shortages created by its export commitments to Europe and lack of domestic investment. It is estimated that Gazprom's 2001 shortfall in supplying the Russian domestic market is 40 bcm. This is why Gazprom tried to accept more than 30bcm in 2001, the limit this pipeline network can presently handle. Under current arrangements, 20 bcm of natural gas will be shipped to Russia in 2000, and 8 bcm to Iran. However, Turkmenistan's own Korpedzhe gas field lost crucial exports to Iran in May 2000, when Iran cut its gas imports as a sign of dissatisfaction over the prospect of Russian involvement in the Dauletabad field. This gas, on the Iranian border, is the same field involved in Unocal's failed project to construct a pipeline via Afghanistan to carry 20 bcm per year for Pakistani markets.
Gazprom is considering taking gas from the Dauletabad, which is still hooked up to the old Soviet pipeline network. Iran has invested nearly $200 million to construct the pipeline from Dauletabad connecting Turkmenistan and Iran, funds that have still not been repaid either in cash or in kind. Turkmenistan and Iran have had price disagreements, and Turkmenistan's gas supplies to Iran of only 1 bcm per year have fallen short of the agreed 5 bcm. As of mid-July 2000, therefore, Turkmenistan was under increasing pressure to reach a deal with Russia. The Russian company that would have transported the gas from Turkmenistan rejected Niyazov's asking price of $46 per 1000 cubic meters announcing that even $36 per 1000 cubic meters would be too high.
Iran is ready to deliver natural gas to Turkey under terms of an agreement already reached. However, Turkey has indicated that under the terms of this "take-or-pay" agreement, it is for now inclined neither to take nor to pay. Iran tried to impose a $200 million fine for this, but since Turkey now recognizes the jurisdiction of international arbitration courts in such matters, whereas Iran does not, Teheran's only recourse, were it so inclined, would be to pursue Turkey in Iranian courts and obtain a judgment there. But how it would collect such a judgment is by no means clear. In fact, Turkey's domestic gas distribution network is still incomplete; so the deliveries are unlikely to begin before the second half of 2001 at the earliest. They are scheduled to begin with about 4 bcm per year, increasing to 10 bcm per year by 2005.
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The contract to construct the TCGP was awarded in 1998 to PSG, a joint venture of Bechtel and the GE Capital unit of General Electric. Royal Dutch Shell later joined the consortium. Construction was to begin in early 2001 and be finished by late 2002, with deliveries starting in early 2003. This timetable assumed that the agreements between the contracting consortia on the one hand and the transit countries on the other hand, would be no obstacle. After many bilateral consultations, and the initialling of framework accords in Istanbul at the mid-November 1999 OSCE summit, the first multilateral series of meetings of parties interested in the TCGP was held in mid-January 2000 in Ashgabat.
Certain technical matters had already been resolved. The undersea section of the TCGP would consist of two lines. The pipe diameter would vary from 28 to 52 inches, depending upon seabed topography. Limitations on pipe-laying capacity in the region would also constrain the diameter. It would be laid starting from the Sakhra station in Turkmenistan, across the Caspian seabed, and along the border of Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey.
As in the case of the Baku-Ceyhan Main Export Pipeline (MEP), the negotiations would be technically intricate, because the pipeline would cross more than two countries. However, an organizational and legal template already existed, provided by the negotiations over the contractual infrastructure for the MEP. Thus, various agreements to be hashed out included a multilateral agreement on gas purchase and sales, an agreement among the countries concerning rights and responsibilities, bilateral agreements between the TCGP consortium and each of the four countries concerned (transit countries Azerbaijan and Georgia in addition to Turkey and Turkmenistan), the pipeline construction contract, the agreement on pipeline use, an agreement about a feasibility report, and a series of other documents concerning financial matters.
The discovery and proof in late 1999, of the large gas-and-condensate field at Shah-Deniz, offshore from Azerbaijan, changed the overall equation. According to BP-Amoco specialists, the Shah-Deniz deposit is the second largest in size and volume that the company has ever developed. Surveyed reserves credibly place total volume between 700 and 1,000 bcm. Azerbaijan wanted to put this gas into the TCGP on its way to Turkey. A dispute began with Turkmenistan over the volumes to be allocated between the two countries. Of the TCGP's 30 bcm, originally all was to have come from Turkmenistan. Turkey had contracted for 16 bcm per year for its domestic market, with the other 14 bcm being re-exported to Europe for hard-currency earnings. Now Azerbaijan wanted those 14 bcm of the TCGP's annual volume for Shah-Deniz gas.
In the beginning, neither Turkmenistan nor Turkey was enthusiastic over the Shah-Deniz prospect. However, it seemed to help satisfy a Georgian demand to be allowed to receive energy supplies from the TCGP project. The country's
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MEP policy had imposed similar requirements for oil from the Baku–Ceyhan pipeline, and these demands were ultimately satisfied. The Georgia International Gas Corporation demanded to operate its own segment of the TCGP, to participate in businesses connected with the pipeline, to collect transit fees, and to consume some of the gas going to Turkey. Partly for this reason, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) entered talks with foreign investors about the prospect to refurbish an existing gas pipeline between Azerbaijan and Georgia, to provision the latter with Shah Deniz gas. This project is now going forward.
Azerbaijan's negotiating position over TCGP volume allocation was based upon its assessment of its own export capacity needs. Its 14 bcm demand was a maximum throughput quota that would not be reached in the first year of production. BP-Amoco, which leads and operates the Shah-Deniz consortium, estimated it would take only two years to ramp up to maximum volume. Niyazov insisted it would take at least five, and he refused to countenance Baku's demand for nearly half of the TCGP volume. However, Azerbaijan wanted to agree in advance on a quota that would not inhibit future development, even if that quota were not fulfilled in the first year. So Baku maintained a figure of 14 bcm annually from the start. Niyazov refused to discuss the matter, and in reply he reiterated Turkmenistani claims to some major Azerbaijani offshore oilfields. That shocked everyone, because the documents that Niyazov initialled at the mid-November 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul had settled this matter.
Although the Russian press reported that the U.S. proposed a 20 per cent compromise, President Niyazov of Turkmenistan accused the United States of supporting Azerbaijan's request for half the TCGP volume. After the mid-February 2000 stalemate in Ashgabat, the Turkemenistani side assumed the obligation to fine-tune the TCGP deal. It was anticipated that President Niyazov would undertake to work out those conditions with President Aliev. Oddly, he gave U.S. negotiator John Wolf until the end of March to devise a financial and project plan to guarantee that Turkmenistan would not lose money if it agreed to Azerbaijan's demands.
At the same time, Niyazov extended the mandate for PSG and the TCGP consortium, which expired February 19, until March 20. Towards the end of February, Wolf again visited Niyazov in Ashgabat, where the latter excoriated him face-to-face on live television. Niyazov blamed Wolf for the impasse and stated that he would consider opening at most one-sixth (5 bcm per year) of the TCGP volume to Azerbaijan's gas from Shah-Deniz. This is in fact the export volume earlier foreseen by Baku in the first year of developing the Shah-Deniz deposit. This figure is just under 17 per cent, and so appeared as a negotiating reply to the reported U.S. "compromise" proposal of 20 per cent.
Niyazov turned to Gazprom to seek a deal. The Azerbaijani side countered, on the basis of the Shah-Deniz find, that it was perfectly content to proceed on its own, with construction of a gas pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. With
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Shah-Deniz, it did not need Turkmenistani participation or the TCGP. Since Azerbaijan would be able to limit the volume of gas from Turkmenistan to be allowed into the TCGP across its territory, it could have killed the project by making the financial parameters uninteresting to investors. On the other hand, if Turkmenistan did not show definite interest, then Azerbaijan and the Shah-Deniz consortium were ready to construct their own pipeline to Turkey. As the TCGP talks were failing in Ashgabat, BP-Amoco was indeed making it clear that it did not intend to wait to move on exploiting the Shah-Deniz deposit. It announced plans to take Shah-Deniz gas to Turkey following a timetable similar to that projected for the TCGP. However, the prices would be better than those Turkmenistan could offer.
Gazprom board chairman Rem Vyakhirev was in Ashgabat in mid-February 2000, waiting for the TCGP talks to fail. At this time, the figure of 100 bcm per year for Turkmenistani gas exports to Russia was batted about in the press. The basis for this was Niyazov's public statements, but Vyakhirev put the upper limit at half that quantity. By the time Vyakhirev met with Niyazov in Ashgabat on 19 February, the only points to be resolved were whether Turkmenistan can deliver the amount of gas foreseen in the agreement and what the price should be. However, these were not minor points.
The growth of Turkey's energy demand is such that it would be able to consume both Azerbaijan's and Turkmenistan's gas, whether the latter be piped through the Caucasus or around the Caspian Sea to Russia and then, via Blue Stream, under the Black Sea. PSG's Smith, speaking in Baku in early March, was optimistic that Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan would ship their gas through a single pipeline, rather than choose inefficiently to build separate systems. He argued that the 14 bcm per year over which Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan disagreed, should be allocated by the market.
On March 9, Niyazov was shown on Ashgabat television, announcing that President Heydar Aliev of Azerbaijan had agreed in a telephone conversation to scale down Azerbaijan's demands to one-sixth of the pipeline's capacity. An Azadinform press dispatch from Baku confirmed on March 10 that a telephone conversation had taken place between the two presidents and that an agreement had been reached. However, the proportions were not confirmed; the agreement could have simply involved the need to agree. Niyazov, who had visited Baku a few years before, now invited Aliev to be his own guest in Ashgabat for a signature ceremony. Aliev replied publicly that he would accept the invitation to Ashgabat for late April, only if the conditions of the deal were agreed before then. Clearly, not everything was settled.
President Aliev, in statements to the press, further suggested that the ongoing negotiations between Turkmenistan and Russia represented only "maneuvering" on Niyazov's part. Aliev further called attention to the apparent contradiction between Turkmenistan's stated intention to turn to Russia on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the agreements signed in Istanbul at the mid-November 1999 OSCE summit. These agreements foresaw the export of gas
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from Turkmenistan to Turkey via the TCGP, through Azerbaijan and Georgia, and specifically not via the Blue Stream project running under the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey. The U.S. representative Wolf himself underlined that the agreement was for Turkey to buy gas from Turkmenistan via the TCGP and not via the Blue Stream pipeline from Russia under the Black Sea. Ankara likewise restated that it would import Ashgabat's gas only via the TCGP. And Turkey can pay hard currency, whereas the trade with Russia historically is barter in large part: the 1999 agreement for deliveries to Russia in 2000 is paid only 40 per cent in cash.
The time for discussions between Aliev and Niyazov would have been the Turcophone summit in Baku in early April 2000. When Niyazov chose not to attend this meeting, Aliev was reported to be furious in private. It is not hard to see why. Such an attempt to pressure the Azerbaijani side, without agreeing the contract terms before Aliev's trip to Ashgabat projected later in April, would have put Aliev in the role of supplicant going to Niyazov. In Niyazov's absence, Aliev agreed with the Kazakhstani representative to look for ways to import gas from Kazakhstan through the Soviet-era pipeline system stretching around the Caspian Sea. What is notable in this decision is Turkey's acquiescence in it, for Turkey had long required delivery of Turkmenistani gas through a TCGP as a condition for accepting Azerbaijan's gas. Press reports suggest, however, that an element in the Turkish decision was Niyazov's insistence on a large up-front payment, from which he had earlier desisted at President Demirel's personal request during a visit to Ashgabat.
In the late 1980s President Turgut Özal promoted the foundation of Organization of Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). In the early 1990s it was widely thought that this initiative, together with a certain cultural history, would make Turkey the dominant regional power in Central Asia. Euro-American assessments of Central Asia in the early 1990s tended to project a competition in Central Asia between Turkey and Iran. Given the historical ties of the two cultures in the region, this was not unreasonable, particularly since Russia had not yet consolidated its state after the break-up of the Soviet Union, and China had not yet become as assertive in the region as it is today. Still, the competition between Turkey and Iran, which in fact never occurred, was posited on the basis of domestic social and political orders: Turkey's "secular Islamic" model of government versus Iran's "fundamentalist Islamic" model. The West hoped that Turkey's secular order would be a model of political development for Central Asia.[7]
Iran, fearing that the BSEC initiative would inaugurate a Turkish push for economic expansionism, sought a counterweight by re-invigorating the
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Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). Since then, BSEC has had greater success developing itself institutionally than ECO. However, ECO has not failed to develop regional networks of interdependence. The idea to pipe Turkmenistan's gas to Europe through Iran, for example, was born at an ECO summit.[8] The determining factor has been that Turkey is the only ECO country that really has any significant capital available for foreign direct investment. Yet Turkey's inability to provide truly large amounts of investment capital led to her discrediting as a viable development alternative in the eyes of Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Central Asian countries, disappointed with Turkey as "older brother," turned to other sources. This political disappointment, combined with the consolidation of Russian political structures in the post-Soviet era and China's lack of reticence in showing its expansionist desires, has led to increased influence of these two countries.
India sees Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as central to its larger strategic objectives, with Uzbekistan being the key to the region and natural partner. A strategic relationship is emerging between Uzbekistan and India focusing on the counterinsurgency issue area, which combines the three separate issues of cross-border terrorism, Islamic extremism and drug trafficking. Turkmenistan shares some of these interests but is less antagonistic towards the Taliban in Afghanistan, who propel a good portion but not all of the insurgent activity in the region. India and Turkmenistan are nevertheless discussing the application of commercial agricultural techniques and energy cooperation.
India is a natural future market for Central Asian energy. The question is how to get it there. In the mid- and late 1990s, India was seeking ways to import Turkmenistan's gas. The Taliban have not provided Afghanistan with the stability necessary for Unocal to construct its projected pipeline across the country and through Afghanistan to India. In the last year, however, as Western investment in Iran has begun to increase, following the U.S. administration's decision not to sanction European and Japanese companies doing business with the country, the South Pars gas fields in Iran have come under increased attention. In early July 2000, after nearly a decade of dithering, Pakistan finally took a decision to permit a gas pipeline to cross its territory to India. Now, however, it will carry gas from Iran rather than from Turkmenistan.[9]
After PSG pulled out of the TCGP consortium, Royal Dutch Shell, which joined it in late 1998 about a year after Bechtel and the GE Capital Group created it, went back to Niyazov with several new proposals of its own for TCGP construction. Shell's public declarations in favor of proceeding can only be described as ardent. Yet in early July, when President Jiang Zemin of China visited Ashgabat on a Central Asian tour, a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China was on the agenda. The length of such a pipeline, passing through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan would be greater than the width of North America from Los Angeles to New York City. Projected at 5,730 kilometers, it would deliver 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually and cost approximately $11 billion. The idea of such a pipeline was first bruited in the mid-1990s and the re-
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animated in late 1997 and early 1998, when the CNPC began to make its first forays into Central Asia to slake China's growing energy thirst.
The U.S. emphasis on the Baku–Ceyhan MEP leads the Europeans to view Americans as interlopers intent on cutting Russia out of the picture. This disquiets Europeans because they have to live with Russia and do not wish to put the bear in a cage. Certainly there are those in Washington who have this as their purpose. But in reality, there is no way that Russia will be cut out of the region, regardless of rhetoric from the New World. The initial success of Russian president Vladimir Putin's incipient policy of moderate re-integration of the "Near Abroad" demonstrates this. In fact there are two issues in play here. First, Europe wants Baku's oil for itself; but if this goes to Ceyhan, then it will be loaded into tankers for trans-oceanic export. Second, the European Union's declaration of Turkey's candidacy for membership signifies, at last, a recognition that the Siege of Vienna is over. However, Europe has yet to overcome its trepidation of Russia, born during the reaction against the 1848–49 wave of revolutions, as the "gendarme of Europe." This is still so, despite Russia's present and projected weaknesses at the economic, social and demographic levels.
Therefore, the Europeans look at Russia and are pleased with the way in which they have been able to draw it and its constituent entities into cooperative networks and ventures around the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea, as well as the Murmansk area. Now they seek to engage Russia constructively in the Caucasus, in order to provide stability for all parties concerned and especially to bring Russia into European structures of security and cooperation. The European Union, despite protestations about the Baku–Ceyhan MEP, has done at least as much as the United States to promote a Eurasian energy corridor in the Caucasus, through its TRACECA and TACIS programs. In such a European effort, it is necessary also to mention the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Energy Charter Treaty and Conference, although these are not part of the family of European Union institutions. (The Energy Charter Treaty and Conference did, however, result from an initiative of the European Union in the early 1990s.)
The above-mentioned developments in Russian–Turkmenistani energy relations came on the heels of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Ashgabat in mid-May 2000, during which he reached an agreement in principle to increase Russian gas purchases from Turkmenistan. This is yet another indicator of Russia's renewed interest in Central Asia since Putin assumed control. That agreement in principle provides for renewal and expansion of the
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December 1999 agreement to export 20 bcm during calendar year 2000. Specifically, it increases this figure by 10 bcm per year for three to four years until import levels reach 50–60 bcm per year. However, the price is yet to be agreed. This agreement in principle between Turkmenistan and Russia came as talks on the TCGP had reached a standstill. Putin's meeting in Turkmenistan raises the competitive stakes in the Caspian region. Since his rise to power, Moscow has increased its attention to Central Asia. Beyond natural gas talks, Russia and Turkmenistan established an intergovernmental commission for general economic cooperation and agreed to enhance bilateral relations.
When Niyazov turned to Russia, he seemed to be only creating problems for himself, as larger sales to Russia would likely lead only to lower prices for Turkmenistan's gas. Without the TCGP, there would not even be any bidding competition for it. Turkey's agreement with Turkmenistan for TCGP gas was reportedly at a fixed price only for the first six months, thereafter to be re-negotiated to reflect market forces. Yet Niyazov asserted that if he accepted Baku's terms for allocating the pipeline's quota, then Turkmenistan would need eight years a profit on the pipeline. This country already confronted in mid-2000 an external debt estimated at $3 billion, a problem only exacerbated by its post–Soviet trading partners inability to make regular payments on gas imports.
It is worth noting that this Ashgabat meeting followed Putin's visit to Tashkent, where he saw Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov and promised assistance against armed insurgents in the south of the country. Uzbekistan wishes still to keep a margin of political maneuver in its relations with Russia, but when Putin visited Uzbekistan in mid-May 2000, President Karimov declared to that the two view of the countries on security issues did not differ. Gazprom, which looks to enhance its role in Turkmenistan, will import gas from Uzbekistan. In Kazakhstan it has taken over the Belgian energy company Tractebel's operations after the latter pulled out over disagreements with the government.
The disintegration of Cold War era state boundaries has dissolved the apparent integrity of Southwest Asia. "Southwest Asia" is a useful geographical term, but it is only descriptive. This category first gained prominence in the early 1980s, as the United States created its Rapid Deployment Force in response to perceived regional threats, but the region was never a cultural, economic, or political unity. Another geopolitical concept inherited from Western strategy during the Cold War is the so-called "Northern Tier." During the 1990s, a new Northern Tier, extending from Turkey in a crescent east-northeast through Kazakhstan, looked to be surviving the disintegration of the Soviet Union.[10] Many of its members seemed to decide to take the concept and extend it in their own interests. However, the coherence of the region is now partly beginning to disintegrate as the "Shanghai−5" have transformed themselves into the Shanghai
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Cooperation Organization, now including Uzbekistan and with a view towards enhancing not only security cooperation but also economic, cultural and explicitly geopolitical cooperation.[11]
While the "new Northern Tier" is losing its integral unity as a land-based geopolitical region, parts of it are coming into different focus as a water-based communications-rich networks.[12] Just as the South Caucasus is becoming once again a part of a broader "Middle East" that extends beyond the territory of the Israeli–Arab conflict, so the Caspian/Black Sea meta-region now emerges as a focus for relationships previously conceived under rubric of Southwest Asia. This differs from the Northern Tier in two major respects. First, the Caspian/Black Sea meta-region ultimate extends into Europe, but "Northern Tier" concept does not. Second, the Northern Tier concept ultimately extends into China, but the Caspian/Black Sea meta-region does not.
Today there are three exclusively Central Asian multilateral formations in the region, although only one of them has a formal organizational body. The one formal organization is the Central Asian Economic Union, and Turkmenistan is not a member of it. Originally founded among Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan as the Central Asian Union, it now includes also Tajikistan. At its most recent meeting, in Dushanbe on 14 June 2000, the leaders of these four countries concluded yet another series of agreements on expanding economic cooperation and setting up joint ventures. In the past, such agreements have remained a dead letter. Now there is some chance of these newest ones taking some life, because President Islam Karimov is finally moving to lift restrictions upon the convertibility of the Uzbek national currency, the sum. Dynamic regional integration is these countries' only defense against geo-economic encroachment by outside powers.
Two multilateral formations are not embodied in formal organizations. First, a coalescence of energy-related issues makes it possible to consider Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan together, in a geo-strategic sense, as a north-south axis along the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. Second, a coalescence of counterinsurgency-related issues makes it possible to consider Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, also in a geo-strategic sense, as an east-west axis along the southern border of the Commonwealth of Independent States. If we look at Turkish influence in Central Asia through the lens of these three issue-constructed multilateral formations (as opposed to traditional, territorially-based geo-politics), it emerges that Turkey is connected almost exclusively with the energy development issue. However, it is trying to begin to recoup its failure to establish economic influence in Central Asia over the last decade, through the counterinsurgency axis by beginning military assistance to Kyrgyzstan.
Iran shares with Turkey the same general issue-profile in Central Asia. Thus Teheran's connections are also mainly with the energy issue, via Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. However, Iran has signed in early July 2000 a military cooperation accord with Russia that undoubtedly includes anti-Taliban coordination. It is worth noting that Russia is firmly implanted in all three Central Asian issues (economic cooperation, energy development,
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counterinsurgency) as well as geographically throughout the region.
The leaders of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, as well as the Central Asian countries and China, are all relatively young, well-installed in power or recently elected. They all look set to continue in office for a good part, if not most, of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The post–Cold War international transition in Central Asia has begun to come to an end. Turkmenistan is slightly abstracted from these patterns of development of international relations in Central Asia. Niyazov's attempt to maintain a "non-aligned" policy accounts for this in part. His domestic policies have contributed also to the country's relative isolation. He does not participate in as many multilateral forms of cooperation as do the other countries of Central Asia. He has somewhat better relations with Iran than do the other Central Asian countries.
Today, among Russia, Turkey and Iran, it is Russia that has become the agenda-maker in Central Asian diplomacy. If Russia is the agenda-maker, then Iran becomes an agenda-taker. This makes Turkey the agenda-breaker. But one has to wonder how much agenda-bending will be possible in the longer run, for the Blue Stream pipeline is now being under construction for gas exports from Russia to Turkey. Since Azerbaijani gas is now marked for re-export to southeastern Europe, Russian gas will control the domestic Turkish market and, possibly, contribute through re-exportation to re-establishing Russian influence in North Africa.
This manuscript was completed 10 July 2000. Narrative parts of this article are based upon a critical synthesis of a wide range of contemporary press reports and personal interviews, omitted from the footnotes in order to conserve space.
[Note 1]. Many discussions of complexity science in international affairs are purely theoretical and/or founded in agent-based modelling. For applications of complexity science to the actual empirical study of international systems, see, inter alia: Francis Heylighen, Eric Rosseel, and Frank Demeyere (eds.), Self-Steering and Cognition in Complex Systems: Towards a New Cybernetics (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1990), pp.311–334; B. Weber, "Implications of the Application of Complex Systems Theory to Ecosystems," in R. Felix Geyer (ed.), The Cybernetics of Complex Systems: Self-Organization, Evolution, Social Change. (Salinas, Calif.: Intersystems Publications, 1993), pp. 21–30; Robert M. Cutler, "Cooperative Energy Security in the Caspian Region: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Development?" Global Governance Vol. 5, No. 2 (April–June 1999), p. 251–271; Robert M. Cutler, "The Emergence of International Parliamentary Institutions: A New Phenomenon of World Society," in Gordon S. Smith and Daniel Wolfish (eds.), Who Is Afraid of the State? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2001), chap. 6.
[Note 2]. Karl Kaiser, "The Interaction of Regional Subsystems: Some Preliminary Notes on Recurrent Patterns and the Role of Superpowers," World Politics Vol. 21, No. 1 (October, 1968): p. 84–107, esp. 90–91, 100–105, showing intriguing prescience. See also William R. Thompson, "The Regional Subsystem: A Conceptual Explication and a Propositional Inventory," International Studies. Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 1 (March, 1973), pp. 89–117. The empirically based conclusions of Michael Haas, "International Subsystems: Stability and Polarity," American Political Science Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 (March, 1970), pp. 98–123.
[Note 3]. See, e.g., Barry Buzan, Jaap de Wilde and Ole Wæver, A Theory of International Security: Threats, Sectors, Regions (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
[Note 4]. A resource-holder is a country that has only energy resources and must rely on others both for transport to market and for investment capital and technology. A transport-holder is a country that may have energy resources but whose territory is needed by resource-holders for transit to
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markets. A capital-and-technology-holder is a country or other international actor that can offer capital and technology but which is neither a resource-holder nor a transport-holder. Robert M. Cutler, "Cooperative Energy Security in the Caspian Region: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Development?" Global Governance Vol. 5, No. 2 (April–June, 1999): p. 256.
[Note 5]. On the general significance of the regional geography, see Ralph Clem, "The Frontier and Colonialism in Russian and Soviet Central Asia," in Robert A. Lewis (ed.), Geographic Perspectives on Soviet Central Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 19–36; Cyril E. Black, The Modernization of Inner Asia (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), adds, to the historical and demographic aspects, consideration of relations between political demands and political resources at both the "international" and "domestic" level, as well as their interaction. Cf. Friedrich Kratochwil, "Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System," World Politics, Vol. 39, No. 1 (October 1986), pp. 27–52; see also John Gerard Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations," International Organization, Vol. 47, No.1 (Winter, 1993), pp. 139–174.
[Note 6]. As used here, a billion is a thousand thousand thousand. "Billion cubic meters" is hereafter "bcm." One cubic meter is 35 cubic feet.
[Note 7]. One of many typical analyses is Paul-Marie de la Gorce, "L'avenir des anciennes républiques musulmanes de l'URSS: la modernité d'Ankara contre le pétrole de Téhéran," Jeune Afrique (5–11 March, 1992), pp. 5–11; cf. Oles M. Smolansky, "Turkish and Iranian Policies in Central Asia," in Hafeez Malik (ed.), Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and Future Prospects (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), chap. 15; see also Graham E. Fuller, Central Asia: The New Geopolitics, Report R–4219–USD (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1992). On Iran's role in the region at the time, see R.K. Ramazani, "Iran's Foreign Policy: Both North and South," Middle East Journal Vol. 46 (Summer 1992): p. 393–412.
[Note 8]. Ahmed Rashid, "Central Asia: Linking Up for Trade," Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 156, No. 8 (25 February, 1993), pp. 19–20.
[Note 9]. For details with an analysis, see Robert M. Cutler, "The Indo–Iranian Rapprochement: Not Just Natural Gas Anymore," The Analyst (Central Asia and Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University), 9 May 2001.
[Note 10]. Robert V. Barylski, "The Russian Federation and Eurasia's Islamic Crescent," Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 46, (May–June, 1994), p. 389–416.
[Note 11]. For details with an analysis, see Robert M. Cutler, "Did Putin Shanghai Bush?", The Analyst (Central Asia and Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University), 4 July 2001.
[Note 12]. The problem of water management is also an issue that inevitably holds the region together, whether in discord or in collaboration. See Philip P. Micklin, The Water Management Crisis in Central Asia, Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies 905 (Pittsburgh, Penna.: University of Pittsburgh, Center for Russian and East European Studies, 1991).
Dr. Robert M. Cutler [ website — email ] was educated at MIT and The University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, and has specialized and consulted in the international affairs of Europe, Russia, and Eurasia since the late 1970s. He has held research and teaching positions at major universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia, and contributed to leading policy reviews and academic journals as well as the print and electronic mass media in three languages.
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