The emerging energy wars -- will the US be outmaneuvered by a new Axis of Energy?

By Aussiegirl

In a stunning article which appeared in December in the Asia Times, author William Engdahl lays out the geopolitical, geostrategic and geoeconomic chess game being played out by a Beijing, Moscow, Kazakhstan and Iranian axis of state-controlled energy giants, who stand to monopolize huge segments of Eurasian oil, gas reserves and pipelines, leaving the U.S. increasingly isolated and out of the picture.

This is a sign of things to come - the coming energy wars - a scenario which could well see most of the the world's oil reserves in the hands of unfriendly countries, wielding state power over oil as a weapon of aggressive foreign policy.

What we just saw with the Ukraine/Russia gas cutoff dispute was only the opening shot of the first stages of a much larger war yet to come. In many ways, Russia's ham-handed and blatant gesture may well have served as an early warning alarm to the world of what it may expect in terms of energy blackmail and even outright economic warfare in the future.

With the news of a new and potentially huge discovery of offshore oil in Brazil, the geostrategic imperative of weaning ourselves from our reliance on unfriendly and potentially unstable sources of oil has never been more profound.

While the media and the Democrats see George Bush and Samuel Alito as their biggest enemies, they obscure the real dangers gathering in the world.

Unfortunately, the media, the politicians and the public are engaged in squabbling over the insignificant minutiae of the daily domestic news cycle or the latest manufactured media "scandal", while the wolves gather at the door.

Let's hope someone is watching the door while the children squabble over who gets to play with the ball.

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

On December 15, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) inaugurated an oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan to northwest China. The pipeline will undercut the geopolitical significance of the Washington-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC)oil pipeline which opened this past summer amid big fanfare and support from Washington.

The geopolitical chess game for the control of the energy flows of Central Asia and overall of Eurasia from the Atlantic to the China Sea is sharply evident in the latest developments.

Making the Kazakh-China oil pipeline link even more politically interesting, from the standpoint of an emerging Eurasian move towards some form of greater energy independence from Washington, is the fact that China is reportedly considering asking Russian companies to help it fill the pipeline with oil, until Kazakh supply is sufficient.

Initially, half the oil pumped through the new 200,000 barrel-a-day pipeline will come from Russia because of insufficient output from nearby Kazakh fields, Kazakhstan's Vice Energy Minister Musabek Isayev said on November 30 in Beijing. That means closer China-Kazakhstan-Russia energy cooperation - the nightmare scenario of Washington.

Simply put, the United States stands to lose major leverage over the entire strategic Eurasian region with the latest developments. The Kazakh developments also have more than a little to do with the fact that the Washington war drums are beating loudly against Iran.


[...]Perhaps the most telling sign of China's concern has been its crackdown on non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Beijing believes that international organizations, especially advocacy NGOs, have acted as Washington's "black hands" behind the recent regime changes in Central Asia. A recent issue of a biweekly journal run by the Communist Party Propaganda Department referred to Washington's "$1 billion annual budget for global democratization" and identified NGOs such as the International Republican Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Institute of Peace and the Open Society Institute as organizations that "brainwash" local people and train political oppositions.

In late August, ahead of a visit by the UN high commissioner for human rights, Chinese police raided the office of the Empowerment and Rights Institute, a human rights group supported by the NED. A new regulation offering more freedom to NGOs was initially expected later this year. No longer. The Ministry of Civil Affairs has now stopped processing registration applications, effectively freezing many groups' operations. Instead, the only government offices taking an interest in NGOs are the national security agency [China's secret police] and public security forces.

Both have launched investigations into local NGOs. Some senior Chinese managers working for international NGOs have been called in for "private talks" with authorities, though no related arrests or detentions have been reported. Some NGO offices have had plainclothes security officers show up in an effort to clandestinely ferret out information on foreign staff and organizations. Environmental groups have been singled out for a massive government survey, most likely because they have angered powerful agencies by successfully initiating public debates on controversial issues, such as genetically modified foods and huge dam projects, and because only around 10% of green groups are currently registered with the state.

Meanwhile, Beijing has commissioned researchers from several provincial academies of social science to study the activities of NGOs in China. NGO publications such as directories experienced unexpectedly strong sales in recent months, as they no doubt became convenient study tools. Likewise, experts have been dispatched to Central Asia to study how those color revolutions first sprung roots. In a May 19 Politburo meeting, senior administrators from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where foreign research funds are usually well received, were reminded of the "acute and complicated struggle in the ideological realm in the new millennium". In other words, be careful about the political implications of your research.

According to sources in Beijing, final decisions on the government's approach to NGOs will be made in a November meeting of the State Council, China's highest executive body. As long as the clouds of color revolution are hovering over Central Asia - some, for example, expect storms in Belarus - the Chinese government will stay on high alert ... Beijing's moves against the country's NGO community remain largely unnoticed outside China. If the international community wants an open and democratic China, it should pay more attention to the survival and growth of Chinese liberal institutions. Otherwise, the country will be destined to remain the same shade of red.

F William Engdahl is author of the book, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order from Pluto Press Ltd. He can be contacted via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

(Copyright 2005 F William Engdahl)