/ International

• Tensions Increasing Over Caspian Energy Riches

  On 16 November in Astrakhan Lukoil president, Vagit Alekperov told journalists that his company will spend over $16 billion over the next decade to develop the country’s Caspian offshore Korchagin and Filanovskii oil and natural gas fields in the Caspian, at the signing of a cooperation agreement with the Astrakhan Region. An equitable division of the Caspian’s offshore resources have bedeviled the region since the December 1991 implosion of the USSR, putting the Soviet Union’s previous cozy arrangements with the Shah’s Iran “into the dustbin of history,” to quote Leon Trotsky.Before the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet Union and…

• Is Occupy Wall Street Just the First Step in a Global Anxiety Attack

  There’s plenty of analysis out there about the Occupy Wall Street movement and its spreading global tentacles. What does it mean? What do the protesters want? Will it continue to grow? Will it fade away as the cold weather settles in? Every media pundit seems to have his or her own explanation, but really there are no clear answers; there is no easy way to explain this leaderless movement that has attracted a grab-bag of interest groups (who don’t necessarily agree with each other on the ideal path forward) willing to ride on its coattails. I like to think of…

• Putin’s New Vision of Eurasia

  Many western politicians have harbored deep suspicions of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Vladimorovich Putin since he first emerged on the Russian political stage in 1999. This is hardly surprising, given his KGB background, though those with longer historical memories will recall that Yuri Andropov came from the same organization and that the West grudgingly found a way to work with him. While the worst aspects of the Cold War faded away with the peaceful collapse of the USSR in late 1991, twenty years later, trying to figure out Kremlin politics remains as vital an exercise as ever, and the “Putin…

• Turkey and Russia Spar Over Natural Gas Prices

  While few people in the world have warm feelings for energy companies beyond perhaps their stockholders, Russia’s state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom has shown an unrivalled and unique capacity to alienate is customers over the past two decades since the collapse of the USSR. Nations unhappy with Gazprom’s bludgeoning tactics include virtually all of the new nations composing the post-Soviet space and beyond. Issues range from aggressive low-balling of purchase prices for natural gas exports (Central Asia post-Soviet states) through transit countries getting screwed on both prices and transit fees (Belarus, Ukraine and China) to end consumers from Eastern and…

• Russia and Latin America - Deja Vu all Over Again

  “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein Twenty years ago this month, a hardliner coup failed in Moscow. Four months later the USSR collapsed. Next month is the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., which set America off on a global campaign of revenge, centered on Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter referred to for more than a century as “the graveyard of empires.” There is more synergy between these events than might first appear – first is that the USSR learned its lessons from its bloody nine-year…

• Gorbachev vs. Putin - Putin Wins a TKO. Gas and Oil Still Flowing

  This week has seen the sad spectacle of the 80 year-old last Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, Mikhail Sergeivich Gorbachev during an interview with the BBC's Bridget Kendal railing against Russia’s current Prime Minister and de facto ruler, Vlldimir Vladimirovich Putin. In the interview, conducted on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the coup that four months later led to the dissolution of the USSR, “Gorby” stated, "Putin and his team are for stability but stability kills development and results in stagnation. The electoral system we had was nothing remarkable but they have literally castrated it."…

• U.S. Vice President Flies to Beijing and Tokyo, Replete with Begging Bowl

  On 2 August extremist Congressional Republicans held a loaded pistol to the USA’s triple A bond credit rating, acquired in 1917 in the midst of World War One, and pulled the trigger. When the smoke cleared, there were back-slaps and high-fives all around as the obstructionists prided themselves on weakening, perhaps fatally, President Obama’s re-election hopes for 2012 by presenting themselves as fiscally “responsible.” The world was not knocked off its axis and the U.S. did not enter the “end of days” so fervently wished for by Christian fundamentalists, but the global consequences of the Republicans’ rash act are beginning…

• Will Russia and China Collapse Before 2020?

  The key factor that will determine Russia’s collapse will be the price of oil. Five years ago, a balanced budget required only $30 per barrel of oil. This year, it has jumped to $115 because of higher government spending, waste and corruption. Next year, the figure will increase even further to $125 per barrel. If the price of oil drops to $90 a barrel, this will be the beginning of a serious economic crisis for Russia. The stabilization fund might be able to hold the budget over for a couple of years, but inevitably the state will have to cut…

• Energy and Politics - The Love-Hate Relationship between Russia and Ukraine

  Russia and Ukraine resemble nothing so much as Siamese twins that have grown up, now detest each other, but share organs difficult, if not impossible, to separate. The two issues that unite and divide Russia and Ukraine are simple – energy and military issues. The former – Russia’s need of Ukraine’s Soviet-era skein of natural gas pipelines that supply Moscow’s most lucrative European markets. Military issues? One word – Sevastopol, the Black Sea’s finest natural harbor, now uneasily shared between the Ukrainian Navy and the Russian Federation’s remnants of the USSR’s Black Sea Fleet. Two decades after the implosion of the USSR, the two…

• America Serving India a Deadly Cocktail in Afghanistan

  President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will withdraw 10,000 U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of this year and complete withdrawal of all its soldiers in that country in a phased manner by 2014 is bad tidings for India and good news for Pakistan and the jihadists. The June 22 announcement is an implementation of Obama’s promises that he made while campaigning for presidential elections in 2008. It is understandable from the American points of view—economically and strategically. The U.S. has sunk a trillion dollar in the past decade in Afghanistan and it can ill afford this…