All along I have accepted that some very distant concern about Central Asian oil might well be a factor in this. I still do. But there are a lot of ways to get it out besides using the Danube. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Greg Nowell <GN842 at CNSVAX.Albany.Edu> To: lbo talk <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Thursday, May 13, 1999 5:53 PM Subject: Rosser ironies/material factors in the present conflict
>Barkley:
>
>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
>
>Fax 518-442-5298
>
>
>