Is the Cold War over? Can we even answer that question? I think the answer to both is: of course not.
What was being fought over before? Well if books and films are to be believed, the fight was about pure ideology: capitalism versus communism, represented by the US and the USSR respectively. With the milestone of 20 years since the collapse of the Soviety Union, we must face the question of what has changed, if anything.
If we think about the question carefully, it should be obvious that the fight can NEVER have been purely ideological. No matter the country, the beliefs of the common man or the determination of the politicians, it is impossible to sustain a campaign of violence on ideology alone.
A campaign of violence? Certainly: the US targeted its own people when they were accused of being communists - as in the "Witch Hunts" of the 1950s. And the USSR used its massive military capacity to subjugate most of Eastern Europe and keep them behind the Iron Curtain for most of the 20th century.
Yet it is clear that each is, in its own way, still trying to fight the same war, only now it is possible to see it for what it is: not a Cold War ideologically concerned with the Arms Race, nor simply the Crude War I have previously alluded to. It is the Resource Race. If either superpower is to sustain its position, it must be done with resources.
This post is to be the first concerning itself with countries and territories of the world, in alphabetical order, to be accompanied by individual pages documenting actions taken, that can be replicated by those reading if they wish.
Abkhazia is a tiny territory in the north-western corner of the Caucusus country of Georgia, formerly a republic of the Soviet Union. Georgia lies to the north of the countries Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan and in between the Black and Caspian Seas.
The area has been disputed as being part of Georgia or an independent state for 20 years. The support for Georgia? The US. The support for Abkhazia? Russia.
Georgia itself has been invaded and subjugated by every "superpower" for over 2,000 years.
But what is its interest to the two modern superpowers if the war for ideology is over?
It is all part of the same war, the same race: the Resource Race.
The fight is for the oil routes that will supply the planet until the Arabian peninsula runs dry.
In between the two Seas lies Georgia. To the south lies Turkey and to the south of Turkey, the Arabian peninsula. If Russia is to gain access to Arab oil overland, it must come through the Caucusus, and that means wresting control of Georgia away from the US. And with its economy on the brink, the only way it can do this is to rip off Zimbabwe of its diamonds.
If America is to maintain control of oil exports from the Arab peninsula - and avoid tearing its own continent to pieces (experts claim there is enough oil beneath North America to fuel the planet for the next 15,000 years but it is set in layers, not wells), - they must maintain control of Georgia.
And that begs the question: whose idea was it to replace Russian with English as Georgia's second language, and why?
An interesting thought to close - Abkhazia: a country that doesn't exist, in a country most of you have never heard of...is it simultaneously the most insignificant and the most important piece in the puzzle of a War that isn't over?
Right idea, wrong geography. The real action in the Caucasus is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that cuts Russia out of the Azeri oil trade. Azerbaijan used to pipe its oil through Chechnya and Dagestan, then to the Russian Black Sea coast, and then ship it out through the Dardanelles into the Aegean sea. Now it pipes it through Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean coast; Georgia makes upwards of 60 million dollars a year on this deal.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, shipping oil overland through Syria or Iran and on to the Russian mainland would be highly impractical for a number of reasons; not to mention pointless, because Russia is already the world's biggest oil producer. Russia only profits on oil shipments if it can do them *more* efficiently than established routes, which piping oil for a thousand mile long detour through politically unstable regions certainly does not accomplish.
I should note that Abkhazia has a history as an independent country numbered in millennia. Its capital (Sukhum) was founded and known to the ancient Greeks as Dioskurias over 500 years before the birth of Christ. In the Middle Ages, Abkhazia was an independent country and Georgia was a separate but neighbouring independent country. Abkhazia was never the ‘heart of Georgia’ or a ‘key-territory’ in the history of Georgia.Since the very beginnings of the two states, Abkhazia and Georgia have been separate countries with different languages and cultures. In only two periods have they been together: first, from 1003 to 1323, a part of what is now Georgia was part of the Kingdom of Abkhazia (and not vice versa); second, in the period 1931 to 1991, Abkhazia was part of the Georgian SSR (both together as parts of the administrative structure of the USSR; Abkhazia was NOT at this time part of an independent Georgian polity).
ReplyDeleteDeclaration of the Revolutionary Committee of the SSR of Georgia on Independence of the SSR of Abkhazia - 21 May 1921 http://www.abkhazworld.com/articles/reports/190
Origins and Evolutions of the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict, by Stephen D. Shenfield http://www.abkhazworld.com/articles/conflict/31-origins-and-evolutions-of-the-georgian-abkhaz-conflict.html
Abkhasian Mountaineers - The Graphic (London, England), September 8, 1877 http://www.abkhazworld.com/articles/newspaper-archives/758-abkhasian-mountaineers-september-1877.html
In response to panoptical: thank you for the extra information. I guess I should adapt my idea to incorporate this, meaning that the conflict is more about which superpower exerts the most influence over the Azeri oil pipe - the US that is wielding influence over Georgia, or Russia, which - one could argue - is trying to regain control of the whole region.
ReplyDeleteIn response to draijerani: again, thank you for the information. My statement about Abkhazia not being independent was only really to reflect that the majority of nations don't currently recognise it as being an independent state. And one could, again, make the argument that the presence of Russian troops means it isn't independent.