But not for -- guess who? -- Turkey and Qatar. Qatar wants a rival pipeline from its North field (contiguous with Iran's South Pars field), through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and finally Turkey. Final destination: once again, Western Europe.
In terms of bypassing both Iran and Russia, the Qatari pipeline totally fits the bill, while with the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, the export route may originate nowhere else than in Tartus, the Syrian port in the Eastern Mediterranean that hosts the Russian navy. And Gazprom would certainly be part of the whole picture, from investment to distribution.
Go West, young Han
Non-stop movement in Pipelineistan, a railway frenzy, a network of underground fiber-optic cables. As far as Beijing is concerned, does it need to behave as a neo-colonial power, like Europe in the past? Of course not. And unlike the US, Beijing sports no ideology. No Western liberal democracy as Promised Land. No "moral progress" in geopolitics. No missionary drive. They just buy their way in.
Thus those Himalayas of new geopolitical "facts on the ground" all across Eurasia -- from deep-water ports in Myanmar to special economic zones in North Korea.
We may already glimpse the contours of a new Eurasian land bridge -- including, for instance, the integration of Central Asia with Xinjiang as well as a southern Silk Road branching through Indochina, linking China to Thailand. Thus the emergence of Kunming as a crack Chinese hub for an immense sub-region of Eurasia. We may interpret some of it as China Going West -- a much more refined expansion of the original 1999 Go West campaign, which centered on Xinjiang. And we're not even talking about a Chinese trade-fueled economic renaissance of the Russian Far East.
China will be involved in the building of a high-speed railway line in Iran. And then there's China's Af-Pak vision: a maze of roads and pipelines connected to Indian Ocean ports linked with Central Asian roads connecting Xinjiang with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, India and Iran also plan to build a new Southern Silk Road, centered on Chabahar port in southeast Iran.
Eventually, Pakistan is bound to become a node of Greater China. The crucial game will be played in the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar. Beijing bets on Gwadar as a key transshipment hub linking it to Central Asia and the Gulf. Both ports - Chabahar and Gwadar -- are key pawns in the New Great Game in Eurasia and also happen to be at the heart of Pipelineistan.
The Iran-Pakistan (IP) pipeline will go through Gwadar -- with the distinct possibility of a Chinese-built extension all the way to Xinjiang. Gwadar might also become a terminal in case the ultimate Pipelineistan soap opera -- the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline -- is ever built. We all know it won't.
Then there's the Russia-China strategic partnership. Finally Beijing and Moscow agreed on the delivery of 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas per year to China starting in 2015. That's Moscow helping Beijing to accomplish a key national security goal; the simultaneous escape from Hormuz and Malacca -- not to mention a big help for China to develop its landlocked provinces.
Obviously China needs a powerful navy; 85% of Chinese imports arrive by the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Then there's all that oil and gas to be exploited across the South China Sea -- which could become a sort of mini-Persian Gulf.
So the first step towards a Greater China would be to -- peacefully -- engage the whole of the South China Sea and Southeast Asia. Then to adequately protect the sea routes to the Middle East across the Indian Ocean, through which China receives oil from Angola, Sudan and Nigeria, iron ore from mines in Zambia and Gabon, copper and cobalt from mines in Democratic Republic of Congo. But more than anything China will privilege a steady network of energy supply from Myanmar, Russia, Central Asia and Iran.
Hillary's 3 am nightmare
Faced with this Eurasian integration frenzy, the US does appear like an island on the other side of the world. The US counter-strategy to all the action in Eurasia has been to designate the Indian Ocean as the new, global strategic center of gravity; that's the essence of the Obama administration's "pivoting to Asia." For the White House/Pentagon, who controls this strategic center, in theory, controls Eurasia; but if you read the fine print, rather controls Chinese energy imports from the Persian Gulf and Africa -- as well as the developing South-South economic axis between China and Africa, not to mention interferes in the free-trade area between China and ASEAN.
Here we find the Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) drive -- that collection of shady free trade agreements shaped by 600 "secret" US corporate advisers currently being negotiated with the Pacific Rim, including Australia, New Zealand and ASEAN members Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
That may be a cool deal, for instance, to Big Pharma -- smashing access to cheap generic medications in the developing world. It will be a wet dream for Wall Street finance capital gangsters -- because it will allow a derivative fun-fest and an orgy of currency speculation. It will be a sort of financial Shock and Awe over Asia -- once more with US big businesses telling governments it's our way or the highway. We may also call it the economic arm of the Obama administration's pivoting.
For a time, it seemed that Hillary Clinton had brushed up on Ancient Persia, Alexander the Great, the Mongols, Mughals, and Sikhs, and "saw the light" in Afghanistan; that's when she came up with a Washington vision of a New Silk Road (road, rail, pipelines) running through Afghanistan.
In terms of bypassing both Iran and Russia, the Qatari pipeline totally fits the bill, while with the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, the export route may originate nowhere else than in Tartus, the Syrian port in the Eastern Mediterranean that hosts the Russian navy. And Gazprom would certainly be part of the whole picture, from investment to distribution.
Go West, young Han
Non-stop movement in Pipelineistan, a railway frenzy, a network of underground fiber-optic cables. As far as Beijing is concerned, does it need to behave as a neo-colonial power, like Europe in the past? Of course not. And unlike the US, Beijing sports no ideology. No Western liberal democracy as Promised Land. No "moral progress" in geopolitics. No missionary drive. They just buy their way in.
Thus those Himalayas of new geopolitical "facts on the ground" all across Eurasia -- from deep-water ports in Myanmar to special economic zones in North Korea.
China will be involved in the building of a high-speed railway line in Iran. And then there's China's Af-Pak vision: a maze of roads and pipelines connected to Indian Ocean ports linked with Central Asian roads connecting Xinjiang with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, India and Iran also plan to build a new Southern Silk Road, centered on Chabahar port in southeast Iran.
Eventually, Pakistan is bound to become a node of Greater China. The crucial game will be played in the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar. Beijing bets on Gwadar as a key transshipment hub linking it to Central Asia and the Gulf. Both ports - Chabahar and Gwadar -- are key pawns in the New Great Game in Eurasia and also happen to be at the heart of Pipelineistan.
The Iran-Pakistan (IP) pipeline will go through Gwadar -- with the distinct possibility of a Chinese-built extension all the way to Xinjiang. Gwadar might also become a terminal in case the ultimate Pipelineistan soap opera -- the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline -- is ever built. We all know it won't.
Then there's the Russia-China strategic partnership. Finally Beijing and Moscow agreed on the delivery of 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas per year to China starting in 2015. That's Moscow helping Beijing to accomplish a key national security goal; the simultaneous escape from Hormuz and Malacca -- not to mention a big help for China to develop its landlocked provinces.
Obviously China needs a powerful navy; 85% of Chinese imports arrive by the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Then there's all that oil and gas to be exploited across the South China Sea -- which could become a sort of mini-Persian Gulf.
So the first step towards a Greater China would be to -- peacefully -- engage the whole of the South China Sea and Southeast Asia. Then to adequately protect the sea routes to the Middle East across the Indian Ocean, through which China receives oil from Angola, Sudan and Nigeria, iron ore from mines in Zambia and Gabon, copper and cobalt from mines in Democratic Republic of Congo. But more than anything China will privilege a steady network of energy supply from Myanmar, Russia, Central Asia and Iran.
Hillary's 3 am nightmare
Faced with this Eurasian integration frenzy, the US does appear like an island on the other side of the world. The US counter-strategy to all the action in Eurasia has been to designate the Indian Ocean as the new, global strategic center of gravity; that's the essence of the Obama administration's "pivoting to Asia." For the White House/Pentagon, who controls this strategic center, in theory, controls Eurasia; but if you read the fine print, rather controls Chinese energy imports from the Persian Gulf and Africa -- as well as the developing South-South economic axis between China and Africa, not to mention interferes in the free-trade area between China and ASEAN.
Here we find the Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) drive -- that collection of shady free trade agreements shaped by 600 "secret" US corporate advisers currently being negotiated with the Pacific Rim, including Australia, New Zealand and ASEAN members Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
That may be a cool deal, for instance, to Big Pharma -- smashing access to cheap generic medications in the developing world. It will be a wet dream for Wall Street finance capital gangsters -- because it will allow a derivative fun-fest and an orgy of currency speculation. It will be a sort of financial Shock and Awe over Asia -- once more with US big businesses telling governments it's our way or the highway. We may also call it the economic arm of the Obama administration's pivoting.
For a time, it seemed that Hillary Clinton had brushed up on Ancient Persia, Alexander the Great, the Mongols, Mughals, and Sikhs, and "saw the light" in Afghanistan; that's when she came up with a Washington vision of a New Silk Road (road, rail, pipelines) running through Afghanistan.
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