At Last! A War Over Oil (Really)

For a long while now it has been an article of faith among some on the Left that the current administration's Great Adventure In Regime Change was caused by a slavering need to assure that Iraq's oil would be safe for Exxon et al.

Before that there were dark suspicions that H.W. Bush took his Grand Coalition to war not to roll back the Iraqi tide from Kuwait but to protect American oil interests in the Gulf region. At the time some of the Geek's academic coworkers hinted that somehow he was involved in this great plot to save the shareholders at the expense of American lives.

In the years before Desert Storm, long before invading Iraq was even a small glint in the eyes of Messrs Bush and Cheney or others of the neocon ninnie persuasion, folks on the Left imagined that the American efforts in South Vietnam were on behalf of Big Oil, making the South China Sea safe for Mobil and Chevron.

All these specters of dank conspiracies to sacrifice lives in order that Big Business might be provided with a few more significant digits in its bottom line must give a frisson or two of pure delight to those on the Left. Heck, the Geek even wishes they were true, documentable from the archives and not mere projections of fears or wishes, as he likes a good conspiracy hypothesis as well as the next guy.

Unfortunately they are not.

That is why it is so nice, so satisfying that we are finally looking at a real honest-to-gosh shooting war where the cause, the real deal, the shore enough is oil. Oil and the need to protect and enhance a monopoly in its distribution and sale.

It is even more delightful that the war is being waged on behalf of this supreme capitalist goal by the Kremlin. By Vladimir Putin. By Russia, onetime Vanguard of the Proletariat.

While Georgia might have swung the first punch in its ill-advised attempt to bring the secessionist province of South Ossetia back under its control, the Kremlin reaction showed all the hallmarks of long standing planning and preparation as well as a goal far more expansive then simply "protecting" Russian "peacekeepers and citizens" in the province.

In the closing years of Putin's presidency it became increasingly clear to all but the most addleheaded that Russia was feeling more than a little steroidal. The Kremlin was (and is) most unhelpful in the Iranian uranium enrichment problem. Putin (and his handpicked successor) have been both obdurate and seemingly blind to reality on the matter of basing American anti-ballistic missiles and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russian strategic bombers are again flying in the finest Cold War fashion near the US and the UK.

The reason for this boisterous behavior after years of quiescence is simple. Russia has oil. Lots of oil. The old, badly dilapidated Soviet Siberian oil fields have been expanded and renovated in large measure by foreign investment. New pipelines have been built. Russian oil flows to Western Europe. The Euros flow back in a flood.

There is a speed bump in the highway of continued Russian oil based prosperity and the political advantages which can accrue from a monopoly on either or both production and distribution. There is oil in several of the Central Asian Republics. There are new pipelines which connect the producers in Asia with the consumers in Europe (and elsewhere.)

The most important of these big tubes runs across Georgia. Right through pro-West, pro-US Georgia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) line runs from Azerbaijan to Turkey. It is US-backed.

The Russians bombed it yesterday. Considering the immediate irrelevance of the BTC to the operations being conducted by the Russian Army against the Georgian forces in South Ossetia, it is legitimate to ask, "Why?"

The answer isn't hard to find. Putin's goal is not removing Georgian troops from the disputed secessionist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. No. Putin's goal is much more than that. He wants to eliminate the long standing annoyance of Georgia's pro-American president, Mikhail Saakashvili in a short, sharp and salutary war.

This goal loops into another goal long held by Putin and company. Pacify the Caucasus. Pacification through effective hegemony. The same goal which fascinated various Czars and later attracted the full attention of Lenin and Stalin.

Hegemony over the Caucasus region provides the necessary first condition for re-establishing operational dominance if not full hegemony over the Central Asian Republics. Ah! A thought that would warm any Russian heart.

Particularly when operational dominance over the oil bearing areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia assures a Russian monopoly of non-Mideast origin oil to Europe and elsewhere. Capitalists and Communists agree on one thing: Nothing beats a monopoly.

Putin has long understood the power of possessing a scarce critical commodity. Russia has one. Russia flaunts the wealth and power which its possession confers. It is not surprising that Russia, like a crack dealership, wants to inhibit competition and raise prices.

An uptick in global oil prices as a result of the current fracas in the Caucasus is good for Russia. Good for Putin. A short war with a victorious conclusion would be infinitely better.

This possibility is worth taking a few risks to turn into reality. From the Kremlin's perspective the risks are very small indeed.

Georgia doesn't have much of an army. It will have to seek a negotiated settlement rapidly in order to preserve independence. The settlement might well include features far removed from autonomy or independence for the two break away provinces such as the removal of Georgia's president.

Given the retreat of a US presence in Central Asia to say nothing of the current American preoccupations with Iraq, Afghanistan and spinning Iranian centrifuges in the closing days of a badly discredited Administration, Georgia lacks Great Power support beyond soothing words and mood music. The Georgians are on their own. That's tough for them.

True the war might go badly for the Russians. It has the potential, if the Kremlin is not careful, very careful, to turn into a never-ending guerrilla affair in the Chechnya mode. Putin will have to take great pains to assure that this eventuality does not come to pass.

Vladimir might have been smiling with anticipation as he flew back from Beijing but his gut might have tightened just a bit if he remembered an all-too-true maxim of Clausewitz: No plan survives first contact with the enemy.