Ukraine: Oil politics and a mockery of democracy
By William Engdahl
Asia Times, January 20 2005
The Asia Times
The results of the third round of elections in Ukraine in which Viktor
Yushchenko was proclaimed the final winner, far from being grounds for
jubilation in Ukraine and beyond, ought to give concern for the future of
Ukraine to many.
The recent battle over the election for president to succeed the pro-Moscow
Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine was more complex than the general Western media
accounts suggest. Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and George W Bush
are engaged in high stakes geopolitical power plays. Both sides in Ukraine
have evidently engaged in widespread vote fraud. The Western media chose to
report only one side, however. Case in point: a non-governmental
organization, the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, reported it found
more vote irregularities on the side of the opposition Yushchenko in the
contested November vote, than from the pro-Moscow Viktor Yanukovych. Yet the
media reported as if fraud only took place on the side of the pro-Moscow
candidate.
The Kuchma regime was indeed anti-democratic, and no model for human rights,
one factor which feeds an opposition movement. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, economic conditions for most Ukrainians have been beyond
deplorable, providing fertile ground for any opposition to promise better
times. Yet the deeper issue is Eurasian geopolitical control, an issue
little understood in the West.
The Ukraine elections were not about Western-sanctioned democratic voting,
as some magic formula to open the door to free market reform and prosperity
for Ukrainians. They were mainly about who influences the largest neighbor
of Russia, Washington or Moscow. A dangerous power play by Washington is
involved, to put it mildly.
A look at the geostrategic background makes things clearer. Ukraine is
historically tied to Russia, geographically and culturally. It is Slavic,
and home of the first Russian state, Kiev Rus. Its 52 million people are the
second largest population in eastern Europe, and it is regarded as the
strategic buffer between Russia and a string of new US North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) bases from Poland to Bulgaria to Kosovo, all of which
have carefully been built up since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most
important, Ukraine is the transit land for most major Russian Siberian gas
pipelines to Germany and the rest of Europe.
Yushchenko favors European Union and NATO membership for Ukraine. Not
surprising, he is backed, and strongly, by Washington. Former US national
security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has been directly involved on behalf of
the Bush administration in grooming Yushchenko for his new role.
As far back as November 2001, Yushchenko was reportedly wined and dined in
Washington by the Bush administration, paid for by the US Congress-funded
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Martin Foulner in the Glasgow Herald
of November 26 reported the details of the meeting. NED, it's worth noting,
was set up during the Ronald Reagan administration by US Congress to
"privatize" certain Central Intelligence Agency operations, and allow
Washington to claim clean hands in various foreign meddling. Ukraine is part
of a wider US pattern of active "regime change" in eastern Europe and
Central Asia.
Brzezinski is directly involved in Ukraine events, and has openly condemned
the initial November election results, along with former US secretaries of
state Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell. Brzezinski's entire career has been
geared to dismantle Russian power in Eurasia since the time he was Jimmy
Carter's National Security Council chief. If Brzezinski succeeds in getting
his hand-picked man in power in Kiev, that will be a major step in the
direction of US domination of all Eurasia. That, of course, is the aim, as
Brzezinski makes explicit in his writings. It is useful to quote Brzezinski
directly from his now infamous 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American
Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives:
Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a
geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country
helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian
empire ... if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million
people and major resources, as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia
automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial
state, spanning Europe and Asia. The states deserving America's strongest
geopolitical support are Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine, all three being
geopolitically pivotal. Indeed, Kiev's role reinforces the argument that
Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia's own future evolution is
concerned.
And why Eurasia? Brzezinski replies:
A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most
advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also
suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail
Africa's subordination, rendering the Western hemisphere and Oceania
geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent ... About 75% of
the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth
is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia
accounts for about 60% of the world's GNP [gross national product] and about
three-fourths of the world's known energy resources ... Eurasia is also the
location of most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states.
After the United States, the next six largest economies and the next six
biggest spenders on military weaponry are located in Eurasia. All but one of
the world's overt nuclear powers and all but one of the covert ones are
located in Eurasia. The world's two most populous aspirants to regional
hegemony and global influence are Eurasian. All of the potential political
and/or economic challengers to American primacy are Eurasian.
Belgrade to Kiev to ...
There is a distinct pattern of US covert actions in changing regimes in
Eastern Europe, in the context of this Eurasian strategy of the US, in which
Ukraine fits the pattern. The Belgrade vote in 2000 to topple Serbian
Slobodan Milosevic was organized and run by US ambassador Richard Miles.
This has been well documented by Balkan sources and others. Significantly,
the same Miles was then sent to Georgia, where he engineered the toppling of
Eduard Shevardnadze in favor of the US-groomed Mikhail Saakashvili last
year, another pro-NATO man on Moscow's fringe. James Baker III played a key
role as well, as some noted at the time.
Now Miles was reportedly involved in Kiev, with the US ambassador there,
John Herbst, former ambassador in Uzbekistan. Curious coincidence? The
Ukraine "democratic youth" organization, Pora ("High Time") is a slick,
US-created entity. It is modeled on the Belgrade youth group, Otpor, which
Miles also set up with help of NED and George Soros' Open Society, USAID and
similar friends. Pora was given a brand image, for selling to the Western
media, a slick logo of a black-white clenched fist. It even got a nifty
name, the "chestnut revolution", as in "chestnuts roasting on an open fire".
Before he came to power, Saakashvili was brought by Miles to Belgrade to
study the model there. In Ukraine, according to British media and other
accounts, Soros' Open Society, the US government's NED and the Carnegie
Endowment, along with the State Department's USAID, were all involved in
fostering Ukraine regime change. Little wonder Moscow is a bit concerned
with Washington's actions in Ukraine.
A key part of the media game has been the claim that Yushchenko won
according to "exit polls". What is not said is that the people doing these
"exit polls" as voters left voting places were US-trained and paid by an
entity known as Freedom House, a neo-conservative operation in Washington.
Freedom House trained some 1,000 poll observers, who loudly declared an
11-point lead for Yushchenko. Those claims triggered the mass marches
claiming fraud. The current head of Freedom House is former CIA director and
outspoken neo-conservative, Admiral James Woolsey, who calls the Bush
administration's "war on terror" "World War IV". On the Freedom House board
sits none other than Brzezinski. This would hardly seem to be an impartial
human-rights organization.
Why does Washington care so much about vote integrity next door to Russia?
Is Ukraine democracy more important than Azeri or Uzbek "democracy"? There
is something else going on besides what appears to be a vote count. We have
to ask why it is that the Bush administration suddenly is so keen on the
sanctity of the democratic voting process as to risk an open break with
Moscow at this time.
Eurasian oil geopolitics
US policy, as Brzezinski openly stated in The Grand Chessboard, is to
Balkanize Eurasia, and ensure that no possible stable economic or political
region between Russia, the EU and China emerges in the future that might
challenge US global hegemony. This is the core idea of the September 2002
Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive wars".
In taking control of Ukraine, Washington would take a giant step to encircle
Russia for the future. Russian moves to use its vast energy reserves to play
for room in rebuilding its political role would be over. Chinese efforts to
link with Russia to secure some independence from US energy control would
also be over. Iran's attempts to secure support from Russia against US
pressure would also end. Iran's ability to enter into energy agreements with
China would also likely end. Cuba and Venezuela would also likely fall prey
to a pro-Washington regime change soon after.
Washington policy is aimed at direct control over the oil and gas flows from
the Caspian, including Turkmenistan, and to counter Russian regional
influence from Georgia to Ukraine to Azerbaijan and Iran. The background
issue is Washington's unspoken recognition of the looming exhaustion of the
world's major sources of cheap high-quality oil, the problem of global oil
depletion, or as the late American geologist M King Hubbard termed it, of
peak oil.
Over the coming five to 10 years the world economy faces a major new series
of energy shocks as older fields from the North Sea to Alaska to Libya and
even major fields in Saudi Arabia, such as the giant Ghawar field, peak and
begin to decline. Many large fields already have peaked, such as the North
Sea, perhaps one reason for the British interest in Iraq. And no new fields
of a North Sea size have been found to replace them.
It was clearly no accident of politics that former Halliburton chief Dick
Cheney became vice president, with quasi-presidential powers, in the current
Washington administration. Nor that his first job was to oversee the Energy
Task Force. In late 1999, as chief executive officer of Halliburton, Cheney
delivered a speech to the London Institute of Petroleum. Halliburton, of
course, is the world's leading oilfield services and construction group.
Cheney presumably had a pretty good picture of where there was oil in the
world.
In his speech, Cheney presented the picture of world oil supply and demand
to fellow oil industry people. "By some estimates," he stated, "there will
be an average of 2% annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead,
along with, conservatively, a 3% natural decline in production from existing
reserves." Cheney added an alarming note: "That means by 2010 we will need
on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day." This is equivalent
to more than six Saudi Arabia's of today's size.
He cited China and East Asia as fast-growth regions, and noted that the
oilfields of the Middle East were, along with the Caspian Sea, the major
untapped oil prospects.
Oil pipeline politics are also directly involved in the fight for control of
Ukraine. In July 2004, the Ukraine parliament voted to open an unused oil
pipeline to transport oil from Russian Urals fields to the port of Odessa.
The Bush administration vehemently protested this would make Ukraine more
dependent on Moscow.
The 674 kilometer oil pipeline, completed by the Ukraine government in 2001,
between Odessa on the Black Sea and Brody in western Ukraine, can carry up
to 240,000 barrels a day of oil. In April 2004, the Ukraine government
agreed to extend Brody to the Polish Port of Gdansk, a move hailed in
Washington and Brussels. It would carry Caspian oil to the EU, independent
of Russia. That is, were Ukraine to become dominated by a pro-EU pro-NATO
regime in the November vote.
The stakes were big. George Bush Sr made a quiet trip to Kiev in May to meet
both candidates, according to the British New Statesman of December 6.
Former US secretary of state Madelaine Albright flew in to Kiev as well.
Last July, the Kuchma government suddenly reversed itself and voted to
reverse the oil flows in Brody-Odessa, in order to allow it to transport
Russian crude to the Black Sea.
Commenting on the significance of that move, Ilan Berman of the American
Foreign Policy Council in Washington remarked at the time, "Kremlin
officials understand full well that Odessa-Brody has the potential to deal a
fatal blow to Russia's current near monopoly on Caspian energy." Berman then
added a telling note, "Worse still, from Russia's perspective, the resulting
European and US economic attention would all but cement Kiev's westward
trajectory." The pipeline to Poland, a three-year project, would make Poland
a major new hub for non-Russian, non-Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries oil as well, Berman notes.
The decision to reverse the pipeline last July would greatly weaken that
westward shift of Ukraine. The next government will have to tackle the
issue. Ukraine is a strategic battleground in this geopolitical tug-of-war
between Washington and Moscow. Ukrainian pipeline routes account for 75% of
EU oil imports from Russia and Central Asia, and 34% of its natural gas
import. In the near future, EU energy imports via Ukraine are set to expand
significantly with the opening of huge oil and gas fields in Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Ukraine is a key piece on
Brzezinski's Eurasian chessboard, to put it mildly, as well as Putin's.
By William Engdahl
Asia Times, January 20 2005
The Asia Times
The results of the third round of elections in Ukraine in which Viktor
Yushchenko was proclaimed the final winner, far from being grounds for
jubilation in Ukraine and beyond, ought to give concern for the future of
Ukraine to many.
The recent battle over the election for president to succeed the pro-Moscow
Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine was more complex than the general Western media
accounts suggest. Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and George W Bush
are engaged in high stakes geopolitical power plays. Both sides in Ukraine
have evidently engaged in widespread vote fraud. The Western media chose to
report only one side, however. Case in point: a non-governmental
organization, the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, reported it found
more vote irregularities on the side of the opposition Yushchenko in the
contested November vote, than from the pro-Moscow Viktor Yanukovych. Yet the
media reported as if fraud only took place on the side of the pro-Moscow
candidate.
The Kuchma regime was indeed anti-democratic, and no model for human rights,
one factor which feeds an opposition movement. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, economic conditions for most Ukrainians have been beyond
deplorable, providing fertile ground for any opposition to promise better
times. Yet the deeper issue is Eurasian geopolitical control, an issue
little understood in the West.
The Ukraine elections were not about Western-sanctioned democratic voting,
as some magic formula to open the door to free market reform and prosperity
for Ukrainians. They were mainly about who influences the largest neighbor
of Russia, Washington or Moscow. A dangerous power play by Washington is
involved, to put it mildly.
A look at the geostrategic background makes things clearer. Ukraine is
historically tied to Russia, geographically and culturally. It is Slavic,
and home of the first Russian state, Kiev Rus. Its 52 million people are the
second largest population in eastern Europe, and it is regarded as the
strategic buffer between Russia and a string of new US North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) bases from Poland to Bulgaria to Kosovo, all of which
have carefully been built up since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most
important, Ukraine is the transit land for most major Russian Siberian gas
pipelines to Germany and the rest of Europe.
Yushchenko favors European Union and NATO membership for Ukraine. Not
surprising, he is backed, and strongly, by Washington. Former US national
security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has been directly involved on behalf of
the Bush administration in grooming Yushchenko for his new role.
As far back as November 2001, Yushchenko was reportedly wined and dined in
Washington by the Bush administration, paid for by the US Congress-funded
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Martin Foulner in the Glasgow Herald
of November 26 reported the details of the meeting. NED, it's worth noting,
was set up during the Ronald Reagan administration by US Congress to
"privatize" certain Central Intelligence Agency operations, and allow
Washington to claim clean hands in various foreign meddling. Ukraine is part
of a wider US pattern of active "regime change" in eastern Europe and
Central Asia.
Brzezinski is directly involved in Ukraine events, and has openly condemned
the initial November election results, along with former US secretaries of
state Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell. Brzezinski's entire career has been
geared to dismantle Russian power in Eurasia since the time he was Jimmy
Carter's National Security Council chief. If Brzezinski succeeds in getting
his hand-picked man in power in Kiev, that will be a major step in the
direction of US domination of all Eurasia. That, of course, is the aim, as
Brzezinski makes explicit in his writings. It is useful to quote Brzezinski
directly from his now infamous 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American
Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives:
Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a
geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country
helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian
empire ... if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million
people and major resources, as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia
automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial
state, spanning Europe and Asia. The states deserving America's strongest
geopolitical support are Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine, all three being
geopolitically pivotal. Indeed, Kiev's role reinforces the argument that
Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia's own future evolution is
concerned.
And why Eurasia? Brzezinski replies:
A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most
advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also
suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail
Africa's subordination, rendering the Western hemisphere and Oceania
geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent ... About 75% of
the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth
is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia
accounts for about 60% of the world's GNP [gross national product] and about
three-fourths of the world's known energy resources ... Eurasia is also the
location of most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states.
After the United States, the next six largest economies and the next six
biggest spenders on military weaponry are located in Eurasia. All but one of
the world's overt nuclear powers and all but one of the covert ones are
located in Eurasia. The world's two most populous aspirants to regional
hegemony and global influence are Eurasian. All of the potential political
and/or economic challengers to American primacy are Eurasian.
Belgrade to Kiev to ...
There is a distinct pattern of US covert actions in changing regimes in
Eastern Europe, in the context of this Eurasian strategy of the US, in which
Ukraine fits the pattern. The Belgrade vote in 2000 to topple Serbian
Slobodan Milosevic was organized and run by US ambassador Richard Miles.
This has been well documented by Balkan sources and others. Significantly,
the same Miles was then sent to Georgia, where he engineered the toppling of
Eduard Shevardnadze in favor of the US-groomed Mikhail Saakashvili last
year, another pro-NATO man on Moscow's fringe. James Baker III played a key
role as well, as some noted at the time.
Now Miles was reportedly involved in Kiev, with the US ambassador there,
John Herbst, former ambassador in Uzbekistan. Curious coincidence? The
Ukraine "democratic youth" organization, Pora ("High Time") is a slick,
US-created entity. It is modeled on the Belgrade youth group, Otpor, which
Miles also set up with help of NED and George Soros' Open Society, USAID and
similar friends. Pora was given a brand image, for selling to the Western
media, a slick logo of a black-white clenched fist. It even got a nifty
name, the "chestnut revolution", as in "chestnuts roasting on an open fire".
Before he came to power, Saakashvili was brought by Miles to Belgrade to
study the model there. In Ukraine, according to British media and other
accounts, Soros' Open Society, the US government's NED and the Carnegie
Endowment, along with the State Department's USAID, were all involved in
fostering Ukraine regime change. Little wonder Moscow is a bit concerned
with Washington's actions in Ukraine.
A key part of the media game has been the claim that Yushchenko won
according to "exit polls". What is not said is that the people doing these
"exit polls" as voters left voting places were US-trained and paid by an
entity known as Freedom House, a neo-conservative operation in Washington.
Freedom House trained some 1,000 poll observers, who loudly declared an
11-point lead for Yushchenko. Those claims triggered the mass marches
claiming fraud. The current head of Freedom House is former CIA director and
outspoken neo-conservative, Admiral James Woolsey, who calls the Bush
administration's "war on terror" "World War IV". On the Freedom House board
sits none other than Brzezinski. This would hardly seem to be an impartial
human-rights organization.
Why does Washington care so much about vote integrity next door to Russia?
Is Ukraine democracy more important than Azeri or Uzbek "democracy"? There
is something else going on besides what appears to be a vote count. We have
to ask why it is that the Bush administration suddenly is so keen on the
sanctity of the democratic voting process as to risk an open break with
Moscow at this time.
Eurasian oil geopolitics
US policy, as Brzezinski openly stated in The Grand Chessboard, is to
Balkanize Eurasia, and ensure that no possible stable economic or political
region between Russia, the EU and China emerges in the future that might
challenge US global hegemony. This is the core idea of the September 2002
Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive wars".
In taking control of Ukraine, Washington would take a giant step to encircle
Russia for the future. Russian moves to use its vast energy reserves to play
for room in rebuilding its political role would be over. Chinese efforts to
link with Russia to secure some independence from US energy control would
also be over. Iran's attempts to secure support from Russia against US
pressure would also end. Iran's ability to enter into energy agreements with
China would also likely end. Cuba and Venezuela would also likely fall prey
to a pro-Washington regime change soon after.
Washington policy is aimed at direct control over the oil and gas flows from
the Caspian, including Turkmenistan, and to counter Russian regional
influence from Georgia to Ukraine to Azerbaijan and Iran. The background
issue is Washington's unspoken recognition of the looming exhaustion of the
world's major sources of cheap high-quality oil, the problem of global oil
depletion, or as the late American geologist M King Hubbard termed it, of
peak oil.
Over the coming five to 10 years the world economy faces a major new series
of energy shocks as older fields from the North Sea to Alaska to Libya and
even major fields in Saudi Arabia, such as the giant Ghawar field, peak and
begin to decline. Many large fields already have peaked, such as the North
Sea, perhaps one reason for the British interest in Iraq. And no new fields
of a North Sea size have been found to replace them.
It was clearly no accident of politics that former Halliburton chief Dick
Cheney became vice president, with quasi-presidential powers, in the current
Washington administration. Nor that his first job was to oversee the Energy
Task Force. In late 1999, as chief executive officer of Halliburton, Cheney
delivered a speech to the London Institute of Petroleum. Halliburton, of
course, is the world's leading oilfield services and construction group.
Cheney presumably had a pretty good picture of where there was oil in the
world.
In his speech, Cheney presented the picture of world oil supply and demand
to fellow oil industry people. "By some estimates," he stated, "there will
be an average of 2% annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead,
along with, conservatively, a 3% natural decline in production from existing
reserves." Cheney added an alarming note: "That means by 2010 we will need
on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day." This is equivalent
to more than six Saudi Arabia's of today's size.
He cited China and East Asia as fast-growth regions, and noted that the
oilfields of the Middle East were, along with the Caspian Sea, the major
untapped oil prospects.
Oil pipeline politics are also directly involved in the fight for control of
Ukraine. In July 2004, the Ukraine parliament voted to open an unused oil
pipeline to transport oil from Russian Urals fields to the port of Odessa.
The Bush administration vehemently protested this would make Ukraine more
dependent on Moscow.
The 674 kilometer oil pipeline, completed by the Ukraine government in 2001,
between Odessa on the Black Sea and Brody in western Ukraine, can carry up
to 240,000 barrels a day of oil. In April 2004, the Ukraine government
agreed to extend Brody to the Polish Port of Gdansk, a move hailed in
Washington and Brussels. It would carry Caspian oil to the EU, independent
of Russia. That is, were Ukraine to become dominated by a pro-EU pro-NATO
regime in the November vote.
The stakes were big. George Bush Sr made a quiet trip to Kiev in May to meet
both candidates, according to the British New Statesman of December 6.
Former US secretary of state Madelaine Albright flew in to Kiev as well.
Last July, the Kuchma government suddenly reversed itself and voted to
reverse the oil flows in Brody-Odessa, in order to allow it to transport
Russian crude to the Black Sea.
Commenting on the significance of that move, Ilan Berman of the American
Foreign Policy Council in Washington remarked at the time, "Kremlin
officials understand full well that Odessa-Brody has the potential to deal a
fatal blow to Russia's current near monopoly on Caspian energy." Berman then
added a telling note, "Worse still, from Russia's perspective, the resulting
European and US economic attention would all but cement Kiev's westward
trajectory." The pipeline to Poland, a three-year project, would make Poland
a major new hub for non-Russian, non-Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries oil as well, Berman notes.
The decision to reverse the pipeline last July would greatly weaken that
westward shift of Ukraine. The next government will have to tackle the
issue. Ukraine is a strategic battleground in this geopolitical tug-of-war
between Washington and Moscow. Ukrainian pipeline routes account for 75% of
EU oil imports from Russia and Central Asia, and 34% of its natural gas
import. In the near future, EU energy imports via Ukraine are set to expand
significantly with the opening of huge oil and gas fields in Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Ukraine is a key piece on
Brzezinski's Eurasian chessboard, to put it mildly, as well as Putin's.
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