A Future For Citizen Journalism in Central Asia

In the early 2000s, the Ketebayev brothers – Bakhytzhan and Muratbek – ran Central Asia’s most interesting journalistic enterprises. They were Kazakhstan’s Tan TV and the weekly newspaper Respublika. They provided open coverage of the fascinatingly public political warfare among President Nursultan Nazarbayev, his son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev, and a group of businessmen-politicians. It all ended unhappily as a couple of the businessmen went to prison, Aliyev was exiled to Austria, and Tan was turned into an entertainment channel; since then, Respublika has limped along with continued trouble. For the last couple of years, Bakhytzhan Ketebayev has been back with a new venture. Sasha Meyer thinks that Kanal Plus, Ketbayev’s new enterprise, may be Central Asia’s answer to Al-Jazeera. Meyer’s report:

By Sasha Meyer

A group of Kazakh journalists says it wants to radically alter the landscape for news media in Central Asia. Much of their success hinges on how far their deep-pocketed anonymous backers will be willing to go.

Kanal Plus (K+) is a private Kazakh satellite TV company that attracted attention in September when it broadcast a series of interviews with former first son-in-law Rakhat Aliev into Central Asia, thus snapping the hitherto taboo subject on the Kazakhstan airwaves.

In an interview with Radio Liberty's Bruce Pannier, company president Bakhytzhan Ketebayev said his ambition is to become region's public broadcaster. To reach that goal, he’s preparing to diversify away from Russian into the local languages. Ketebayev also plans a citizen journalism component, in which Kanal Plus would air videos shot on cell phones by ordinary viewers and submitted via the Internet.

Such a social component would help increase the TV channel's popularity. It would also reduce its vulnerability. Kanal Plus doesn't have its own network of correspondents, and instead relies on local partners who provide videos. These local associates are often pressured by state officials not to collaborate with Kanal Plus. (The company itself operates from an undisclosed location outside the region and is thus beyond the direct reach of the authorities.)

The participatory journalism effort would also help alleviate a weakness: The company has no partners in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, so one might find local citizens in both countries filling the gap.

Last but not least, the use of public journalism would ensure that the reporting is harder hitting and resonates more strongly with ordinary people.

If done right, Kanal Plus could achieve in Central Asia what Al Jazeera accomplished in the Arab world. Within three years of its 1996 launch, the Qatari channel became, in the words of journalist and author Thomas Friedman, “the freest, most widely watched TV network in the Arab world,” because it had eliminated the state monopoly on news and analysis. In 1999, John Burns of The New York Times said Al Jazeera gave the Arab viewers “newscasts without censorship” and “explores issues long suppressed by the region's rulers, including the lack of democracy, the persecution of political dissidents and the repression of women.”

A feat like that is more affordable today than then. There are more satellites, and their transponders can squeeze in more channels because of advances in data compression and multiplexing. On the ground, dish antennae and TV receivers are now within the budgets of many more Central Asians. And the scale favors Central Asia: Unlike the Arab world, with its 25 countries and territories, 358 million people and 14 million square kilometers, Central Asia is just five countries, 60 million people, and four million square kilometers.

Obviously, much depends on the priorities of Kanal Plus's sponsors. Ketebayev says the channel is funded by rich Kazakhs. He won’t identify them, but says they believe they can preserve their wealth only if the justice system is more law-based. In their view, Kazakhstan’s system and that of the rest of Central Asia protects neither the poor nor the rich, but only the ruling families.

How far these backers are willing to support Kanal Plus’s journalists is anyone's guess. But they could turn Kanal Plus into a typical Russian news outlet circa 1996. Independent of the government, Russian TV channels were free to criticize officials and politicians. However, they were often used by the oligarchs who owned them as tools in mud slinging campaigns in their own struggle for more money and power. As a result, the journalistic quality was rather low.

Alternatively, Kanal Plus' funders could emulate the style practiced by Alexandr Lebedev. The billionaire former KGB officer supports Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s most daring newspaper, but doesn't interfere in its reporting. The latter approach would give Ketebaev and his band of journalists a chance to realize their ambitions and have an Al Jazeera-like impact on Central Asia.

There is still the matter of harassment, intimidation and murder. Novaya Gazeta, after all, has had four of its reporters murdered since 2001, including Anna Politkovskaya. Just last month, Kyrgyzstani journalist Gennady Pavlyuk was thrown out of a window and killed. Yet, even in Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev appears far less willing than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to countenance the murder of journalists. If properly carried out, citizen journalism could actually favor those who become Central Asian reporters: It would be hard to silence several hundred reporters; none of the Central Asian republics might be prepared to absorb the negative image of violence against the staff of such a high-profile organization.

On the Trouble in Blogistan

Earlier this week, the Financial Times' Isabel Gorst wrote a nice piece on trouble in what she called Blogistan -- a threat to free use of the Internet in Kazakhstan, and the link between that and the publication of former first son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev's tell-all book, Godfather-in-Law. (RFE-RL's Andrey Shary interviewed Aliyev about the book.). I noticed some Facebook traffic on the Internet problems in Kazakhstan as well, and asked frequent O&G contributor Sasha Meyer to weigh in on the topic. His story follows.

By Sasha Meyer

The debate on whether free markets and liberal democracy can take root in Central Asia has been going on for two decades. Both proponents and those who disagree with them will soon have a big opportunity in the form of a huge new audience to persuade.

Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet, and Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the Web, have noted recently that the mobile web has finally taken off. And Central Asia is keeping up with the trend: Telecoms in the entire region -- Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan -- are rolling out mobile broadband. These countries got started with next-generation wireless services even earlier than Russia, which is usually first in the former Soviet Union to adopt new technologies, according to Pyramid Research.

Wireless Internet is likely to spread fast in Central Asia for two reasons. First, it is cheaper to deploy than copper and fiber-optic technologies, and the rollout will be seen as a mere upgrade by millions of consumers who already have a cell phone. Secondly, the costs of hardware are falling. Phone and computer makers, facing saturated markets in the rich world, have been focusing on developing nations. Predictably, they are offering their wares at lower prices in poor countries. A sub-$35 handset, capable of delivering both phone calls and Internet access, has been available since 2007, thanks to a campaign by GSM Alliance, a telephone industry group, to develop a web-capable phone for all.

Similarly, in computers, the netbook, a small laptop, went on sale in 2007 for $300 apiece, a previously unheard of price for a computer. Phone companies plan to or already do offer these computers free or at subsidized prices to entice new customers, just like they do with mobile phones. The drop in netbook prices is forecast to go on; Nvidia, a chip maker, wants to bring the figure down to $100.

Such expectations are favored by supply-and-demand dynamics. While laptop and desktop chip production is dominated by the Intel-AMD duopoly, the market for netbook chips is fiercely competitive, with at least four more companies in the game. Furthermore, rivalry among computer manufacturers is also hotting up. On the demand side, netbooks are a huge hit in Asia, and will also remain popular with Western consumers who opt for cheaper alternatives during economic recession.

All that means millions more ordinary Central Asians will start using the web in the next couple of years. These newcomers to the Net will be distinct in that most will speak no English or Russian (those who do are already on line). But there's a dearth of content in local languages, which represents a big opportunity for those who are in the business of delivering news or shaping public opinion.

Some are better prepared than others. Radio Liberty has websites in almost all of the languages, complete with podcasts; its Kazakh service has a blog to boot. Voice of America's Uzbek TV programs have a YouTube channel and a Facebook presence. And Kremlin's Voice of Russia plans to take its Uzbek and Kyrgyz services online. This growth in Net users will also offer a reach-boosting opportunity for NGOs that provide news analysis, such as IWRP and Eurasianet (the latter will likely follow the former's example and expand beyond Russian and into local languages).

As to how, some recent studies might offer a hint. People in BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are using mobile web to access primarily not information but entertainment, according to a Nielsen Media study.

One possible format worth emulating then is that of the HuffingtonPost, a decidedly political website that mixes serious reports with entertainment news and the latest in celebrity lifestyle. On the other hand, research by Andrew Odlyzko, a well-known Internet expert, suggests a different approach. Odlyzko found that content is not king: People have always used a new technology not because it offered content, but rather because it connected them with others. In practical terms, that would mean a Craigslist in Kazakh or Uzbek might be as valuable as a HuffingtonPost in those tongues.

With millions more going on line in Central Asia in the near future, an opportunity opens up for the U.S., the EU and Japan as well. The G7 could help boost civil society discourse in the region by providing connectivity that is not vulnerable to censorship, thus ensuring a level playing field for all viewpoints.

The Khodorkovsky Rule

Before you slink away for the weekend given the wonderful weather, take a look at a piece today by the FT's Charles Clover, my former Almaty roommate. In it, Clover weighs in along with a couple of colleagues on the tectonic shift under way in the great game in Central Asia: The U.S. is out, and Russia is in.

The August events in Georgia triggered this shift -- the countries along Russia's western and southern borders learned that friendship with Washington is worth only so much when Moscow is willing to use actual troops in defense of its sphere of influence.

The most interesting part of the long piece is a quote from Dimitri Simes, the head of the Nixon Center in Washington. In Simes' view, Russia has conveyed the following message for neighbors that want to remain on friendly terms:

Number one: you can't join a military alliance with an outside power. Number two: do not deploy third-party military forces without Russia's consent. Number three: do not move third-party military forces through your country without Russia's consent."

I don't doubt that Simes is right. In more than one way, those rules bear a striking resemblance to those set out by Vladimir Putin in 2000 for Yeltsin-era oligarchs. The popular version of the story is that Putin presented the oligarchs a choice -- get out of politics, or lose your fortunes. But the truth is probably that the oligarchs themselves, seeing the writing on the wall, sought the deal. As I wrote in Putin's Labyrinth, the oligarchs, including Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, did so

to head off a Putin attack on all of them. One oligarch, Mikhail Fridman, told [John] Lloyd, the Financial Times writer, that he and the other billionaires deserved Putin’s wrath. In an interview at the time, Fridman said they asked only that past wrongs be forgotten. “I think the best plan would be if Putin were to declare an amnesty on everything that happened in the past,” Fridman said.

As Central Asia's leaders are all cognizant, Khodorkovsky refused the deal, and consequently has languished in prison. It will be difficult if not impossible for the U.S. or anyone else to again break the region from a similar fear.

New Washington Team and a Fresh Game in Russia, Iran and the Caspian

After much gnawing over the notion, the Bush administration decided last year to issue a White House invitation to Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. That was wise -- this trained dentist is one of a handful of indispensable players in Eurasian energy.

Alas, the invitation was also late -- geopolitical rival Vladimir Putin had marked up a several-year-long head start of mutual state visits between Moscow and Ashgabat. And it was clumsy: the Turkmen leader was asked to come after the November presidential election. In other words, after Bush was officially a lame duck.

Understandably, Berdymukhamedov declined.

Today, the Obama administration is trying to lower the temperature in U.S. relations with Russia, what it calls a "reset." In two weeks, President Obama will meet with President Medvedev in London. As part of the warming-up exercise, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is cobbling together a basic agreement for the presidents' perusal on replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December.

At the same time, the administration is forming its foreign policy team for Eurasia, the former Soviet Union, and energy. Russia has largely regained the upper hand in Central Asia and the Caucasus, which Washington had treated as a region of U.S. strategic interest since it backed construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline connecting the Caspian and Mediterranean seas in the 1990s. Washington called it the East-West Energy Corridor.

Will the Obama administration get its timing better in terms of inviting Berdymukhamedov to the White House? If so, he might become friendlier toward the parade of U.S. diplomats and oil company executives who call and email me and others regularly with tales of woe regarding their reception in Ashgabat.

Members of the new team include Mike McFaul, the long-time Russia hand who co-wrote a prescient analysis of the Russian economy in Foreign Affairs a year ago. McFaul is running the Russian and Eurasian Affairs desk at the National Security Council. Also at the NSC is Liz Sherwood-Randall, a key architect of the U.S. embrace of Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov in a stint at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, who will watch the rest of the former Soviet Union. The talk is that NSC chief James Jones will also establish a new NSC slot for global oil, but I've heard the names of no firm candidates. At the State Department, the administration is losing Steven Mann, the ultra-experienced Coordinator for Eurasian Energy Diplomacy, who was offered various posts, but instead is leaving to go into the private sector. Stepping back into Eurasian energy is Dick Morningstar, who served as Caspian czar during the 1990s before leaving to teach law at Harvard and Stanford.

In addition, there's talk in Washington of deputizing Vice President Joe Biden as a direct, regular interlocutor with Putin, along the lines of the Al Gore-Viktor Chernomyrdin Commission of the 1990s, which scored numerous successes on political and commercial issues.

In terms of energy itself, the Obama administration has signaled a break with previous administrations by naming a team focused on climate change and alternative fuels. But, in the case of Eurasia, policy can't be one-size-fits-all. Fossil fuels are king there, and Putin has recently handily bested U.S. diplomacy in that sphere. The final act of his triumph was the five-day Russian-Georgian war last August, which revived Russia's premier great power status throughout the former Soviet Union.

Recently, the U.S. has struck back with an West-East corridor. Turning the trans-regional corridor into a two-way route, West-East is a railroad route to supply U.S. troops in Afghanistan with non-lethal commercial supplies -- food, toilet paper and the like. Want to sell something that the troops can use? This is the way to get it there.

The context is the apparent U.S. loss of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, and the uncertainty of the overland supply route from Pakistan through the Khyber Pass.

After Russia helped to persuade the Kyrgyz to eject Manas, it told Washington that it was willing to pick up some of the slack. (One alternative overland route starts in the Baltics, runs through Russia, and on through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to Afghanistan; traffic on this route could be expanded, Russia points out).

But the last 16 years in the region have been all about the uncanny power of alternative routes on geopolitics. So the U.S. appears to have politely declined and, in addition to the trans-Russia route, begun to run the West-East corridor through Georgia and Azerbaijan, across the Caspian to the Kazakhstan port of Aktau, then on to the Uzbekistan city of Termez and Afghanistan.

The ultimate game-changer in the region would be a U.S. diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. Clinton has tried to set the stage by inviting Iran to a March 31 conference in The Hague on Afghanistan to be attended by her and ministerial-level officials from some 75 countries.

As part of the attempted thaw with Moscow, Clinton is also trying to get Russia to help forge a breakthrough with Iran. There's talk of an Obama trip to Moscow in July.

Though Clinton is focused on other benefits to be gained by normalized relations with Iran -- mainly a better chance for Middle East peace -- such a change would also open up a new source of oil and natural gas. And that would change the geopolitics of Europe by diversifying its natural gas supply. That makes the Iran policy in part a new Russian policy.

The CIA, Secretiveness and Jim Giffen's Gamble

Jim Giffen, a New York man accused of passing oil company bribes to Kazakhstan’s president, has asked a federal judge to determine whether U.S. intelligence agencies are purposely withholding documents that the defense says could exonerate him.

In a letter on Giffen’s behalf, his lawyer, William Schwartz, also asks U.S. Judge William Pauley to determine whether his client – whose trial has yet to be scheduled five years after his arrest – has been denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Earlier this month, Pauley suggested in court that the delays may have gone on too long.

The Giffen case has attracted attention as the largest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecution since the 1977 law took effect. Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. In Kazakhstan, the case is known as Kazakhgate.

The 67-year-old Giffen doesn’t deny the government’s charges that he passed along some $80 million in payments from U.S. oil companies to Nazarbayev and other officials from the country. But he has invoked a so-called “public authority” defense, asserting that he had reason to believe that U.S. intelligence agencies knew and approved of the payments because Giffen served a useful role for the U.S. as a Nazarbayev confidante. In order to prove his claim, Giffen has requested a trove of documents from the CIA. In an April hearing, a U.S. prosecutor told Pauley that he would produce some of the documents by September.

Giffen in fact had contact with the CIA for more than three decades as a businessman dealing with the Soviet Union and then post-Soviet Kazakhstan. During the Soviet period, he and other American businessmen were effectively required to brief the CIA after visits to the Soviet Union -- it was a price of being permitted to deal with the enemy in a relatively free manner. After the Soviet breakup, Giffen shifted to Kazakhstan, and he continued to make his visits to the agency, something he regularly noted at the time to acquaintances as a seeming sign that he was plugged in at the top in Washington.

In invoking the novel defense, Giffen has seemed at least in part to be gambling that the highly secretive Bush administration would refuse to turn over documents for public review, and that thus some of the charges might be dropped since he couldn't defend himself without the papers. The latest news seems the first indication that the strategy may pay off.

Giffen’s letter – dated Sept. 8 and entered into the court file yesterday – was triggered by remarks made by Pauley in Giffen’s hearing on Sept. 5. In the hearing, assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Ritchen said he didn’t have the CIA documents, and the usually patient Pauley for the first time suggested that the government demonstrate that it is serious about trying the case. He said he might order intelligence officials to appear and explain themselves. According to the latest court docket, Pauley has scheduled a closed hearing Sept. 25, apparently with representatives of the intelligence agencies.

``At some point, the government has to decide whether it wants to go forward,'' Pauley said Sept. 5, as reported in a story by Bloomberg reporter David Glovin, who has covered the case almost from the beginning. ``Oftentimes, there's nothing more effective than having to look at a federal judge and explain why you haven't done what you're supposed to.''

Pauley said, ``Five years -- that in itself is punishment and hardship'' to Giffen. ``I'm reaching the point where I can't let it go on for years.''

Asked why the CIA has not complied with the request for documents, CIA spokesman George Little said in an e-mail response to me yesterday, "The CIA does not, as a rule, comment on matters pending before U.S. courts."

In his letter, Giffen asks Pauley in the Sept. 25 hearing “to determine whether any delays in production to date have been the result of deliberate inaction or indifference on the part of those agencies such that Mr. Giffen’s rights to a speedy and fair trial may have been compromised.”

The Sweep of Georgia's Impact

I'm just back from two weeks in Kazakhstan, looking at the ripples from the events in Georgia. The short takeaway is that Russia's short, victorious war will be felt for years to come all the way from Central Asia to western Europe. Here is the piece in this week's Business Week.



What doesn't seem to be much appreciated is that the main problem isn't really Georgia. It's that Georgia is the thread hanging off the tattered sweater; you pull it, and the sweater falls apart. Not counting the suddenly transformed politics of the Eurasian continent, but just economics, will Azerbaijan and Georgia manage to widen the Caucasus energy corridor to accommodate another 1.5 million barrels a day of Kazakh oil over the coming years, as Kazakhstan would like? What of hopes to diversify Europe's natural gas supply? The answer to both is "perhaps," but that Russia will have to be accommodated.

What would Russia want in exchange for allowing the corridor expansion to go through? For starters, as it's made plain, it wants all of the Azerbaijan state's natural gas supply, the very same volumes that the State Department is pushing President Ilham Aliyev to ship to Europe. As for Kazakhstan, it's not clear what it will be asked -- President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the balancer of great powers, has already been so deferential to Vladimir Putin that one wonders what more there is to surrender. From Europe, Putin would like continued demand for Russian gas at current or greater volumes.

One thing that's sure is that Russia doesn't have to use its Army again. Having deployed it once, Putin has made his point. Besides, Russian energy pipelines provide it all the leverage it needs without its army.

While You Were Involved in War

In the midst of Vladimir Putin's land grab in Georgia, BP suffered another blow in its oilfield tussle in Russia. Last week, a Russian court barred Robert Dudley, the CEO of BP's joint venture in Russia, from running the company for two years. Now BP is trying to figure out how to secure its Russian assets, which account for a quarter of the company's global production.

BP and its partners at TNK-BP -- four Russian oligarchs who are mainly financiers and bankers -- have been in a dispute since spring. In a nutshell, the Russians value the company for the dividends it pays out; BP sees the company as more of a growth play, and wants to plow as much of the oil profit as possible back into the company. While that sounds like a balancing act managed at almost all companies around the world, it's turned ugly in this case.

As O and G readers know, I see this brawl ending badly for BP. Given the pressure the Russians have brought to bear, with the obvious collusion of the Kremlin (it's absurd to claim, as the Russian partners have, that an army of inspectors could have a free-for-all at the company unless the Kremlin were okay with it), I don't see how BP comes out with anywhere near its current 50% share of TNK-BP.

Indeed I think it's entirely possible that the British company is forced out entirely. In that case, BP itself -- meaning the global oil company -- is at risk; Wall Street will pummel its share price, and that would make it a vulnerable target for takeover. Some predict that Shell is the likeliest suitor, and I agree.

The partners are scheduled to meet to brawl again face to face on Sept. 25.

Guest Column: Khanna Explains The Second World

Today we have the pleasure of helping to launch a terrific new book. It's The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, by Parag Khanna, director of the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation. I asked Parag to write for the blog today not only because of the quality of his book, but because his travels took him through our turf, and he came away with a different take from my own in some cases, in particular about Gazprom. Without further ado, here is Parag's posting:

Thanks very much to Steve (with whom I share a terrific editor at Random House) for allowing me to post an introductory note on this esteemed blog about my book, which has been released today.

The book covers my travels through about 40 countries to look at their changing and increasingly multi-directional leanings, and focuses on societies that are increasingly divided socially, politically, and economically between haves and have-nots, winners and losers, first- and third-worlders -- hence the "second world." It's a happy coincidence that the countries of interest to O&G readers used to be called the "second world" until the term fell out of use. I spent quite some time in Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the like for my research.

I want to jump into two ongoing debates: Gazprom/Europe and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization/Afghanistan.

Very often Gazprom diplomacy and Russian diplomacy are taken as synonymous, and recently the two have appeared as well-coordinated as Chinese synchronized divers. But we should not forget last year's tiffs with Belarus, and the current bickering in Ukraine, both of which serve as examples of corporate logic undermining diplomatic logic.

Gazprom's demand that Belarus -- Russia's only major ally in the former Soviet Union (alongside perhaps Armenia and Tajikistan) -- pay market prices didn't win it friends other than those who saw bankruptcy and incorporation into a State Union with Russia as desirable. It also woke up EU members to the need to diversify fast.

And in Ukraine, the creation of RusUkrEnergo to continue Gazprom's bullying for constant pay-outs on amounting arrears has only alienated wider segments of Ukraine's leadership. One can only imagine that the population is as well, meaning that future election outcomes may not be as close a split between Russian and Western -leaning sides as has been the case to date. Gazprom logic would care little for such an outcome. But an increasingly Russia-skeptical Ukraine could abandon caution and welcome overtures from NATO more than it has to date -- making Putin's worst fear a reality. Diplomacy is about making friends, while corporations exist to make money. Unless Russia balances the two, oil and glory may not be forever connected.

Furthermore, the argument that Russia has Europe permanently over a barrel on gas supply assumes a long-term Russian stability while ignoring that it is Europe that can invest in diversification over the long term, drawing more oil/gas from North Africa, for example, thus gradually increasing its leverage over Russia.

The other issue is the recent talk of NATO reaching out to China (perhaps via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, known as SCO, though Russia for obvious historical reasons wants no part in any Afghan operations) to potentially run a Provisional Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan, or run one jointly with other nations, even the U.S. Apparently the offer was made, and China was enthusiastic, but their letter to the State Department is said to have gone unanswered for lack of coordination with NATO or a decision on how exactly to respond. So the U.S. may have dropped the ball. (Any updates/insights on this would be appreciated.)

Across the 'Stans, it's only a matter of time before NATO and SCO mingle ever more closely, and friction possibly occur. Rumors from on the ground (yet again) that the Kyrgyz might demand a shutting of America's Manas base have such maneuvering at their root. So concrete outreach between the two "alliances" beyond mundane briefings in Brussels would be where geopolitics and diplomacy intersect today. That could be quite exciting to watch unfold as NATO stands on the brink of failure in Afghanistan while Chinese and Iranian infrastructure projects -- such as in Tajikistan and Afghanistan -- move forward across the region, eventually allowing the two to connect safely overland.

Will it be the new Great Game or new Silk Road? I predict both: America continues to support political liberalization in the region, meaning some opening to greater cross-border flows, while also hoping to maintain lily-pad like bases across the region. From China's view, it too requires open borders to facilitate its exports while importing energy, and through the SCO sees itself ever more as a contributor to regional stability. Throw in Russia and Europe and you have a recipe for all the intrigue and mystery that characterized both the Silk Road and Great Game eras.

Oil and Glory at the University

For the number of professors who are assigning The Oil and the Glory to their classes, I'm happy to discuss or reply to students' questions right here on the blog or directly by email (link at the bottom of the home page).

New York University is among those reading the book. I was delighted to speak myself to one of the classes last week -- Professor Carter Page's course Energy, Environment and Resource Security. In addition, Prof. Carolyn Kissane has assigned it to her course, Transformations in Central Asia: A Global Context. Thanks to Profs. Page and Kissane for getting the topic out before the next generation.

Photo: laffy4k
Rights: Creative Commons

The Same Old Game in Uzbekistan

As they say, hope springs eternal. But when it comes to Uzbekistan, it's getting ridiculous.

Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, the former Soviet Union’s most malignant president, is engaged in one of his customary mid-rule alliance shifts. After a few years of bedding with Vladimir Putin, he’s showing some leg to his former intimate, Washington. He has released some political prisoners. He’s allowing Human Rights Watch to re-open its Tashkent office. He's again allowing NATO to use Termez as an entry point to Afghanistan.

All of this has triggered remarks by some human rights activists and State Department officers that Western sanctions against him are working.

But Karimov’s about-face is predictable. He has with regularity shifted between Russia and the United States since the 1991 Soviet breakup. What does not change are his main policies – iron-fist rule, torture and repression of his people, and impoverishing, Soviet-like economic policies.

It seems a quaint notion now, but in 1996, for instance, Karimov desperately wanted what was then regarded as the ultimate recognition in this part of the world – an official state visit to the White House. Washington rubbed its hands with glee, getting Karimov “in exchange” to agree among other things to currency reform, and to allow exiled opponents to return home. Within months of his Oval Office visit with President Clinton, however, it was back to the old Karimov – the currency reform was canceled, and opponents were arrested or forced back out of the country.

Now, Human Rights Watch says that Karimov’s release of political prisoners just before last week’s visit of a European delegation to Tashkent is proof that “sustained international pressure on Tashkent is effective.”

It means nothing of the sort. What it does mean is that Karimov remains a cynical – and shrewd – geopolitical player who knows precisely how to push the right buttons in both Moscow and Washington.

Photo: DGtal Plus Art & Photo
Rights: Creative Commons

Guest Column: Iran's Cold Winter

By Paul Sampson

Iran is in the grip of an energy crisis that has left homes without heating and electricity, forced the temporary shut-down of power plants, and even led National Iranian Oil Co to stop re-injecting gas into its onshore oilfields. How could this happen in a country with the world's second-largest oil and gas reserves, you might ask?

First, this year's winter has been the coldest in a half century; Turkmenistan cut gas supplies to Iran at the beginning of the year in a pricing dispute; and, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacted very slowly to a national emergency.

Iranians I've spoken to say the trouble with Turkmenistan was entirely avoidable. Last autumn, Turkmenistan said that in 2008 Iran would have to remit much more than the $75 per 1,000 cubic meters, the extremely low price it had been paying. But rather than deal (what even Russia's Gazprom when the Turkmen raised the same gripe), the Iranians dug in their heels and -- hey presto -- had the taps turned off.

The Turkmen pipeline supplies remote northern Iran villages that are cut off from the mainland, so there was always going to be a problem. But, as the freezing weather started to bite, the problem became a full-blown crisis.

For Ahmadinejad, whose handling of the economy has been woeful at a time Iran is being squeezed by US-led sanctions, the energy shortages should be an embarrassment. Some analysts predict he'ill pay for his shortcomings with a hammering in next month's parliamentary elections, where his conservative rivals are expected to gain ground.

But don't bet on it; friends in Tehran have said over the past few days that Ahmadinejad is as confident as ever and, backed by the all-powerful Supreme Leader and his friends in the Revolutionary Guards, is setting his sights on being re-elected in June.

For some Iranians, that would be the last straw.

Photo: please!don'tsmile
Rights: Creative Commons

Becoming Quieter on the Caspian

The prize in the Pipeline War is Turkmenistan. Russia and China -- especially the former -- are far ahead of the West in the contest. One reason has been their willingness to look the other way on the issues of human rights, rigged elections and presidents for life.

Chris Chivers of The New York Times weighed in over the weekend on the American response, which is to lower the volume on the moralizing.

There has been a U.S. policy shift on the Caspian, and that's to tell the presidents that they don't have to be like Norway to get along with Washington. As long as they stay on the good-behavior -end of the spectrum of the generally badboy former Soviet states, they're all right.

Some quiet diplomacy is needed in the region. The U.S. is right to give the benefit of the doubt, for instance, to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov as long as he continues to methodically dismantle the legacy of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov.

The aim of the U.S. policy is to help to continue to carve out some long-term breathing room for the region from Russia by championing the trans-Caspian and Nabucco natural gas pipelines to Europe. So far, Turkmenistan has been more favorable toward Russia's competing system, the Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines.

Yet there's a line not to be crossed.

One is pandering. Chivers provides an astonishing public remark by Julie Finley, U.S. ambassador to the OSCE. Speaking to Kazakhs in Europe a couple of years ago about their seizure of unflattering newspapers, Finley said, “Maybe you saved some readers some waste of time, anyway.”

And a second is Uzbekistan. Chivers describes a recent visit to Tashkent by the apparently irrepressible Admiral William Fallon, commander of the U.S. Central Command. Fallon is seeking to help thaw currently frozen relations with Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, who holds the distinction of being the former Soviet Union's most brutal dictator.

“I told them that we couldn’t do much about the past, but that we could look at the future,” Fallon said of his discussion with the Uzbeks.

With respect, that's incorrect, Admiral Fallon. There is no respectable future relationship with Karimov until, for starters, he proves that he has stopped torturing and killing his people.

Unlike some of the region's other leaders, Karimov took no road to post-Soviet ruthlessness. He began there. My own initial sign of that was back in January 1992, two weeks after the Soviet collapse, when I crossed the street from the Hotel Uzbekistan to talk to the Pulatov brothers at Birlik, the then-Tashkent-based opposition group whose office was across the street. At the bottom of the stairs was a pool of blood. Inside, I learned from the more active of the two Pulatovs -- Abdumanop -- that his brother Abdurahim had been knocked on the head with a pipe by an unknown assailant.

The situation has declined since. Karimov regards entreaties by westerners such as Fallon not as an opportunity to re-open a perhaps positive economic path for his people, but a display of weakness, evidence that he still calls the shots in the dance with the foreigners.

It will probably require Karimov going the way of Niyazov before normal relations with the West can resume.

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Guest Column: Radio Liberty Coming to a PDA Near You

By Sasha Meyer

International broadcasters like the BBC and VOA have always suffered from physics. They broadcast in AM format on short and medium wave. While AM signals can reach listeners on the other side of the globe, they are highly susceptible to interference. The result is discouragingly noisy and at times inaudible reception.

FM format on ultra-short wave is well known for its high fidelity, but it lacks range. An FM signal goes only as far as the horizon, which is not very: A station with a 100-meter-tall antenna can reach listeners only within 20 miles.

During the Cold War, U.S. government-run VOA and others tried to overcome the obstacles by increasing the power of the transmitters and moving them closer to the Eastern Bloc's borders. (Radio Moscow did likewise, using facilities in Cuba and Eastern Europe.)

After the Soviet collapse, the VOA tried to fix the problem by arranging to broadcast its programs on local CIS stations. This solution has proved both cumbersome (requiring negotiation with a multitude of partners), limited (some countries haven't agreed) and temporary (many partnerships have been suspended, both in Russia and Central Asia).

But the arrival of new broadcast technology – Digital Radio Mondiale or DRM – promises to solve the problem once and for all.

DRM enables the delivery of FM-quality audio over AM distances. Field tests show clear reception of a DRM broadcast from Portugal in places as far away as Finland and Cyprus. (Listen to samples here). The next step – DRM Plus – promises CD-quality sound, albeit over shorter distances.

The future for DRM seems bright for several reasons. It enjoys broad support among broadcasters. They see it as their last fighting chance against the Internet and satellite radio.

Unlike the latter two, DRM is cheap: Existing transmitters can be used with an addition of a computer that digitizes the audio. Furthermore, it significantly cuts electricity bills.

Geographically large countries - Russia, India and Brazil - are among its biggest backers. For them, DRM is a cost-effective way to deliver news across their vast distances. A Chinese company already makes DRM-capable Himalaya radios and Russia has produced one called Orlyonok.

The DRM plans got an extra boost last year when Swiss semiconductor giant ST Microelectronics announced plans for a tiny DRM decoder. The chip can be built into anything from car radios to PDAs.

DRM broadcasting is already a reality. For example, the Kremlin's Voice of Russia has been broadcasting since 2003 in DRM format to China and to Europe (in English, French and German).

Expect Radio Liberty and Deutsche Welle to start beaming their DRM programs into the CIS once Orlyonok hits store shelves in Minusinsk and Khujand.

Many Spaniards celebrated the recent demolition of Radio Liberty's huge antennas near Barcelona. But, with DRM's arrival and experts saying that Cold War 2.0 is imminent, that destruction might seem a bit rushed.

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Turkmenistan Starts to De-Bizarre: Libraries Legalized

It's true that outsiders (including myself) have spent a good 15 years making Turkmenistan the butt of our Central Asian humor. But in our defense, everyone from ordinary Turkmen to Central Asia's presidential circles felt the same way. When you'd simply mention the name "Turkmenbashi," local people couldn't contain themselves.

That of course was what Saparmurat Niyazov insisted that people call him -- Turkmenbashi, or Father of all Turkmen.

Well, all good fun must come to an end. Niyazov died a year ago, and today his successor, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (a dentist by profession who my friends at Registan.net insist on calling "Stomatalogbashi, or Father of all Dentists) began to discard some of the country's weirdest laws.

Berdymukhamedov announced in a nationally broadcast news conference that Turkmenistan needs a few libraries. Some working cinemas. An opera. A ballet. A circus.

What's next -- will he trash the Ruhnama, the delusional Niyazov tract that's required reading of all Turkmen?

I for one hope that Berdymukhamedov does not melt all the Niyazov statues for scrap. Humor, after all, is the root of sanity.

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Hillary, McCain and Jingoism

I was in Baku on an oil story when Hillary Clinton visited Central Asia during the 1990s, but when I got back to Almaty I asked around for local impressions of her. The visit went over well, I was told by her Kazakh and Uzbek hosts -- she stopped by a pre-natal care clinic in Almaty, and met with Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev and, in Tashkent, with Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov. But I also heard a singular personal observation from the amused locals -- Clinton, it turns out, doesn't have an athlete's slim legs.

How to respond to an immature remark? Probably with silence, which is what I did. And in fact, I didn't hear Nazarbayev, Karimov or any other official or reporter say publicly: F-A-T T-H-I-G-H-S.

Nor for that matter did I hear then or since any public official abroad say of John McCain: "I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: O-L-D."

Which brings me to recent remarks by Clinton and McCain, both of whom maintain that above all else what sets them apart from their respective rivals in both main parties is gravitas on the foreign policy stage.

So how is it that we find Clinton saying of Vladimir Putin, as she did yesterday: "he's a KGB agent. By definition he doesn't have a soul." And McCain in a newspaper interview: "I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B."

Both of these knee-slappers were intended as swipes at President Bush for his oft-quoted 2001 remark about Putin, as kindly provided by the L.A. Times' Andrew Malcolm: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue."

Did Bush's remark reflect wisdom or good judgment? No. But neither does it require any to remark on someone's well-known former employment.

Putin's KGB background does affect Kremlin policy. The thrust of it is -- anything goes. In other words, set the goal, and use whatever means necessary to achieve it, which is a worrying approach to domestic and foreign policy.

But Putin is going to be around a long time, and the U.S. is going to have to find a common language with him. Rather than offering a serious approach, Clinton and McCain dived quite happily into the muck in a craven effort to capture the base.

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Ode to Harry Flashman

Westerners gathered in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the late 1980s and early 1990s understood they were in Great Game territory. They understood it deep in fact, mainly because of the writing of a handful of superb Britons -- Peter Hopkirk, Fitzroy Maclean, and of course George MacDonald Fraser.

Fraser died yesterday, which brought me back to the influence he had on a generation of foreign correspondents based in Peshawar, Kabul and Islamabad.

In The Great Game, Hopkirk was unmatched in his grasp of the big picture, and Maclean's Eastern Approaches was a riveting, first-person account of sneaking into the Caucasus and Central Asia when it truly was perilous to do so.

But it was Fraser's Flashman that provided comic relief while delivering the authentic history. It's a belly-laugh-out-loud frolick through Afghanistan, starring the cad Harry Flashman. When new correspondents arrived in Peshawar, the first thing they were often advised to do was stop by Abdara Road and pick up a copy.

That helped to create a Flashman cult following. In all, Fraser turned out a dozen Flashman novels, taking his character into exploits ranging from the charge of the light brigade to the U.S. civil war.

Farewell George MacDonald Fraser, and thanks for the inspiration.

Earth to Exxon: Your World is Not Enough

Exxon Mobil has received a fresh message from Russia: We are in charge. Get used to it.

No doubt the oil giant -- which is in battle on two fronts in the former Soviet Union, not to mention in Venezuela -- will ignore the warning and crash-land blithely into the dinosaur pit.

I mean that only slightly tongue in cheek. Around the world, Big Oil is having to cut deals with petroleum-rich states that want to control their own resources. I've recently come around a bit to Exxon's view that resource nationalism will moderate -- petro-states like Russia will need high technology to arrest their declining production and develop difficult new fields -- but only a bit.

The direction of global oil is clear, and it's toward the demise of the Big Oil companies as we know them. In general, the petro-states that control more than 80% of global oil reserves can get what they need from technology-rich oil services companies, and will largely do without the Exxons, Chevrons and BPs of the world.

Yet Exxon seems to think that the old rules hold, those of prior decades in which Big Oil called the shots.

Forbes reports on the latest news on the Russian front. It's a salvo from a Gazprom deputy chairman named Alexander Ananenkov. In a news conference yesterday, he called Exxon's control of the giant Sakhalin-I natural gas field an "infringement of Russia's national interests." He added that Exxon's wish to sell its Sakhalin-I gas to China had made Russians "poor relations who see their gas siphoned off."

The fact is that, according to Exxon's contract, it can sell the Sakhalin production wherever it wants, and China is willing to pay a higher price than Russia.

But that ignores political reality. Russia wants the Sakhalin gas for the domestic market. Why? So it can keep selling its own gas for enormous profits to Europe. And, in case it must curtail its exposure to Europe because of growing alarm there over Russian market dominance, Gazprom itself wants to be able to sell to China.

Exxon would be wise to find a middle ground now rather than wait -- as Shell, BP and Total did to their chagrin over the last two years -- for Russia to build into a lather.

Exxon is also the lead rebel in a several-month-long dispute with Kazakhstan over the supergiant Kashagan oilfield. The Kazakhs are in a fit over a minimum five-year delay in first production at the Caspian Sea field, plus a huge budget over-run. The Kazakhs want more money, and they want it faster than they are contractually guaranteed.

The word is that the other foreign partners developing Kashagan -- Total, Shell and Italy's Eni -- are amenable to Kazakhstan's terms. But Exxon is holding out for an extension in the length of the forty-year contract.

The reason for Exxon's stubbornness is mainly its instinctual bloody-mindedness. But it's also highly concerned about what a concession on Kashagan will mean for its other former Soviet holdings -- 25% of Tengiz, a supergiant sister field to Kashagan; and of course Sakhalin-I. I personally think that the other companies sympathize with Exxon and are hiding behind its willing to play bully. But that's besides the point. Exxon is the lightning rod.

And Exxon doesn't want to look like a pushover as it stands firm, its back right at the edge of the dinosaur pit.

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Presidential Humor From Central Asia

Thanks to David Hoffman for this entertaining link. For identification purposes: From left to right, Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, Turkmenistan's Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Tajikistan's Imamali Rakhmanov.

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Merry Christmas, Alan Johnston

In a great year for me, by far the best news of all came July 4th when my former Tashkent roommate, BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, was released unharmed from captivity in Gaza. Alan, who is 45, had been hostage for almost four months. He credits Hamas, otherwise branded a terrorist organization, for his release.

I saw Alan a couple of months ago over a meal in London, and he looked and sounded great. I was reminded of this when his voice came on NPR this morning in an interview about his new book, Kidnapped: And other Dispatches. It appears not to be available as yet in the U.S., but I did find it on Amazon.co.uk. It's sure to be a wonderful read.

Merry Christmas, Alan.

Christmas Cheer in Kyrgyzstan

They tried with Vladimir Lenin. Then they took a stab at Boris Yeltsin. Now the wise white Muslim beards in Kyrgyzstan are turning to a can't miss tourist grabber -- Santa Claus.

Kyrgyzstan, which has totally missed out on the region's oil rush since it doesn't have any, is now trying to cash in on what it's got in plenty -- mountains.

Here's the AP dispatch out of Bishkek:

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — This former Soviet republic has mountains honoring Communist and Russian leaders. Just in time for Christmas, authorities say they plan to name a snowy peak "Mount Santa Claus."

Three climbers set off Wednesday to scale the designated peak and bury a capsule containing the flag of Kyrgyzstan at the summit on Christmas Eve.

Why is a predominantly Muslim and former Soviet land honoring the jolly old elf?

"We want to develop tourism, and Santa Claus is an ideal brand to help us do this," said Nurhon Tadzhibayeva, an official with Kyrgyz tourist authorities.

Plans are afoot to hold an international Santa Claus congress in Kyrgyzstan in the summer, Tadzhibayeva said. The country also intends to hold annual games in which Santas from all over the world will test their chimney-climbing, sled-racing and tree-decorating skills.

Other Kyrgyzstan peaks bear the names of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

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Time Is Right -- Putin is the Person of the Year

Time has chosen Vladimir Putin as its Person of the Year for 2007. The magazine notes as it usually does that this does not connote endorsement. The selection rather recognizes a person who Time's editors believe had the greatest impact in one way or another in the world.

For reasons different from those Time lays out, I agree with the choice. The biggest is that Putin has forced the world to take Russia seriously. Just a few years ago, it would have been regarded as absurdist to suggest that Russia would have its current voice in global politics and business.

It's irrelevant that he's done so on the back of high oil prices, and that Russia's influence no doubt will wane when those prices inevitably do. One place where Time is wrong is in saying that Russia possesses an inherent central role in world affairs -- on the basis of what? Its nuclear weapons? It's Putin's personality that has put Russia at center stage.

Oddly enough, and perhaps more importantly, Putin has also brought a much-needed balance to global diplomacy. He has rightly pointed out that the unipolar world that's followed the Soviet collapse has put global diplomacy off-kilter, especially given the rigid Bush administration view of the world.

Some of Putin's actual policies -- such as energy domination in Europe -- are decidedly contrary to Western interests. But because of his very belicosity, Putin has made the ordinarily dismissive Bush actually engage, and that can only be positive.

Time's selection highlights the world now faced by the other countries on which this blog mainly focuses -- the eight states of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Putin's disciplined determination means they face a tougher prospect in terms of weaning themselves away from Russia's economic embrace. The next year will bring a continued battle of pipeline politics between Putin and U.S. and Europe, with Central Asia -- specifically Turkmenistan -- the key prize.

The Putin

Does Putinism require Vladimir Putin?

Putin announced today that he’s prepared to stand beside Dmitri Medvedev as his prime minister. He also says there’s no plan to transfer presidential powers to the prime minister's office.

I personally think that Putin will exercise much more power than any Russian prime minister in the post-Soviet period after the March elections. After all, he only said that there are no plans to change the law – Medvedev needn’t formally change any rules to allow his mentor to govern, for instance, the ultra-powerful military and intelligence services.

Yet I recall a conversation on my last trip to Moscow this year with a super-smart Russian analyst who predicted that Putin would step aside – there would simply be a shifting of seats as in musical chairs.

So let’s take Putin at his word and consider whether Putin is a requirement for the current system to go on.

The prevailing wisdom is yes. Putin failed to build up Russian stable institutions of governance during his almost eight-year tenure, but instead erected power around himself, the argument goes. In an editorial Saturday, my former newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, wrote, “Putinism hangs on a single man.”

That's an enormous categorical assumption. And I think it's wrong. Putin did build up an institution, and it’s hiding in plain sight: The people all around him, in public and behind closed doors, who run the Kremlin, Gazprom, Rosneft and the rest of the economy are that institution. Heirs to the fortunes wrested in part from Russia's powerful oligarchs of the 1990s, they aren't going anywhere.

Putin has just bequeathed one of the most powerful parts of that institution to Medvedev, and that's his political brain trust. Russia's Vedomosti newspaper says Medvedev's presidential campaign will be run by Putin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin and possibly also his main strategist, prince of darkness Vladislav Surkov.

Yes, I think my Moscow friend had a point. Though it can seem otherwise, what's been built up in Russia is bigger than one man. Still, Putin will be around a long time. From close in, he can ensure that his successor is getting along well. He can reassure the many people counting on this institution for their fortunes. He can continue to help balance these forces. And he can step in forcefully should Medvedev unexpectedly falter.

Many people call Putin’s practices “Putinism.” So what shall we denote the institutional proper noun for those who practice Putinism?

I suggest The Putin.

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Putin Lays Out Russia's Future: The Gazprom-KGB State

For years, scholars, think tank commentators and journalists have been fond of a cute phrase to describe Russia: The KGB State. That's because of Vladimir Putin's KGB past, and the men who generally surround him.

But Putin's clever choice today of successor shows how he sees his country, and that's a hybrid -- what one might call the Gazprom-KGB State.

The levers of power will be distributed like this: Dmitri Medvedev keeps the money that's fueled Russia's roar back onto the world stage rolling in; and Putin keeps his hand in decision-making through his power base -- the FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB.

Medvedev, who unless someone mightier than Putin intervenes will be Russia's next president come March, is chairman of the Russian natural gas giant. He's also of course Putin's deputy prime minister, but it's the Gazprom title that has demonstrated Putin's confidence in his 42-year-old protege.

Gazprom is the spearpoint of Russia's foreign policy. Through its control of natural gas pipelines, Gazprom is the instrument of Russian influence in its former colonies in Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Slavic states of Belarus and Ukraine, and even in the Baltics. And Gazprom is also Russia's lever of influence in Europe, where the company supplies 30% of the natural gas. That influence is likely to grow with the construction of new pipelines from Russia to Europe.

But what Medvedev doesn't have is links to the FSB, or any of the other security services. That means he's absolutely no threat to Putin's aspirations of holding on to power. If Putin had selected Medvedev's main rival, former KGB officer Sergei Ivanov, it would have sent a different message.

Last week, Putin proved that he's the country's most popular political figure in a massive sweep of parliamentary elections. Now he's moved to consolidate his position with the appointment of a milquetoast successor who seems likely to gladly stay on the economic side of power, and leave the rest to his patron.

We all assume that Putin plans not just to exert continued influence, but paramount power. Expect to hear more on that front.

Russia: Note to Presidential Candidates

This week's U.S. reversal on Iranian nuclear aims is a wake-up call on multiple fronts for those who will run American foreign policy for the next few years.

Among them is this: Vladimir Putin isn't a simple gadfly. Instead, he's one of the most important leaders the U.S. can cultivate over the next few years. Why? Because he's engaging and challenging the U.S. on issues that both countries care about, and happens to get it right -- and the U.S. wrong -- at important times.

As we learned this week, Iran is one. For years the U.S. tried to stampede him into supporting ever-escalating sanctions, leading to possible war, against Iran. But he resisted, asserting that President Bush's claims about Iran's nuclear weapons capability were overblown, and according to the new U.S. intelligence estimate it is Putin's judgment that was correct.

The new Iran intelligence highlights another needed correction: Putin in fact isn't inaccurate -- nor belligerent -- when he asserts that the U.S. presumes to know the only way on foreign policy.

U.S. policy on Russia currently amounts to this: You hurt my feelings.

It would be better to focus on issues, and the main one is energy, the foundation of Russian -- and Putin's -- power, how he's asserting Moscow's prerogatives in Europe and elsewhere.

As readers of this blog know, I think that one of the most potent instruments of power in Europe today is control of the flow of oil and natural gas. Putin has learned the lesson of the momentous U.S. foreign policy triumph last year with the completion of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and is conducting his own, much more ambitious pipeline policy.

Putin's strategy is market-oriented -- to cement and increase Russia's current control of 30% of Europe's natural gas market. It so happens, in my opinion, that that aim is incompatible with European and U.S. interests in a more diversified natural gas supply so that no one can dictate terms.

The U.S. is attempting to counter the Russian pipeline thrust, but is late to the game. U.S. energy bureaucrats led by Steven Mann are meeting in Sofia tomorrow and Friday to talk over how the U.S. can polish its strategy, and it'll be interesting to know the outcome.

I personally think that the new intelligence assessment on Iran -- like the previous one -- sounds too smugly certain. Anyone who has read Tim Weiner's excellent Legacy of Ashes can see that the intelligence business is barely manageable at best, like herding cats as the saying goes. But the fact that the intelligence services did not have rock-hard evidence before on Iran's intentions gives little comfort to those reading this week's abrupt, contrary assertions.

And it's equally discomfiting to those who have watched American policy on Russia amount to finger-pointing.

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Notes on the Pipeline War: Amateur Hour in Washington and Europe

Note: I had an interesting interview today with David Inge of WILL Radio at the University of Illinois. Lots of history, Russia, Iran and China.

Now to pipelines. I’ve been exchanging emails with an oilman friend about a long natural gas pipeline championed by the United States and Europe to meet Vladimir Putin’s petro-thrust into Europe. This friend, who chooses to correspond privately, thinks the West’s handling of the pipeline, called Nabucco, has been amateurish at best. And I must say after going over it with him that he makes a strong case.

As background, this clumsily named, 2,000-mile-long pipeline would start in Turkey and terminate in Austria. It would transport natural gas from the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, providing them a financial channel independent of current monopoly-buyer Russia. It would also help to diversify the natural gas supply of Europe, which relies on Russia for some 30% of its gas.

Nabucco is the West’s response to three big Russian-planned pipelines that instead would channel Central Asian gas north to Russia, for onward export to Europe through the planned Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines. The pipelines would advance a shrewd Russian market strategy to cement and build on its domination of Europe's energy supply.

Russia is far advanced in the contest, but the West thinks it can catch up. As readers of this blog know, the Bush administration is about to name Thomas Pickering, one of Washington’s most seasoned statesmen, to head the diplomatic effort in a newly created office within the State Department.

But my friend argues that, not only would Pickering not be poised to push Nabucco over the finish line, the West is currently “not even in the starting gate.”

Putting aside for the moment that the Central Asians have yet to make a necessary commitment to the line, Nabucco’s advocates have to date failed to perform a detailed economic analysis of the proposed line. And because they also have no convincing engineering study of the line, along with a detailed, country-by-country understanding of how big or small the role of each player in the complex line would be, the West ends up at risk of being manipulated by those with a vested interest in its construction.

In the 1990s, when the U.S. got behind the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline – the million-barrel-a-day line connecting Baku with the Turkish Mediterranean – it corralled support money from organizations like the Export-Import Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. No equivalent effort has accompanied the campaign for Nabucco.

So is the West serious? If so, my friend says it might move beyond a pose and create a program. He makes sense.

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Business Week Names The Oil and the Glory A Top-10 Business Book of the Year

Thanks to Business Week for the recognition. SL

Who's Afraid of Vladimir Putin?

In a long interview I did last night for Bob Brinker's show Money Talk, a man asked me whether I think that Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man on Earth. I replied that I could think of five men more dangerous.

But the exchange raises a question: How has Putin -- a glad-hander of rogues to be sure, a petro-nationalist definitely, an intolerant autocrat at home as well -- managed to earn the impression of a menacing figure abroad? He hasn't started any wars; as far as I know, he hasn't sold nuclear weapons or fissible materials to anyone he shouldn't have.

A more sensible view of the 55-year-old Putin -- whose party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections yesterday, and appears likely to be the country's leader for some years to come -- is that he's a politician who one underestimates at one's peril. He is indisputably dangerous to his domestic enemies, both directly and in the atmosphere of impunity toward murder that he has created at home.

Human Rights Watch should harangue him about his human rights policy. The British should continue to demand the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi in last year's Alexander Litvinenko assassination. And Washington and the European Union should move to prevent Gazprom from gaining a bigger foothold in the European natural gas market.

But Putin is not likely to provoke a war. I also don't think he believes he's contributing to Iran's nuclear weapons capability -- he lives in the neighborhood, and could be among those to suffer most directly in a nuclear exchange.

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