The war between Russia and Georgia

The
eternal "Grand Game" for the key to the world

By
Diego Ghersi                                                                    Read Spanish Version

The
strategic area of the Caucasus, rich in hydrocarbons and an important
communications center, again becomes a battlefield for world
hegemony.

Ever
since in the early 1900s Sir Harold Mackinder posited the theory of a
"continental heart," Central Asia has been considered to be
the world’s pivotal region.

The
British strategist, said to be the greatest advocate of Anglo-Saxon
geopolitics, said in 1919 that if Central Asia was the continental
heart, Eastern Europe was the "key" to it. Consequently,
whoever governed Eastern Europe would be the master of Eurasia and
Africa, therefore, lord of the world.

This
concept leaps to the eye of whoever can read a map. Far from being
physically separated, Europe and Asia are united in the undeniable
continuity called Eurasia. But the concept is not utilized (beyond a
curious examination) because that continuity has not been accompanied
through history by a lasting political unity.

Mackinder’s
ideas may explain the British efforts that, until the mid-20th
Century, tried to prevent an alliance between Germany and Russia (the
former Soviet Union) and the creation — to that effect — of a
number of "buffer" states that separated both powers, thus
preventing the union of continental Europe and Asia.

Today,
the "Grand Strategic Game" continues to the played in the
same terms, although the protagonists have changed in name or form.
Thus, the old British policy is continued by the United States.
Germany can be considered to be the European Union and the "buffer
states" as the expansion of NATO.

From
that viewpoint, we understand the initial inclusion into the Atlantic
organization of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, who after the
Balkan War were joined by Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. In this
way, the United States managed to dominate Eastern Europe and drive a
stake into the natural association of the European Union and Russia.
This, in the Mackinderian concept, kept the U.S. from losing control
of Eurasia’s "continental heart."

Russia’s
intervention in South Ossetia marks a return of the land of the czars
to the dispute over world hegemony, after the initial uncertainty
produced by the collapse of the socialist regime and its return to
the capitalist world.

Russia
is not alone. Behind her is a new, post-Cold War creation: the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a powerful regional bloc
founded in 2001 that brings Russia directly in contact with China and
the similarly strategic Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, Tadjikistan and
Uzbekistan.

Indirectly,
Mongolia, India, Iran and Pakistan are considered to be "observer
states" in the SCO. Only Afghanistan is missing from an
organization that could become an irreversible brain tumor in the
United States’ foreign policy.

It
is evident that one of the main objectives of the SCO is to act as
counterbalance to the United States, preventing conflicts that might
allow that country’s intervention in regions bordering on Russia and
China.

In
this framework, Washington’s hope to use the media to sell the new
Russia as the old Soviet Union and the South Ossetia conflict as a
new battle in the vanished Cold War is sterile.

Thus,
when commenting on the war in the Caucasus, U.S. analysts and
officials "mistake it" for a continuation of the
never-ending and crass face-off between Russians and Georgians or
part of the leftovers from the Cold War. They even speculate about
Russia’s desire to erase the national "humiliation" it felt
after the collapse of the Soviet Union by restoring its "sphere
of influence" in the southern territories.

Reality
and common sense rule out those theories because the conflict in
South Ossetia involves clear objectives in the future.

Added
to the historic strategic importance (from a geographical point of
view) assigned to the Caucasus is the greed generated by the
management of its economic wealth.

The
Caspian Sea is believed to contain an estimated 25 billion barrels of
crude. The reserves of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are
equal to those of Kuwait and greater than those in Alaska and the
North Sea together. Russia and the U.S. find they must fight over the
control of the oil flow from the Caspian Sea to the Western markets.

The
Caspian Sea (technically, the world’s largest lake) has no corridor
to the sea. That generated a transportation problem for the former
Soviet republics in the region, which urgently needed to export their
natural resources to the West and could do it only along oil
pipelines that were under Russian sovereignty.

At
that time, the Clinton administration propitiated the construction of
an alternative pipeline from Baku (Azerbaijan) to Tbilisi (Georgia),
thence to Ceyhan, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. The BTC pipeline
(Baku, Tbilisi and Ceyhan) became operative in 2006.

To
that effect, the White House in 2003 supported the so-called "Rose
Revolution" that overthrew Georgian President Eduard
Shevardnadze, who — because he was close to Moscow — was an
obstacle to the Americans’ interests. His successor and current
President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, has a law doctorate from
George Washington University and is undoubtedly friendly to the
United States.

The
struggle for South Ossetia therefore implies control of the oil flow,
an issue that’s too delicate to leave in the hands of the Muscovites,
who could then provide energy to the European Union and wrest from
the United States a source to oil other than the Middle East.

This
is confirmed by a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice: "We shall not allow Russia to draw a new line of
separation among the states that have still not joined the
trans-Atlantic structure."

However,
the current balance of forces leads us to think that Russia will not
move from the conquered positions and that the U.S. will have to work
hard for conditions that are more favorable to its ambitions. The
Mackinderian theory, and the loss of moral authority the U.S.
experienced with its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, undermine
Rice’s statements to the effect that "the United States has a
strategic framework for cooperation with Russia. It is Russia’s
behavior in this recent crisis that is isolating it from the
principle of cooperation among nations, when it invades small cities
and bombs civilians."

From
this strategic dispute, or "Grand Game" involving blocs of
nations, nobody on earth will be excluded. Nor will South America, a
major reserve of natural resources that the U.S. will reach for
sooner or later, to the degree that the other options — like the
Middle East and the Caucasus — continue to heat up.

Diego
Ghersi writes for the Mercosur Press Agency (MPA).