Federico Bordonaro

Apparently, classical geopolitical dynamics are active, even at times when cooperation and transparency prevail over conflict between historically rival nations.
Therefore, the following news reported by the Telegraph and by other world media are not so “incredible” as one may think at first sight. However, Europe should take into consideration that both the Baltic and the Black Sea areas need special attention in the following years…

Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus. The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the “potential aggressor”.

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Interesting commentary written by Reuters’ analyst Paul Taylor:

Turkey’s bid to join the European Union is fading away with surprisingly little drama because investors no longer see the prospect of accession as an essential policy anchor.
But EU leaders should keep Ankara’s entry negotiations alive on the back burner rather than trying to engage Ankara on alternatives to membership, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy would like to do.
In a version of the old Soviet workers’ joke, “they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,” the buzz on Turkey in the European Commission’s enlargement department is, “they pretend they’re reforming and we pretend we want them”.

Since too many years, EU rotating presidencies simply pass the buck on the next one when it comes to Turkey’s accession bid. However, in the last couple of years the issue has been discussed less heatly than it was before.
While Europe may choose to “indirectly” exhaust Turkey’s patience on the bid issue, it also fears that Ankara might turn less Western-oriented, as this analysis explains:

For decades, Turkey was a junior player in the West’s Cold War alliance, run by military generals; now it has its own voice and enough clout to spar at times with its NATO partners.
Despite harsh rhetoric, Turkish pragmatism has kept military business with Israel largely intact. Israel is involved in two major military projects — tank and fighter plane upgrades — worth more than US$1 billion in Turkey. The Turkish military has also bought Israeli drones to help fight Kurdish rebels, whose strength has waned since their heyday in the 1990s.
“Relations between Israel and Turkey are strategic and decades-old,” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “Despite the ups and downs, Turkey continues to be a key player in our region. We shouldn’t be drawn into frenzied statements about it.”
Alon Liel, who was Israel’s No. 1 diplomat in Turkey in the 1980s, described the situation as a “crisis” and said Israel had received “very harsh signals” from an increasingly assertive government.
“Today there is a new foreign policy that doesn’t rely only on the West. They see themselves as a player in many regional circles,” he said. “All this assertiveness in the region gives Turkey a self-confidence that allows it to be tougher to us.”

Interview for RFERL quoted by Brian Whitmore in his article on the Azeri-Turkish gas row:

Azerbaijan has apparently decided to play its energy card.

As much of the world applauded Turkey’s historic rapprochement with Armenia last week, Azerbaijan felt left out in the cold and abandoned by its closest ally.

Baku had argued strenuously that a deal to reestablish relations between Ankara and Yerevan should not be signed while Armenia continued to occupy Nagorno-Karabakh, and it threatened to take unspecified countermeasures if one was.

Speaking at a nationally televised cabinet meeting on October 16, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev revealed one of those steps: “It is not a secret to anyone that for many years Azerbaijan has been selling its gas to Turkey for one-third of market prices.”

Aliyev added: “What state would agree to sell its natural resources for 30 percent of world market prices, especially under current conditions? This is illogical.”

Very interesting paragraph taken from the annual “Strategic Survey” published by London’s IISS. Every now and then, someone asserts that nation-states are dead and geopolitics obsolete. Now, almost in the year 2010, can we say that these fancy predictions were accurate? The answer is a resounding NO.

Moving into 2010, many of the ambitious foreign-policy agendas and practices established by Western powers in the previous decade and a half appear in retreat. What appetite will there be for the ‘nation-building’ projects that were thought at once strategically necessary and morally desirable? The efforts in Iraq are bound to become modest. Those in Afghanistan, especially as the economic crisis continues and the magnitude of the challenge becomes ever more evident, will naturally become minimalist, at least in comparison to the original design. New projects seem unlikely to be undertaken and would have trouble garnering public support except in the most exceptional of circumstances. What appeals for humanitarian intervention will be answered? The so-called ‘responsibility to protect’ has been advanced as an international imperative, though often with Western impetus, in the face of acts of genocide or equivalent natural tragedies. A sense of natural human charity persists even in times of grave economic crisis. But tragedies in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere have not resulted in the concerted international action for which so many campaigners have pleaded. The static or declining military budgets of European powers place limits on expeditionary capacities already stretched by operations thought to be of strategic vital national interest. Rising powers in Asia, and elsewhere, are still more reluctant to ‘interfere in the internal affairs’ of others. The survivability of doctrines like the responsibility to protect and humanitarian intervention will depend on countries outside the West adopting them more fully than has heretofore been evident.

The intellectual habit in the West has recently become to align national or alliance strategic interests with the delivery of a global public good. It may be that budgetary constraints and the disillusions of recent experience will inspire more political leaders to move from the poetic towards the more prosaic end of the strategic spectrum: defining goals more crisply in terms of clear national interest rather than acts of wider strategic charity. Emerging countries may need to move in the other direction and find some way to define the advance of a wider public good as in their national interest. Rising powers, if they are truly to rise, will only achieve genuine prominence if they are to shape the wider order in which they live. This rebalancing will take time, and may not have wholly beneficial effects. In some areas, like climate change, it may be that Western powers will continue to provide the impetus for an effective global regime, though one will not emerge without key participation from the bigger rising powers. But other causes will need champions from emerging power centres. As time passes, the limitations on Western and US foreign and security policy may become more evident. Domestically Obama may have campaigned on the theme ‘yes we can’; internationally he may increasingly have to argue ‘no we can’t’.

Moldova Urges Russian Troops to Quit Rebel Region

Moldova’s new Western-leaning leadership, in an early challenge to Moscow, said on Thursday it would press Russia to withdraw its soldiers from the country’s breakaway Transdniestria region.

Russia has a peacekeeping force of around 1,200 soldiers stationed since 1992 in the rebel territory, a mainly Russian-speaking sliver of land bordering Ukraine.

The context is fluid. Transnistria, together with Crimea, is one of the potential flashpoints in Eastern Europe. Let’s see how this develops and what ramifications it may cause for the WBSR.

In light of this week’s decision by the Obama Administration to scrap U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, and of NATO Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s proposal of a possible joint U.S.-Russian-NATO missile shield, I re-post an analysis that I wrote for PINR with Dr. Giuseppe Anzera back in July 2006 on the ballistic missiles issue.

25 July 2006
‘‘Ballistic Missiles: A Crucial Strategic Issue for the United States and Europe'’

hile the mainstream media has covered the question of nuclear proliferation in recent years, ballistic missile proliferation is emerging as an increasingly crucial, yet less publicized, strategic issue. On July 4, for example, North Korea tested a Taepodong-2 missile. Five days later, India fired an Agni class missile. Both tests failed, but they signaled how enhanced missile technology will soon be available for these two states. While India is a solid democracy and is even courted by Washington as a new strategic partner, the same is not true for North Korea.

There are two fundamental aspects in the evolution process of today’s ballistic missiles. The first one is the effort made by so-called rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran, to upgrade their offensive capabilities quickly as a result of more powerful and longer range ballistic missiles. The second one is the different perceptions existing in the United States and the European Union about both offensive and defensive missile technologies. Such divergence, caused by historical and geostrategic issues, may hinder the birth of an integrated, transatlantic, missile defense system.

Historical Background

Ballistic missiles have been at the core of global security matters before, such as during the Cold War. In the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union gradually reached the conclusion that increasingly sophisticated anti-ballistic missile defense systems were responsible for bringing more instability to the global military balance since better defenses stimulated an offensive arms race to counter those defenses. Therefore, in 1972, Washington and Moscow signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (A.B.M.) treaty, widely considered as one of the pillars of global security agreements.

The A.B.M. treaty had been signed in a broader historical context when the two world powers were already engaged in a series of talks called the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (S.A.L.T.) aimed at limiting the number of strategic ballistic missiles possessed by the superpowers. According to such agreements, new Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (I.C.B.M.), as well as Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (S.L.B.M.), could only be added to existing arsenals after older ones were eliminated.

The period between 1969 and 1972 set the stage for a new military balance that lasted until the end of the Cold War, notwithstanding a serious crisis in Soviet-American politico-strategic relations in the early 1980s as a result of the Reagan-sponsored Strategic Defense Initiative (S.D.I.), launched on March 26, 1983, when Reagan declared the S.D.I. to be consistent with the A.B.M. treaty. However, already in the 1990s, the altered geostrategic context as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union caused many U.S. strategists to rethink the missile defense issue.

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Rumors of a U.S. back down on BMD in Europe appeared in the press on Sept. 16.
The New York Times reports on Sept. 17 that

The Obama team relied heavily on research by a Stanford University physicist, Dean Wilkering, who presented the government with research this year arguing that Poland and the Czech Republic were not the most effective places to station a missile defense system against the most likely Iranian threat. Instead, he said, more optimal places to station missiles and radar systems would be in Turkey or the Balkans.

“If you move the system down closer to the Middle East,” it would “make more sense for the defense of Europe, Mr. Wilkering said in an interview.

Mr. Wilkering said the new administration did not want to simply abandon missile defense but orient it for a different threat than the Bush team saw. “The Obama administration is more interested in missile defense as a valuable instrument, a valuable aspect of our military posture than I would have thought,” he said. Beyond moving the system from Eastern Europe, the Obama team concluded that the advantage of using the smaller SM-3 interceptors is that they have been proven effective and can be deployed sooner than the ground-based interceptors that the Bush team was still developing.

In any case, the matter should be followed closely, since the political/strategic implications are wide. For instance, the U.S. may be trying to trade-off the BMD in Eastern Europe with Russia’s diplomatic support on the Iranian nuclear question. Moreover, Poland risks to be forced to review its overall strategy of military modernization, that was predicated upon a strong partnership with Washington.
Things appear to be in flux, but once again the BMD project shows its tremendous complexity both at the technical and the diplomatic-strategic level.

Interview for RFERL on the hypothesis of a gas cartel.

It’s enough to send a chill, figuratively and literally, down the spines of energy consumers: the creation of a cartel of natural-gas producers. It would be an organization akin to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the body so many blame when the price of gasoline starts to rise.

“A gas cartel, should it see the light, would mean that producer countries would augment their power even more and that they could have a stronger say on gas prices,” says Federico Bordonaro, a senior analyst with equilibri.net, an Italian-based analytical group specializing in risk assessment.

In today’s Financial Times, Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform and the author of “Is Europe doomed to fail as a power?”, offers a concise yet brilliant analysis of the state-of-the-art of European defence policy.
Grant points out that, despite visible progress, the EU defence capabilities still lag behind what’s needed. Moreover, he underlines how the geopolitical realities of EU Neighbourhood are marked by an ‘arc of instability’ (Balkans-Caucasus region-Middle East) that EU powers should take seriously.

How to make Europe’s military work
By Charles Grant

The European Union is justly proud of its “soft power” – its prosperity, stability and commitment to multilateral institutions have won admirers the world over. A decade ago, when the EU launched the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and appointed Javier Solana as the first high representative for foreign policy, it signalled ambitions in the field of hard power, too. Policymakers in places such as Beijing, Delhi and Moscow took note.

These days, however, few governments elsewhere view the EU as a rising power. They regard it as slow-moving, badly organised and often divided. They are particularly scornful of its lack of military muscle. To be sure, some of the two dozen European missions have made a difference, such as the peacekeepers sent to Bosnia, Chad and eastern Congo, the judges helping to run Kosovo, and the flotilla combating pirates off the coast of Somalia. But one purpose of the ESDP was to generate significant new military capabilities, and in that it has failed. The mission to Chad was delayed by a lack of helicopters – until the Russians provided some.

Defence budgets have been slashed across Europe and only five member states spend more than 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence (Britain, France, Poland, Greece and Bulgaria, but the latter two contribute very little to EU missions). In theory the EU can call on two “battlegroups” – rapid reaction forces available for deployment to a crisis zone – at any moment. But many battlegroups exist only on paper and none has ever been deployed.

This military weakness matters. An arc of instability, stretching from eastern Europe via the western Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East to north Africa, borders the EU. A security crisis in the EU’s neighbourhood may affect its interests directly, for example, by unleashing waves of refugees. There will surely be many occasions when the EU is called on to deploy soldiers, policemen or humanitarian aid. The US expects the EU to be able to sort out its own backyard, notably in the Balkans. And the United Nations wants the Europeans to be ready to intervene in African war zones.
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Banca d’Italia’s governor, Mr Mario Draghi, stated this week that criminal groups may be favoured by the ongoing economic crisis, as businesses will have more troubles in getting money from the banks and may thus fall into the usury trap.

Equilibri.net’s analyst Anna Longhini predicted such an outcome in a February 2009 article.

La crisi economica sta iniziando a colpire duramente dal punto di vista dell’accesso al credito le piccole e medie imprese italiane, a causa di un mercato creditizio che presta a tassi elevati e a condizioni che favoriscono una sempre minore flessibilità nell’esercizio dell’attività imprenditoriale. Parallelamente il mercato dell’usura sta trovando un terreno sempre più fertile in cui operare, perché chi non ottiene i finanziamenti necessari dalle banche o dalle finanziarie spesso si vede costretto a rivolgersi al mercato dell’usura. Il quadro descritto emerge dai dati dell’ultimo rapporto Sos Impresa di Confesercenti del 2008, che mette in luce i numeri di quello che è soltanto uno dei rami dell’attività mafiosa nel nostro Paese.

A “New Great Game” of Geopolitical Control Surfaces in Russia’s Old Backyard. An analysis written by Nadya Ivanova for Circle of Blue, with bits of my interview on the energy issues of the South Caucasus and Caspian regions.

Last December, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) completed an intensive seven-year project to understand the ecological dynamics of the Kura-Araks. NATO convened scientists from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to propose technical solutions for ecological restoration and cleanup.

The campaign, which also involved technical experts from the United States and several European Union (EU) nations, aimed to be more than a classic environmental initiative. Instead, NATO and OSCE focused on the river basin and its cleanup as a tool for using science, collaboration and strategic investment to design solutions to equally important competition over energy and diplomacy that might thrust the South Caucasus into an international conflict.
Reducing those conflicts is essential to cleaning up the river basin and to resolving the important issues that wrack the strategic region, where the EU, U.S. and Russian spheres of influence coalesce over politics, energy and diplomacy.

Article by Bruce Pannier for RFERL with bits of my interview on the subject:

It’s been an up-and-down year for the Nabucco natural gas pipeline.

Just as work on the long-stalled project seems set to finally begin, some shift — usually at the hand of Russian energy giant Gazprom — alters the commercial landscape and Nabucco’s chances appear to recede.

But the pipeline’s supporters have just selected a big name in European politics to help push the project toward realization — Joschka Fischer, the former head of Germany’s Green Party and the country’s foreign minister from 1998-2005.

Fischer faces some serious obstacles in jump-starting Nabucco — the would-be cornerstone in Europe’s drive to kick its Russian energy habit, which has failed to attract commitments from suppliers and consumers alike.

Not least among them is the fact that Nabucco’s rival pipeline projects have a powerful lobbyist all their own — Fischer’s former boss, ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has spent four years on the payroll of Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Bruce Pannier writes on Gazprom for RFERL — the analysis contains bits of my interview for the Radio:

It’s been a tough year for Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant.

Just a year ago, Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom was the third-most valuable company in the world, worth some $350 billion. Now, it has shrunk by two-thirds to about $120 billion, declining to the world’s 40th-largest company, according to “The Moscow Times” on May 27.

And the company appears set to fall another notch or two, thanks to a ruling by Russian antimonopoly authorities on June 2 that Gazprom must share its export pipelines with independent gas producers.

An interview for RFERL on the evolution of European-Central Asian diplomatic and commercial ties.

Just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine an official from Turkmenistan visiting Brussels to discuss exporting natural gas directly to the EU.

But when Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov meets with European Union officials in Brussels, discussing his country’s participation in projects to bring natural gas to Europe will be high on his agenda.

Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have traditionally been the most resistant of the Central Asian states to Western influence, but both are increasingly showing an interest in breaking that mold.

RFERL’s “Power Vertical” delivered an interesting comment on Stratfor’s geopolitical analysis of the global recession.

The report begins with statistics showing how the global recession is affecting various countries and then moves on to an interesting, geography-based explanation of why the recession is, so far, more than four times worse in Russia (change in GDP of negative 9.5 percent over the last 12 months) than it is in the United States (a decline of 2.6 percent).

Stratfor’s analysis of the United States – how its geography, including the world’s largest mass of arable land and a generous inland waterway system that promotes open and cheap domestic trade, produced a resilient and flexible political and economic system – is intriguing reading.

Geography may not be “destiny”, but it certainly has an influential say about it…

As Peter Zeihan wrote in the Stratfor’s report:

The most important aspect of the United States is not simply its sheer size, but the size of its usable land. Russia and China may both be similar-sized in absolute terms, but the vast majority of Russian and Chinese land is useless for agriculture, habitation or development. In contrast, courtesy of the Midwest, the United States boasts the world’s largest contiguous mass of arable land — and that mass does not include the hardly inconsequential chunks of usable territory on both the West and East coasts.

Second is the American maritime transport system. The Mississippi River, linked as it is to the Red, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee rivers, comprises the largest interconnected network of navigable rivers in the world. In the San Francisco Bay, Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound/New York Bay, the United States has three of the world’s largest and best natural harbors. The series of barrier islands a few miles off the shores of Texas and the East Coast form a water-based highway — an Intracoastal Waterway — that shields American coastal shipping from all but the worst that the elements can throw at ships and ports.

This reminds me about Spykman’s lesson: Size per se is not strength, but potential strength. Size, topography, and location, if taken together and analysed in their mutual relations, allow an observer to “get the really big things right enough”, as Colin S. Gray said about Mackinder’s geopolitical works.