I dropped the bit about E. Europe transport, of which the Danube is important, "Corridor VII", because I found no evidence some weeks ago when I conducted searches based narrowly on the Danube and oil. Later, on a rather different course of investigation on something I thought totally different, while rearching trade on another major world commodity, cotton, whose historical significance is perhaps as great as oil, a quite abundant trove of evidence regarding the expansion of European trading interests and its connections to trade routes in E Euroep and central asia. There are 8 other identified TENS corridors besides the Corridors IV (and overland route basically through Eastern Europe and the Danubian valley, starting from German) and VII (the Danube). When you are following two separate lines of inquiry and they both lead, unexpectedly, to similar points, it is worth reopening the hypothesis.
The argument that because the Danube is blocked today by military actions, that the longer term goal of opening secure trade routes to Asia/Black Sea is not in the background as an objective, does not hold water. That's tantamount to saying that control of the Suez was not a goal of Israel France and England in 1956 because the canal was shut during hostilities. Not worthy of intelligent argument. Sometimes you need to break an omelet to make eggs. In fact a Serb political economist argues http://www.diplomacy.cg.yu/doc13.htm (Dr. Predrag Simic, in Belgrade), in a document written before the current hostilities, that the Yugoslavian situation has been a major impediment to the development of Southern Europe generally.
Nor do I see much difference between the argument advanced, that there are a whole series of development objectives centered around transportaiton (rail, roads, water routes & ports) and communication (fiber optics and telecommunications) and the thesis which you grudingly admitted, i.e., that there could be some kind of "dominate Europe" objective.
In fact, what I have put out is that the whole transportation system of Europe has been the object of major bureacratic initiatives since at least 1993. In addition, the TRACECA stuff has been featured not only on the front page of the NYT but has been the object of formal announcements made at the White House, with constellations of Caucasus leadership in attendance.
So yes, Madeline Albright would be aware of TRACECA (that's the Euro-asian routes) and TENS (the Euro routes of various stripes, two of which feed directly into the Black Sea, and one of which crosses the Balkans on an east-west basis, corridor VIII), and it would be a factor in her thinking. How heavily it figures relative to other considerations I have no way of knowing, although I do have a friend in the international oil (Princeton Ph.D., until recenlty owner-publisher of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, which he sold, former Asst Sec'y of Energy under Carter, and currently an oil trader) with whom I hope to have a discussion in the near future and learn more. He's rather blunt about when he thinks something is a crock of shit so he would have let me know, methinks. It would also be a factor in French thinking insofar as they have been playing a significnat investment role in the South side of the Caspian.
You are of course free to mock, but I frankly find such condescension, in the light of the information dumped by me on to the list for all to peruse, and against a background of mega-mergers (among the largest in capitalist corporate history, but I don't know if that holds, inflation-adjusted) among oil interests that are heavily involved in the Caucasus and Russia, to be a poor reflection on your judgment.
On a tangent: it is also very interesting, and possibly relevant, that Sergei Stephasin has been put forward as Russian PM. The basic Russian oil strategy has been to try to substitute North-South routes for the "silk route" east-west routes, which includes A) the "Blue Stream" trans-Black Sea gas pipeline to Turkey, the Russian effort to "head off" or compete with competing lines from Turkmenistan and B) the Baku-Novorossisk route through Checnnya and C) established export routes north from the east Caspian (not just for oil). Oil MUST flow through Chechnya if the Russian routes are to have a chance against the east-west routes, and there is a major report due out by Shell on a Kaz.-Baku east-west pipeline across the Caspian. But at precisely the time when the Russians should be trying to demonstrate that they can "deliver" Caspian area oil via Russian-favored routes, the Chechens have been repeatedly shutting down the major pipeline. Stephasin is known to be a "Chechen hard liner." In short, it would be a coup if the Russians could show that "their routes" were the ones that worked whereas the alternatives are blocked by hassles with Kurds, with Turkey, and so on. Incidentally, I have read reports that the Russians are maintaining hospitals for Turkish Kurds wounded in battle outside Moscow. China is also trying to invest $5b in Kazakhstan, which border is, in an effort to direct energy flows in its direction. This is obviously a rather different orientation than the European favored trans-Caspian export routes, leading from Azerb. through Georgia and thence either to Turkey (Ceyhan) or to various other Black Sea destinations, esp. Bulgaria, Urkraine, and Romania. In short, China and Russia both have substantial material (as well as general policy, with regard to their own minority ethnicities and the right to oppress them without interference) stakes in keeping obstacles in the path of east-west oriented development.
The interconnectedness of such events is, I confess, always speculative, and by its nature nothing can be proved until (and only if) documents are made available, which won't be for some time. So in trying to answer your jibes seriously I labor at a disadvantage. Nonetheless, may I point out that in WWII (and actually even earlier, in the British imperial 19th c period similar kinds of thinking prevailed) it was considered deadly serious that the invasion of North Africa was a threat to British control of Iraq and Iran; and that Hitler actually considered the thrust to Stalingrad as one part (AFrica being the other) of a giant pincer movement designed to encircle much of the world's energy resources. Such a large view of geography has prevailed in the past and is even more relevant in an era when pipelines are longer, truly continental entities (as in the US and Russia) and when bombing runs for the Balkans leave on an almost daily basis from the American mid-west. I hope you won't insipidly impute to me the view that Serbia had such ambitions. Of course it did not. As I have reapeatedly said, Serbia's sin is that its political leadership is in the way.
It is certainly not too much to suggest that there are people who think geostrategically today, by which I mean, not in terms of a "giant pincer movement" a la Hitler, but the development of a major west-east axis that would cause much of the trade currently routed through Russia to go directly to Europe by a variety of routes. I don't simply suggest it. These people are in govt and they've got a web site advertising that thinking to the whole world; they've been in the front pages of the major media and aon the steps of the White House; I've put it out for anyone to look at, and the "scholar's response" is mockery?
The basic "materialist thesis" is not shut, but clearly an open matter on the strength of information publicly available. Having had occasion to compare public documentation with closed political documentation for the oil diplomacy of the pre-WWII period, I can say that there is a prima facie case that this thesis should not be dismissed: the abundance of material providing background, showing concern at high level, is exactly the kind of thing which indicates that there is probably even more going on non-publicly. But I consider such dismissive criticisms as have been leveled so far to be geopolitically naive and ill-informed. Moreover, you refuse to acknowledge that the thesis I first advanced has been supported by a significant increase in documentation from a variety of sources. Your arguments at this point amount, in the face of stronger evidence, to the assertion that there is no connection between major capitalist commodity markets, the routes on which they trade, and the capitalist propensity to warfare: which of course, would qualify you as an American political scientist. A career awaits. I'm going to be in Montreal for several days so if you want me to read your sarcastic and dismissive replies you'll have to cc me, as when I come back there will be dozens of emails which I'll be deleting, and I use "packets," so I often don't see what's in what I delete. Come to think of it, if you're sarcastic and dismissive, I'll just delete. -g.
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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