Peter comments Ben’s post on neweurasia.net Homebase and highlights real economic and political roots of “The Great Battle for Central Asia Gas”.

Russophobic and Western-centric logic invariably skews analysis of this entire issue.

The grotesque caricature of Russia’s energy resource export policy exemplified by Josh’s post at Registan is typical. He maintains, with little by way of actual evidence, that Moscow is interested exclusively in wielding its gas reserves for geopolitical advantage. Nord Stream, as Josh sees it, is a self-evident exercise in loss-making to the end of subjugating former Soviet satellite states. He tries to justify the argument with the unsubstantiated claim that Russia intends to sell its gas to Germany at a discount.

The analysis is woefully hindered by recognition of facts. If Russia were not our geopolitical antagonist, we would not bat an eyelid at the Nord Stream project. The pipeline would assures guaranteed supplies to Western European markets at regular prices, while giving Moscow the knowledge it did not have to rely on potentially antagonist. Nothing would stop Poland or Ukraine entering into direct negotiations with Gazprom, or German gas trading companies for that matter, but they would have to do so in the knowledge that they were operating on a truly open and competitive market. Was that not what Warsaw and all the Baltic States were seeking when they sought accession to the European Union and the community of Western economies, after all?

It would be naïve to suppose that there is not a dimension of geopolitics to Russia’s energy strategy, but the fact remains that they are entitled to do with their resources as they wish provided they do use them to breach the sovereignty of foreign states. So long as this remains the case (and developments in Russia’s interest in the energy infrastructure of neighbours Belarus and Ukraine are not encouraging this respect), there is no case to be made. Nord Stream undermines blackmailing strategies, not to speak of outright theft, on the part of transit states, which should only come as a relief to gas-hungry Western European states.

Where the arguments against Nord Stream are anti-competitive at best, and hypocritical at worst, prevailing attitudes to Central Asian gas resources are just plain dishonest. In the clamour for urging Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to embrace the costly and technically problematic solution of a Trans-Caspian pipeline, there is absolutely no recognition that this strategy is essentially no different from Nord Stream. It is expensive and will result in worthwhile returns only over decades, unless Western states are actually willing to financially underwrite the entire exercise that is.
While the mythical transit is being created, long-standing difficulties will arise in negotiating reliable gas supply contracts with Russia, not to speak of end-users in Eastern Europe such as Ukraine. The situation is not a dilemma, as some want to see it, but a technical and commercial nightmare.

Western-centric observers make facile associations between democracy, sovereignty and energy-wealth, but Central Asian states inevitably see matters in much more sanguine terms. If Turkmenistan could sell every last bit of its gas to the Chinese at competitive rates, they would do so without the slightest bit of compunction. China has vastly more to offer in real economic terms to offer Central Asia than the United States and Europe.

The brutish truth is that Western policymakers are far more interested in undermining the interests of their global antagonists than the genuine well-being of former Soviet states. These are the real terms of any discussion of energy reserves, not the glib and sweeping statements about democratic values and civil liberties.

What the West, or serious-minded citizens, should be truly be concerned be occupied with is constructing an ethical and consistent policy of engagement with Central Asia and the surrounding region. That would involve subordinating economical self-interest to genuine stability and sustainable development, which would be virtually unprecedented in the recent history of the Western world.