During talks with Mr Nazarbayev, Mr Cheney will try to give a "big nudge" to oil and gas corridors linking Kazakhstan with Europe while "planting a big American flag in central Asia," said Glen Howard, the head of the Jamestown Foundation think-tank. "We are flexing our muscles a little bit," Mr Howard added.
The plan is one of a flurry of new pipeline schemes spanning central Asia and the Caucasus that are the counters in a geopolitical chess game playing out between the US, Russia and China for control over one of the world's last undeveloped oil and gas basins.
To fully appreciate what this means, you have to look at a map of Central Asia. Notice the proximity to US satellites in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the future targets of US military aggression Iran and Syria. Interesting how these military, economic and political moves create a large barrier between the oil fields of the Middle East and our good "friends" in Russia and China.
3 comments:
Smart Central Asians will pray for "exploitation" of their resources by "capitalists". Smart critics of capitalism will note that dirty, stinkin', lousy capitalist pigs have more to profit from wealthy and prospering Central Asians than they do from Central Asians who instead have living standards like those who are "protected" from "exploitation" by dictators like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro.
Better for these Central Asians to leave their resources untapped and inaccessable to the world's strongest consumers.
The real point of this story is Washington's attempts to outmaneuver Russia in the former Soviet republics.
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