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Building New Silk Roads to Avert an
Energy Crisis in 2010
by James Finch 16-08-2006 |
page 3 |
China's Problem: Putin's Desire for Superpower Status
With Putin's star rising, Russia has aspired to block China's energy
ambitions in Central Asia. When China embarked on a Sino-Kazak strategy, Boris
Yeltsin was still president. Since then, Putin and his inner circle of Chekists
(named after the Soviet Union's first secret police squads) have begun
tightening the noose around the ex-Soviet states. The mandate driving Putin's
fellow ex-KGB insiders is Russia's return to superpower status.
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This became evident on October 26th 2005, when SCO's top officials met in
Moscow for their annual conference. Because India's Foreign Minister and
Pakistan's Prime Minister attended as SCO-invited observers, Putin boasted the
populations represented by SCO member states and observer countries exceeded
three billion people. He bragged he had gathered "half the planet" at the
Kremlin. At the top of the SCO agenda were energy issues, such as expanding the
oil and gas sector and exploration of new hydrocarbon reserves. Of course, these
are the issues which are clearly foremost on the mind of the Chinese.
But has Putin's mood swung further toward impudence? When Chinese Prime
Minister Wen Jiabao announced the Sino-Russian bilateral trade turnover might
surpass $28 billion, Putin challenged, "I hope this happens." While even
Russia's media suspected Putin used the SCO conference as his egocentric
publicity showcase, Russia depends upon China's economic prowess to uplift its
own economy. Will there come a time when Russia is less fearful of China's
economic might? This might be well into the future. Russia's economy continues
to require an ally in China. Politically, Russia depends upon China politically
as a buffer from the U.S. The September EU-China Summit to be held in Helsinki
should offer clues about the tentative Sino-Russo alliance. Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao will give the keynote address, and possibly helping to forge closer
alliances with Russia's neighboring Finland. After all, Nokia is based in
Finland, and China is the world's largest consumer of mobile phones and
services.
One has to wonder if Russ ia has been slowly closing China's door to Central
Asia over the past few years. Gazprom's press secretary, quoted in a 2004
interview in Vedomosti, announced, ". sharing mineral resources with foreign
countries is against our policy. In fact, sharing oil with the Chinese would be
even more inappropriate." Gazprom, for example, is now developing Uzbekistan's
gas fields for export to the West, and not to China. (See part two of this
series.)
The delicate equilibrium between Russia and China - one where both countries
hope to maneuver against further U.S. meddling (or as cynics call it,
imperialism) in the Middle East - requires yielding as few concessions to the
other as need be conceded. When China moves too boldly, Russia plays upon its
alliance with Japan to keep China in check. Both use their U.N. Security Council
vetoes as negotiation tools in carving out petroleum, and other commodity
interests, to preserve their energy security issues.
China serves Russia's political aspirations in quelling U.S. expansion into
the Middle East. Having decades-long ties with Iran and other Muslim states,
Russia has a convenient ally in China, when using Iran as a thorn in
Washington's backside. And China still remembers the oil concessions it lost in
Iraq, after the U.S. invasion of that country. China likely frets about the
unending squabble over Iran's uranium enrichment aspirations in light of having
lost those Iraqi oil concessions.
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