The global geopolitical shift: the discovery of the « New Northern Passage » linking Europe with the Caucasus and Central Asia

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis (Russia), February 6, 2007 Tuesday

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS.

The most significant geopolitical shift affecting the NATO states and Russia — and therefore the Middle East and Asia — in the early 21st Century may be the slow dawning of recognition that (a) Russia and the US/Europe have more which unites then than divides them, and (b) that a « new Northern Passage » has been made « navigable », linking Europe with the Caucasus.

The new « Northern Passage »  is the land bridge from Europe through Ukraine and the Black Sea to the Caspian energy basin, breaking a reliance on Turkey as the bridge — and buffer against Russia — which has been in play since the Crimean War, which ended 150 years ago, in 1856.

The opening of a new geopolitical and energy trade highway between Europe and the Caucasus and Central Asia via Ukraine and the Caspian promises to dramatically curtail Turkish power to control the East-West nexus at the Eurasian landbridge, and instead makes Turkey just one of the players in a more complex matrix.

As well, Russia is now likely to become far more significantly involved as a cooperative member of the « Northern Passage » landbridge

The Crimean War (1854-1856) had pitted Imperial Russia against an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. And at that stage, Ukraine was an integral part of the Russian Empire.

That war — which had its origins in competing religious claims in the Levant between France and Russia — became the mantle on which British foreign policy was to rest for the next one and a half centuries, and it essentially sealed the isolation by Western Europe of Russia. World War I saw the attempt by Britain and the British Empire and Commonwealth to relieve Russia — by this time beleaguered by German military attacks — through the Dardanelles campaign against Turkey, but when Turkish and German forces repulsed the Allied Gallipoli landings after months of intensive combat, the chance to end the isolation of Russia was lost because Russia itself became lost to an ideology which threatened the Western states.

Moreover, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the opportunity to break Ukraine away from Soviet/Russian control (and again to create the landbridge from Europe to the energy centers of the Caucasus which Hitler sought) was again lost, largely because German nazi policy alienated, through genocide and repression, the Ukrainian population which had, to some extent, initially welcomed « liberation » from Russia.

The Ottoman Empire, and then Turkey, quite correctly, capitalized on all these developments to enhance its importance, subsequently becoming a key lynchpin in the West’s policies to contain the Soviet Union, becoming in the process the vital link between NATO and CENTO (Central Treaty Organization). But the West’s cultural links with the Ottoman Empire preceded that, as much because of the West’s fascination — as an outgrowth of the Roman/Greek civilization — with the philosophies of Hellenism, as with the Viking fascination in the 10th and 11th Century (and thereabouts) with the power of Constantinople (now Istanbul). [For example, the man who was to become King Harald III — Harald Hardrada (« Ruthless ») — of Norway, had served as head of Byzantine Empress Zoe’s Varangian Guard; he later, as King of Norway, died in his failed attempt to conquer England, in 1066.]

With the Ottoman victory under Sultan Mehmed II over the Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) capital, Constantinople, in 1453, the Western European states recognized the Turkish domination of South-Eastern Europe and the Levant.

But the end of the Cold War has seen an end to a strategic era which had begun in the 11th Century — with the route through Constantinople to the Holy Lands of the Levant used by most pilgrims and Crusaders — and the opening of significant new strategic possibilities. To begin with, Turkey, after the final collapse of Ottomanism at the end of World War I, and Russia, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1990, are both geographically reduced superstates, greatly different in terms of landmass from their imperial primes. And while this notion is shunned emotionally, to some degree, in Ankara and Moscow, the reality is now that the Black Sea is littoraled by many states — including modern Turkey — which are relatively newly-free in the modern forms of their sovereignty: Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Turkey.

And behind these littoral states lie many of the key players: Russia, Greece, Serbia, Azerbaijan. They, in fact, are often the key actors, in terms of the energy pipeline networks, or in terms of oil and gas supply. Turkey, too, has parlayed its controlling position astride the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and as a geographic entity at the Eurasian link-point, to play a role as a hub for oil and gas pipelines, linking the Caucasus and Central Asian fields with Europe and the Mediterranean.

Now, with the discovery of major oil deposits in the Mediterranean, the Turkish General Staff (Genelkurmay Ba kanlar : GB) is congratulating itself on having first invaded Cyprus in 1974, and then for having withstood international pressures to cease its military occupation of northern areas of Cyprus in order to enter the European Union (EU). There is little doubt that Turkey has strengthened its military (predominantly naval) preoccupation with the waters around Cyprus following the announcement that the Cypriot Government had called for tenders, to close by February 15, 2007, for exploration and exploitation of oil blocs off the Cypriot coast. Turkey also plans to develop an oil pipeline from its port at Ceyhan — the terminus on the Gulf of Iskenderun for oil coming from the Caspian region via the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline — to the Israeli port of Ashkelon, linking with the pipeline to Eilat, on the Red Sea, for tanker onshipment to Asia.<1>

It is also not insignificant that this Turkish-Israeli pipeline would pass close to the Turkish-occupied shores of the north-east of Cyprus.

But, in many respects, a small stake in the now much broader — and vastly more flexible — geographic and geopolitical framework is all that keeps Turkey in the strategic game as far as energy is concerned. The domination of the Bosphorus Strait is no longer the vital strategic gate that it once was. Now, even Russia and Ukraine have enormously increased flexibility in trading with the major markets of Europe and — as a result of the start of re-opening a modernized version of the old « Great Silk Road » — Eastern and Central Asia.

Things have been moving rapidly in the remaking of the global strategic map, and yet much of this change has yet to be acknowledged in, for example, the US State Department or the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), where entrenched reliance on Turkey has slowed Washington and London reaction to the opportunities for a stake in the new strategic game. GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Senior Editor Yossef Bodansky, in a report on January 3, 2007, noted in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis :

In late December 2006, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich of Ukraine quietly laid down the foundations of a major shift in the European, and ultimately global, strategic energy posture.

They jointly committed to facilitating the emergence of alternate routes for oil and gas of the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia which would not be dependent on, and beholden to, either Russia or the US-dominated NATO. The vision of Pres. Aliyev and Prime Minister Yanukovich marked the beginning of the regional states taking control of the development, transporting, and marketing to the West of their own natural resources.

The crossing of the threshold took place during Yanukovich’s visit to Baku and discussions with Aliyev. Azerbaijan and Ukraine embarked on a little-noticed strategic initiative to introduce new modalities for supplying Europe with refined oil over the next few years, and, in the longer term, also natural gas. At the core of the initiative was the building of a new oil pipeline from Azerbaijan — via Georgia and the Black Sea — to Ukraine, where the coming oil would be funneled into the east-west pipeline which currently carries mainly Russian oil (which is mixed with Russian imports of Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Turkmen oil) to Western Europe.

« Ukraine is interested in organizing supply of high-gravity oil Caspian [Sea Basin] oil via the Baku-Supsa-Odessa-Europe route and the participation of Azerbaijani companies in the project, » Yanukovich explained in Baku, adding that Ukraine was committed to « preserving the quality of transported high-gravity oil while using the Odessa-Brody-Plock oil pipeline ». High-gravity crude oil is thin, light, easily pumpable, and therefore most sought after in the West.

The proposed pipeline would come atop the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan [Turkey] and Baku-Novorossiisk [Russia] pipelines, adding political flexibility more than just volume of shipment. For the Europeans, the new route makes a profound difference.

What has become apparent is that the containment, and isolation, of Russia — as variations of this sentiment were conceived in terms of the post-Crimean War, and then in terms of post-World War I, and then in the immediate post-Cold War — have served to ensure that Russia could not be part of the West. This had its merits at certain times, from a Western standpoint, although Prussia, and then Germany, under the « Iron Chancellor », Otto von Bismarck, saw Russia in a very different light. Indeed, had Europe been spared the Franco-Russian competitions of Napoleon and then Hitler (whose rise may, indeed, have its origins in Napoleon’s alteration of the map of Europe), then Russia may have been embraced into « the West » much sooner.

And despite Russia’s new cordiality toward Turkey — now that they no longer face each other across contiguous borders — it is only in Turkey’s interest to play down the prospects offered by the « new Northern Passage » across Ukraine and Russia to the Caucasus and Central Asia.<2 >Nonetheless, old patterns are difficult to change, not just for the US State Dept. and the British FCO: Turkey has continued to destabilize the Russian presence in the region, by supporting, or facilitating, the transit of terrorists and logistical support for terrorists, across Turkey into the Russian regions of Chechnya and Dagestan. It has also sustained support for narco-trafficking and terrorism to and from the former Yugoslav territories in the Balkans, and in escalating a renewal of military confrontation in the AEgean Sea over territorial and other issues. And now oil.

Significantly, the more the Turkish General Staff pursues its perceptions of national interest — which it must — the further it becomes isolated from the European Union (EU) and the United States, and even from NATO. It has, therefore, a vested interested in obfuscating the emerging strategic realities of the region in order to remain seen as the dominant and indispensable power of South-Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Caucausus. It must diminish, or control, Russian southward influence; it must diminish the growing integration of Ukraine with the EU (and Ukraine’s reconstruction of more mature ties with Russia), and it must, in some regards, de-stabilize the Eastern Mediterranean in order to dominate it.

The Turkish GB for sound national reasons rejected US demands that it allow US and Coalition forces to stage through Turkey en route to Iraq in 2003. It subsequently, for equally sound national reasons, began a rapprochement with an old — or rather, occasional — adversary, Iran, in 2006, in a move which also opposed the interests of its nominal principal ally, the US. But these moves, which account for the gradual sense of disillusionment in Washington with the Turkish alliance (which was seen as critical during the Cold War period of containment of the USSR), only serve to reinforce the « new option » of the « new Northern Passage » linking Europe with the Caucasus and the emerging Great Silk Route countries.

There are many sub-sets to the equation still developing. Secessionist movements in the GUAM treaty states (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova), for example, as well the pattern of international activities linked — often through Turkey — to the jihadist insurrections in Chechnya, Dagestan, Kosovo, FYR of Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, Afghanistan, other Central Asian areas, and so on: all these are sub-sets of whether a viable political and economic network can be extended from Europe into Asia, and vice-versa .

The reality is that the « new Northern Passage » is the key to next expansion of the European and Western economic and political framework, if it is to occur at all. It is not difficult to see, then, that this is threatening to the jihadist and Islamist movements, and perhaps disconcerting to the clerical leadership in Iran (at the same time inviting to a possible future secular Iran). Moreover, by securing just such an expansion, the West also is better placed to dampen the Islamist fires which have erupted in a Middle East which would benefit from becoming close partners of a major economic complex.

Footnotes:

1. A 42 inch crude oil pipeline of 254km linking the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat with the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon. Three booster stations pump the crude at a maximum capacity of 60-million tons a year. To enhance the activity of the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline, a new project was recently completed: the pumping of crude oil from Ashkelon, through this pipeline to Eilat on the Red Sea. This activity would complement the original South to North pumping direction, making the system unique in its bidirectional feature. The ability to pump crude oil in both directions also enabled the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC) to double the operational storage capacity. Two additional booster stations pump the crude in the opposite direction, namely from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, at a maximum capacity of 20-million tons per annum . As well, part of a 16in. pipeline from Eilat to Haifa, which was used in the past for pumping crude oil, has been cleaned and now transports distillates southwards. In 2003 EAPC rehabilitated the non active part of the 16in. pipeline, which enables EAPC to transport distillates (gasoline, jet fuel and gasoil) from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and vice-versa .

2. In order to attempt to ensure its continued dominance of the Black Sea — and the attendant regional or trans-regional trade — Turkey created a naval working relationship in the Black Sea in March 2004, called Black Sea Harmony, established ostensibly in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions 1373, 1540 and 1566 aimed at deterring terrorism and asymmetric threats worldwide. It was similar to the NATO-led Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean, and also aimed at ensuring the security of the Turkish Straits, namely the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. Turkey extended invitations to each littoral state to join Black Sea Harmony. Initially, the operation is currently being conducted in Turkey’s territorial waters in the Black Sea. Statistics concerning suspect ships are collected and shared with other littoral nations. In case of hailing of a suspect ship, voluntary boarding (depending on the captain’s will) is conducted. Permanent headquarters of Operation Black Sea Harmony is located in Eregli, on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Once the Operation becomes multinational, other littoral States would be able to send Liaison Officers to Eregli. Russia officially joined the Black Sea Harmony initiative on December 27, 2006, and Ukraine also announced that it was considering joining the grouping.

See also:

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, February 16, 2006: Nexus of Eurasia Oil and Trade Links Being Held Hostage By Armenia .

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, May 26, 2006: Greek and Turkish Fighter Collision Over Southern AEgean Linked to Turkish Recon of Crete AD System.

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, May 31, 2006: Greek-Turkish Confrontation Continues and Escalates in the AEgean Sea.

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 5, 2006: From a Pattern of Activities, Evidence Strengthens of a New « Cold War » in the AEgean as the Greek-Turkish Confrontation Continues .

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 19, 2006: June 19, 2006: Looking at the « Cold War » in the AEgean Sea in Numbers .

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, November 9, 2006: The AEgean Sea Confrontation of Greece by Turkey Continues to Escalate, Signaling a Deliberate End to Turkey’s EU Entry Prospects .

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, December 25, 2006: New Impetus for US and EU Liberal Policies May Jeopardize Stability in the Caucasus, and Shake NATO Solidarity .

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, January 3, 2007: New Caucasus Pipeline Strategy Has Significant Strategic Impact .