Russia and the Middle East

I found this article on Stratfor about the geopolitics of the Middle East, and they have intelligence that Russia is beefing up its presence in the Middle East and likely looking to return to its prominent Cold War role in the Middle East. There's so much information in the article that I'll just quote a huge chunk of it:

With Israel sorting itself out internally and the neighboring Arabs lying in wait for the final outcome, this brief respite presents an opportunity for the Russians in the Middle East theater. Russia brought the world back into a Cold War paradigm with its August invasion of Georgia. The idea of a revived Cold War gained further traction in recent weeks when key Russian leaders emerged from the shadows and started popping up in places such as Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua to sit down with their old Latin American drinking buddies and discuss a slew of arms deals.

While the Russians appear to be paying a lot of attention to Latin America, the Middle East remains a viable playing ground for Russia to turn the screws on the West. In fact, Stratfor already has been getting indications that Russian intelligence officers are pouring into Beirut — a traditional Cold War battleground.

Of course, much has changed since the days of Soviet-sponsored chaos in the Middle East. Many of the Palestinian leftist leaders with whom the Soviets worked are either dead or retired. Groups have gone extinct. Alliances have shifted.

Nonetheless, the Russians still have a menu of options in getting back into the Middle East game. They will find no shortage of disaffected Palestinians who are sick of the current state of affairs and would be more than happy to have a foreign state sponsor. Former Marxist groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, after being beaten heavily in the past year by the Turks in northern Iraq, would likely jump at the opportunity to link up with their old Russian backers. Lebanon, which is now experiencing a higher-than-usual degree of communal volatility, has a range of factions for the Russians to choose from. And the list goes on.

Should the Russians decide that it is worth their while to incur the risk of provoking both Israel and Turkey, the Middle East is the next logical place for Moscow to ramp up covert activity. And the time to do so is now, while the Israelis are still distracted.

Turkey already sees the Russians coming. The Turks were extremely displeased to see Russia at war in the Caucasus, and they now are doing everything they can to keep the Russians as far away from the Middle East as possible. For this reason, Stratfor is hearing that the Turks are growing more and more insistent that the peace talks between Israel and Syria move forward — and quickly.

Syria, meanwhile, is in an interesting position. On the one hand, they can listen to their Turkish mediators and pursue an opening with the United States through a peace deal with Israel. On the other hand, they can choose to jump back into the Cold War game with the Russians and work against Western interests, taking all the risks that come with such a plan. In any case, the Syrians will have a lot of hard thinking to do over the next several weeks.

What the article didn't mention (though Stratfor has mentioned it before, as have Turkish journalists) is the suggestion that Russia might already have contracted out at least one operation with the PKK: the bombing of the BTC pipeline right before the South Ossetia war.

There's also no mention of Iran, though Russia's policy vis-à-vis Iran has been quite successful. It has enabled Iran to remain a minor pariah, just isolated enough to prevent the West from being willing to depend on Iran as a transit point of energy from the east, but not crazy enough to start any wars (though this would drive up energy prices and further bog down the US/Israel, which could be useful to Russia). This is significant because besides through Iran, the only other two ways to get energy from the east into Europe are through Russia and through the Caucasus. Russia obviously controls its own territory, and with the South Ossetia war, has successfully closed the Caucasus to Western energy pipelines (all three of them).

Bolivia nears civil war

The conflict in Bolivia has boiled over, with violence across the eastern provinces. The eastern region, which has traditionally been more wealthy than the western region (populated mainly by indigenous people), has chafed under Morales, who is the nation's first indigenous president, and has been socializing the economy and aggregating more power towards the state. The conflict is tinged with racial undertones, and the Washington Times article says that "[m]ilitancy in the east is increasingly laced with racist rhetoric against Andean Indians." The eastern region – wealthier and whiter – has never supported Morales' socialist designs for Bolivia, and the particular bone of contention at the moment are the riches of Bolivian natural gas, which Morales wants to funnel into social programs for indigenous Bolivians in the west. Militants from the east have blocked crucial energy pipelines out of the country, and Stratfor reports that there are rumors that the government has been using live ammunition against the protestors. Stratfor says there is a distinct possibility that a civil war will ensue. As is expected, Morales' buddy Chávez has supported the Bolivian government with military aid, but if the conflict gets much worse, it could be the first popular affront to Chávez's coterie of Latin American socialist elected authoritarians.

US embargoes dissent in Cuba

According to a document leaked to the very interesting website Wikileaks, Cuba's government has negotiated with Venezuela's government to establish a cable connection to the internet. Apparently Cuba has been walled off from the internet via anything but a slow and expensive satellite connection thanks to Amerca's embargo on Castro's prison paradise. I'm not a big fan of the Cuban embargo, but this strikes me as a particularly boneheaded aspect of it – it's very difficult to fully censor the internet, and in a semi-repressive communist country, the internet could be a great way of safe communication among dissidents. There are already a few famous dissident bloggers in Cuba, and it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be more if Cubans could access the internet more cheaply and easily.

Republican warmongers cause spike in oil prices, blame oil companies

Samuel R. Staley from the Reason Foundation has an editorial at the Hawaii Reporter about the irony of Republicans bemoaning high oil and gas prices and blaming the oil companies. An excerpt, recounting the reasons for the recent explosion of energy prices:

The third and most important factor, is what pundits are calling "geopolitical uncertainty."

We are at war in Iraq and still have troops in Afghanistan. Iran wants to rattle our bones by going nuclear and the world is wondering if we will militarily strike them to prevent it. Throw in an anti-Bush politician in charge of Venezuela (our fifth largest supplier of crude oil in February) and the political instability in Nigeria (our fourth largest supplier of crude oil in February) and at least one-fifth of the price of a barrel of oil on the world market is attributed to geopolitical uncertainty according to oil industry analysts.

I'd like to add something: with the exception of instability in Nigeria (of which I know little about), all of the major causes of the uptick in the price of oil have been egged on by the Russia government:

• Russia both supplied Iraq with most of its arms for the last three decades, while at the same time feeding the US intelligence (almost certainly erroneous, and likely intentionally erroneous) about Saddam's affinity for anti-American terrorism. Later, likely hoping to prolong the war and increase the period of instability before the oil started flowing again in Iraq, the Russians fed Saddam intelligence on America's military and war plan.
• Russia has been Iran's nuclear connection, despite the lack of obvious benefit to Russia. America's spat with Iran is the most recent development to raise the "geopolitical price premium" of oil.
• Russian arms were behind Venezuela's latest embarrassment over arming anti-Colombian rebels and the subsequent threat of US invasion and spike in the price of oil.
• Russia supports both the Armenians and the Azeris in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has led to uncertainty regarding the West's access in the future to the Caspian Sea as an energy transshipment point.
• During the late Clinton years, Russia trained Ayman al-Zawahiri, who months later officially merged his terrorist organization with bin Laden's al-Qaeda and committed the 1999 US embassy bombings in East Africa, which Lawrence Wright thinks was an attempt to "to lure the United States into Afghanistan." The US responded with cruise missile strikes, and the attacks halted plans for an American-funded gas pipeline in Afghanistan, and ushered in the decade-long period lasting up until today of steadily rising oil prices.

In all of these cases, it wasn't the original sin that made the most impact, but rather then American response to it (or the markets' response to the events in light of recent American posturing). In acts of provocation, the provocateur commits an act that is seen as so egregious that it demands a response, yet the purpose of the attack is not to kill or even to terrorize, but rather to draw the victim into another conflict. When Russian support of anti-American dictators is seen as a tactic for drawing the US into conflict with oil-producing countries, the correct American response is not warmongering, as Putin's American critics would have, but rather a retreat from American imperialism abroad. Just something to think about.

Bolivia's eastern regions chafe under socialist rule

In Bolivia, an interesting battle is brewing between the wealthy, more European-blooded residents of the eastern states and the poorer, indigenous-blooded residents of the western part of the country. Bolivia's president is Evo Morales, a dark-skinned socialist who rose to power on the back of anti-capitalist discontent and Hugo Chávez's aggressive push to turn his corner of the world red. The struggle's latest incarnation is a series of referenda for more autonomy for the western states, whose main center is in Santa Cruz:

As presidents from Venezuela to Ecuador and Bolivia vow that they, for the very first time, are governing for the poor, the oppressed, and the indigenous, Latin America is in the midst of a power struggle. Conservative leaders say it is their new responsibility to double up efforts to stem the tide of Mr. Chávez and his leftist coalition – which they claim is not addressing the welfare of those most in need, but attempting to consolidate power and undermine liberties across the region.

"We don't want this to end here," says Carlos Pablo Klinsky, the president of the caucus of legislators in Santa Cruz who helped usher in the autonomy referendum. On Sunday, Bolivians in the Amazonian states of Beni and Pando overwhelmingly voted for more autonomy. With three victories and a fourth vote planned for June 22, Bolivia is emerging as an epicenter of a growing pushback against Latin America's left.

High energy prices beget war, or is it the other way around?

At Human Events, Venezuela dissident Gustavo Coronel has an article up about energy and security that, in my opinion, has a bit of a weird perspective. First of all, the author starts off by saying that "[s]omebody seems to have cut Adam Smith’s invisible hand, at least in what pertains to the market dynamics of the international oil industry." Well, of course – the vast majority of the world's fossil fuels are in the hands of state corporations, and you can't expect state corporations to act as profit-maximizers in the same way that private entities do.

Then he goes on to discuss the intersection between tight energy supply and deteriorating security conditions among oil-producing nations, and concludes that these worsening security conditions are a result of high oil prices. But that seems a little backwards to me, especially given the factors that he lists in the upward climb of energy prices. Among them are Iran's nuclear ambitions, Chávez's increasing pariah status, and Saudi Arabia's flagging support of the US. But these are the causes of high energy prices, not the results. It's sad to me that even ultra-conservative publications like Human Events don't see Russia's hand in all three trends. But I suppose it's part of the broader post-Cold War trend of conservatives easing up on their criticism of the Eurasian empire, with the notable exception of John McCain. (Though I often ask myself whether Russian anti-American posturing isn't a sort of provocation, and if the Russian hawks aren't playing right into the Kremlin's hands.)

Putin the puppet master

I had a letter published in Publius Pundit, another one of Kim Zigfeld's blogs. The letter was about possible Russian motivations for backing the Burma's military junta: sparking conflict and raising the price of oil and natural gas. This appears to be a favorite strategy of Putin's regime, as the Russsians seem to have done something similar in Venezuela and Iran by backing Hugo Chávez's and the ayatollahs' regimes. Here is the full text of the letter that I sent in response to this posting:

Dear Publius Pundit,

Here's something else to keep in mind when exploring Russia's relationships with energy-rich states: Russia has huge reserve of oil and natural gas, and any jump in the price of these commodities will first and foremost raise energy revenue that the Russian government receives. Since the resource-driven economic boom is the primary reason why Putin's support is so high (another being those oh-so-convenient Chechens), maintaining high energy prices are key to Putin's ambitions for the Russian state.

This preoccupation with energy, though, leads the Russians to do some pretty treacherous things. For example, in the late 1990s they allegedly trained Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's sidekick – or perhaps the true leader of al-Qaeda). Just a few months later, al-Zawahiri's terrorist group was incredibly interested in and well-informed of plans by Americans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan and ease the Russian's quasi-monopoly in the region. Later, al-Qaeda attacks American embassies in East Africa, which was believed by many to be a provocation of the US, trying to get them to enter Afghanistan. Though there was no invasion, the oil pipeline was shelved shortly after the attacks. Interestingly enough, all of this is right about the time when the price of oil starts skyrocketing – in early 1999 the price of oil had fallen to about $12 per barrel, but has increased fairly regularly ever since, to the point where it is now 1000% of the price that it was less than a decade ago. Much of this increase in prices was no doubt due to the ramifications of US policy in the Middle East in response to periodic attacks by al-Qaeda.

And Burma is not the only place where we see Russia abetting regimes that have been drawing the ire of the United States: Iran, too, has been helped by Russia in developing something (at minimum nuclear power, and at most nuclear weapons) that doesn't seem to benefit Russia much at all. Iran (like Burma) is a relatively poor country that wouldn't seem to be in the position to pay lots of money for expensive nuclear reactors, especially given its own enormous energy reserves. Security interests don't seem too great, since both Russia and the US have enough weapons to inflict more damage than they'd ever want, and an attack on Russia by any country is pretty unthinkable. And Russia, by supporting the regimes, is putting itself at risk of being criticized. So what's in it for Russia? An American invasion of Iran – with the world's second-largest reserves of natural gas, and third-largest reserves of oil – would surely send the price of oil skyrocketing past $200 a barrel, and that couldn't be bad for Putin. Just something to think about.

Erratum: it's not actually Kim Zigfeld's blog, but rather a blog for which she's a regular contributer.

Price of oil jumps, Putin grins

The WSJ has a front page story today about the recent authentication of documents implicating Venezuela directly in arm shipments to the Colombian rebel group FARC:

These documents indicate Venezuela appears to be making concrete offers to help arm the rebels, possibly with rocket-propelled grenades and ground-to-air missiles. The files suggest that Venezuela offered the FARC the use of one of its ports to receive arms shipments, and that Venezuela raised the prospect of drawing up a joint security plan with the FARC and sought basic training in guerrilla-warfare techniques.

In the second paragraph, the WSJ says that the revelation is likely to "is likely to ratchet up pressure for the U.S. to impose sanctions on one of its most important oil suppliers." Sure enough, oil traders have responded and prices have risen to a new high of $126 a barrel.

And how exactly was Venezuela going to get those arms to sell to FARC rebels? The same place all dictators get their weapons – Mother Russia:

At the meeting with Gen. Carvajal, another Venezuelan general is described as offering the port of Maracaibo to facilitate arms shipments to the guerrillas. The general suggests piggybacking on shipments from Russia -- from which Venezuela itself is buying everything from Kalashnikovs to jet fighters -- to "include some containers destined to the FARC" with various arms for the guerrillas' own use.

A spokesman at the Russian embassy in Washington declined to comment.

The Russian government can't have been blind to the fact they were doing something that would potentially destabilize an ally with vast energy resources. Energy politics are crucial to the survival of Putin's regime, and a higher price for oil because of conflict (or simply the possibility of conflict) in Venezuela means a higher price for natural gas (see: substitute good), of which Russia is the world's largest producer. This strategy of aiding rogue states in doing unpalatable things is also seen in Iran, to whom Russia has sold nuclear reactors which have provoked the ire of many American foreign policy mavens. Seeing as how Iran is one of the world's largest energy producers, the threat of military action against the regime has been a force in the recent upward climb in the prices of oil and natural gas.