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<b>High stakes in Eurasia's 'New Great Game'</b><br>
China and Russia will benefit from US mistakes in Afghanistan, and
the operation in Libya, gaining influence and energy.<br>
Pepe Escobar <br>
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2011 14:39<br>
<br>
<br>
Antonio Gramsci once mused that the old order has died but the new
one has not yet been born. <br>
<br>
While Washington's geopolitical/energy focus was on Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, and to a lesser extent on Central Asia,
international politics was already in transition from a unipolar
world towards a new, polycentric system. <br>
<br>
And then the 2011 Arab Revolt irrupted all across the MENA (Middle
East-Northern Africa) chessboard, turning all calculations upside
down and reconfiguring the relationship between the US, the main
Eurasian nations, and Northern Africa.<br>
<br>
Time to recall an ultimate Cold Warrior, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, who
in 1997, in the article "A Geostrategy for Eurasia", published by
Foreign Affairs, conceptualised that: "Eurasia is the world's axial
supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise
decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically
productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the
map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost
automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now
serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer
suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What
happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will
be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and historical
legacy." <br>
<br>
<b>US power waning</b><br>
<br>
Fast forward to the first decade of the 2000s. The George W Bush
administration devised a strategy for a Great Central Asia according
to which the US would roll back Russia's traditional and China's
growing influence. <br>
<br>
Washington would have New Delhi as the partner of choice in
Afghanistan and Central Asia - laying the foundations of a new Silk
Road. <br>
<br>
And Washington would establish itself not far from Xinjiang, in
Western China, and close to Russia's underbelly. Essentially, that's
how the US would win the New Great Game in Eurasia. <br>
<br>
This strategy was inbuilt in the Pentagon's Long War - codename for
the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine - and its far more important,
if half-hidden, twin: the global energy war. <br>
<br>
In my 2007 book Globalistan, I branded this process as Liquid War;
here we would find "liquidity" not only in terms of fast-flowing
capital and information shaping liquid modernity (a hat tip to
Zygmunt Bauman), but also as in oil/gas pipelines crisscrossing an
enormous battlefield, what I have called Pipelineistan.<br>
<br>
The problems with the Bush administration strategy may have already
started way back in 2003, when Turkey - the bridge par excellence
between Central Asia and the Mediterranean - decided not to support
the war in Iraq. <br>
<br>
Since then, Turkey has gotten closer to Russia and, following
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's concept, in fact all its
neighbors, especially Iran - performing what could be called an
"escape from the US" - and thus denting its role as a NATO base for
penetration into Eurasia. <br>
<br>
It's in this context that an Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance was
solidified (and, incidentally, may now be unraveling). Meanwhile
Eurasia as a whole changed at breakneck speed.<br>
<br>
Russia was "back" on a continental and also global scale; China and
India emerged geo-economically; the US got bogged down in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Soon the US was not the "indispensable nation"
anymore. <br>
<br>
<b>China and Russia</b><br>
<br>
Very few former Soviet states were annexed to the US sphere of
influence - as it was expected after 9/11. Moreover, Washington's
dream of a line of control stretching from the Mediterranean all the
way towards Central Asia, aimed at cutting in two the Eurasian
landmass, did not happen. <br>
<br>
China and Russia developed a joint Eurasia policy - organised, among
other channels, by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the
Eurasian Economic Community and now increased military cooperation.
<br>
<br>
In Pipelineistan terms, China didn't have to send a single soldier
(to Iraq) or get bogged down in an infinite quagmire (in
Afghanistan); instead it will get plenty of oil from Iraq and much
of the natural gas it needs from Turkmenistan. <br>
<br>
China is massively investing in a land-based Central Asian energy
strategy - a pipeline-driven New Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to
China's Far West in Xinjiang. <br>
<br>
The US's geopolitical perspective is characteristic of a sea power -
framing its relationship with other nations from the position of an
"island"; the Mediterranean basin and Central Asia are viewed as
placed in a so-called "arc of instability", as defined by Dr
Brzezinski. <br>
<br>
Over these past few years, in a constantly evolving context, much
more than Great Central Asia, what became paramount for Washington
was the geopolitical concept of a Great Middle East - expanding on
Brzezinski's "arc of instability" and running from the Maghreb all
the way to Central Asia. <br>
<br>
So as much as Brzezinski conceptualised Central Asia as a volatile
and unpredictable "Eurasian Balkans", we had the Bush administration
forcefully dreaming of the "birth pangs" of the Great Middle East.
The aim was unmistakable; to cause a lot of trouble to the
increasing geopolitical union between China and Russia. <br>
<br>
<b>Botched operations</b><br>
<br>
In these past few years, up to the - largely botched - Africom/NATO
operation in Libya, the US strategy has been aimed at the
militarisation of the entire arc between the Mediterranean and
Central Asia.<br>
<br>
Africom, the US Africa command implemented in 2008 with a
headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, has now engaged in its first
African war, in Libya. Africom aims at rapid intervention all across
Africa but also has its sights on the "New" Middle East and Central
Asia. <br>
<br>
So now the US strategy can finally be examined in detail as a
militarisation of the Mediterranean-Central Asian arch. <br>
<br>
That would assure the US a wedge between Southern Europe and
Northern Africa; assure military control over Northern Africa and
Southwest Asia, with particular emphasis on Turkey, Syria and Iran;
and "cut" Eurasia in two. In sum: divide and rule. <br>
<br>
So this geopolitical road map was bound from the start to target
Syria (already happening); Iran (a perpetual neo-con dream); and
even Erdogan's Turkey - all useful for a US advance in Eurasia. <br>
<br>
Meanwhile Eurasian powers Russia, China and India - all BRICS member
countries - not to mention Iran and Turkey themselves, are slowly
calibrating their response.<br>
<br>
In the midst of this ever-shifting accommodation of tectonic plates,
Afghanistan assumes an even more crucial role. It could - and should
- recover its status of crossroads/hub bringing Central Asia and
South Asia together. Yet that may ultimately happen not under
American sponsorship - but under Chinese and Russian partnership. <br>
<br>
The Moscow/Beijing counterpunch is to organise the SCO as a rival to
NATO in terms of providing security for Central Asia - and for
Afghanistan. Wily Hamid Karzai has seen which way the wind is
blowing - and he's all for it. <br>
<br>
Moscow and Beijing have decided to enter into "tight cooperation"
(their terminology) not only in Central Asia but in the Middle East
and North Africa as well; Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao admitted as
much in a recent op-ed piece for the Financial Times newspaper. <br>
<br>
The wake-up call was the Western intervention in Libya. The Chinese
economic/political/diplomatic push will be organised under the aegis
of the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China,
South Africa). <br>
<br>
The complex hidden agendas at play in Syria; the unraveling of the
Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance; the West's double standards over
Bahrain; Washington's determination to overstay its military
presence in Iraq -these developments are all seen by Moscow and
Beijing as part of a strategy to perpetuate Western dominance in the
Middle East. <br>
<br>
So expect even more feverish moves by the angel of history. Eurasian
actors Turkey, Iran, Russia and China will be ever more active in
the Mediterranean and Central Asia - the key geostrategic
battleground in a 21st century New Great Game that might even be
pitting Washington against Eurasia itself.<br>
<i><br>
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for the Asia Times. His
latest book is <b>Obama Does Globalistan</b> (Nimble Books,
2009). He may be reached at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pepeasia@yahoo.com">pepeasia@yahoo.com</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/201173142127501343.html">http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/201173142127501343.html</a></i>
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