All these news simply remind us that the 21st century will not be a century of American hegemony unhinged, but rather, an Asian-Chinese century among anything else... The integration of the EU on the one hand, and the Brasil-Argentina-Uruguay pole on the other, exemplify yet other regional integration schemes. The only regions where there seems no development and/or regional integration of any kind are the Islamic World and Africa (except for Malaysia, which is a key player in ASEAN, and Turkey, perennially trying to attach itself to the EU). Below is a column from Asia Times, written by Kaveh Afrasyabi of Tehran University.
ASIA TIMES - 6 November 2004: TEHRAN - Speaking of business as unusual. Amere two months ago, the news of a China-Kazakhstan pipeline agreement,worth US$3.5 billion, raised some eyebrows in the world press, somehinting that China's economic foreign policy may be on the verge of a newleap forward. A clue to the fact that such anticipation may have totallyunderstated the case was last week's signing of a mega-gas deal betweenBeijing and Tehran worth $100 billion. Billed as the "deal of century" byvarious commentators, this agreement is likely to increase by another $50billion to $100 billion, bringing the total close to $200 billion, when asimilar oil agreement, currently being negotiated, is inked not too farfrom now. The gas deal entails the annual export of some 10 million tons of Iranianliquefied natural gas (LNG) for a 25-year period, as well as theparticipation, by China's state oil company, in such projects asexploration and drilling, petrochemical and gas industries, pipelines,services and the like. The export of LNG requires special cargo ships,however, and Iran is currently investing several billion dollars adding toits small LNG-equipped fleet. Still, per the admission of the head of the Iranian Tanker Co, MohammadSouri, Iran needed to purchase another 87 vessels by 2010, in addition tothe 10 already purchased, in order to fulfill the needs of its growing LNGmarket. Iran has an estimated 26.6-trillion-cubic-meter gas reservoir, thesecond-largest in the world, about half of which is in offshore zones andthe other half onshore. It is perhaps too early to digest fully the various economic, politicaland even geostrategic implications of this stunning development, widelyconsidered a major blow to the Bush administration's economic sanctions onIran and particularly on Iran's energy sector, notwithstanding theIran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) penalizing foreign companies daring toinvest more than $20 million in Iran's oil and gas industry. While it is unclear what the scope of China's direct investment in Iran'senergy sector will turn out to be, it is fairly certain that China'sparticipation in the Yad Avaran field alone will exceed the ILSA'sceiling; this field's oil reservoir is estimated to be 17 billion barrelsand is capable of producing 300 to 400 barrels per day. And this isbesides the giant South Pars field, which Iran shares with Qatar, alonepossessing close to 8% of the world's gas reserves. To open a parenthesishere, until now Tehran has been complaining that Qatar has been outpacingIran in exploiting its resource 6-1. In fact, Iran's unhappiness overQatar's unbalanced access to the South Pars led to a discrete warning byIran's deputy oil minister and, soon thereafter, Qatar complied withIran's request for a joint "technical committee" that has yet to yield anyresult. For a United States increasingly pointing at China as the next biggestchallenge to its Pax Americana, the Iran-China energy cooperation cannotbut be interpreted as an ominous sign of emerging new trends in an areaconsidered vital to US national interests. But, then again, this cuts bothways, that is, the deal should, logically speaking, stimulate others whomay still consider Iran untrustworthy or too radical to enter into bigprojects on a long term basis. Iran's biggest foreign agreement prior tothis gas agreement with China was a long-term $25 billion gas deal withTurkey, which has encountered snags, principally over the price, recently,compared with Iran's various trade agreements with Spain, Italy andothers, typically with a life-span of five to seven years. Thus some Iranian officials are hopeful that the China deal can lead to afundamental rethinking of the risks of doing business with Iran on thepart of European countries, India, Japan, and even Russia. ConcerningIndia, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran initially in1993 for a 2,670-kilometer pipeline, with more than 700km traversingPakistani territory, the Iran-China deal will undoubtedly give a greaterpush to New Delhi to follow Beijing's lead and thus make sure that the"peace pipeline" is finally implemented. The same applies, mutatismutandis, to Russia, which has as of late been dragging its feet somewhaton Iran's nuclear reactor, bandwagoning with the US and Group of Eight(G8) countries on the thorny issue of Iran's uranium-enrichment program.The Russians must now factor in the possibility of being supplanted byChina if they lose the confidence of Tehran and appear willing to tradefavors with Washington over Iran. Russia's Gazprom may now finally setaside its stubborn resistance to the idea of entering major joint ventureswith Iran. Iran appears more and more interested to join the Shanghai CooperationOrganization (SCO) and form a powerful axis with its twin pillars, Chinaand Russia, as a counterweight to a US power "unchained". The SCOcomprises China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan andUzbekistan. China, Russia and Iran share deep misgivings about the perception of theUnited States as a "benevolent hegemon" and tend to see a "roguesuperpower" instead. Even short of joining forces formally, the mainoutlines of such an axis can be discerned from their convergence of threatperception due to, among other things, Russia's disquiet over thepost-September 11, 2001, US incursions in its traditional Caucasus-CentralAsian "turf", and China's continuing unease over the Korean Peninsula andTaiwan; this is not to mention China's fixed gaze at a "new Silk Road"allowing it unfettered access to the Middle East and Eurasia, this as partand parcel of what is often billed as "the new great game" in Eurasia.Indeed, what China's recent deals with both Kazakhstan (pertaining toCaspian energy) and Iran (pertaining to Persian Gulf resources) signifiesis that the pundits had gotten it wrong until now: the purview of the newgreat game is not limited to the Central Asia-Caspian Sea basin, butrather has a broader, more integrated, purview increasingly envelopingeven the Persian Gulf. Increasingly, the image of the Islamic Republic ofIran as a sort of frontline state in a post-Cold War global lineup againstUS hegemony is becoming prevalent among Chinese and Russian foreign-policythinkers. For the moment, however, the Iran-Russia-China axis is more a tissue ofthink-tanks than full-fledged policy, and the mere trade interdependenceof the US and China, as well as Russia's growing energy ties to the USalone, not to mention its weariness over any perceived Chinese"overstretch", militate against a grand alliance pitted against theWestern superpower. In fact, the Cold War-type alliances are highlyunlikely to be replicated in the current milieu of globalization andcomplex interdependence; instead, what is likely to emerge in the futureare issue-focused or, for the lack of a better word, issue-area allianceswhereby, to give an example, the above-said axis may be inspired intoexistence along geostrategic considerations somewhat apart from purelyeconomic considerations. Hence what the SCO means on the security front and how significant it willbe hinges on a complex, and complicated, set of factors that mayeventually culminate in its expansion, from the current group of six, aswell as greater, alliance-like, cooperation. It is noteworthy that inCentral Asia-Caucasus, the trend is toward security diversification andeven multipolarism, reflected in the US and Russian bases not too far fromeach other. In this multipolar sub-order, neither the US is capable ofexerting hegemony, nor is Russia's semi-hegemonic sway withoutcompetition. In the Caspian Sea basin, for example, Kazakhstan has optedto take part in several distinct, and contrasting, security networks,including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Partnership for Peaceprogram, the Commonwealth of Independent States' Collective SecurityOrganization, the SCO, and membership in OSCE (Organization for Securityand Cooperation in Europe). Kazakhstan is not, however, an exception, but seemingly indicative of anexpanding new rule of the (security and strategic) game played outthroughout Central Asia-Caucasus. Economically, both Kazakhstan and Russiaare members of the Central Asia Economic Cooperation Organization, and allthe Central Asian states are also members of the Economic CooperationOrganization (ECO), which was founded by the trio of Iran, Turkey andPakistan. Certain economic alliances are, henceforth, taking shape,alongside the budding security arrangements, which have their own tempo,rationale and security potential. Concerning the latter, in 1998, the ECOembarked on low security cooperation among its members on drug traffickingand this may soon be expanded to information-sharing on terrorism. Also,Iran has also entered into low security agreements with some of itsPersian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The SCO initially was established to deal with border disputes and is nowwell on its way to focusing on (Islamist) terrorism, drug trafficking andregional insecurity. Meanwhile, the US, not to be outdone, has been sowingits own bilateral military and security arrangements with various regionalcountries such as Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, aswell as promoting the Guuam Group, which includes Azerbaijan and Georgia,formed alongside the BTC (Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan) pipeline as a counterweightto Russian influence. Consequently, the overall picture that emergesbefore us is, as stated above, a unique multi-trend of military andsecurity multipolarism defying the logic of Pax Americana. In thispicture, Iran represents one of the poles of attraction, seeking its ownsphere of influence by, for instance, entering into a military agreementwith Turkmenistan in 1994, and, simultaneously, exploring the largeroption of how to coalesce with other powers in order to offset thedebilitating consequences of (post-September 11) unbounded Americanizationof regional politics. A glance at Chinese security narratives, and it becomes patently obviousthat Beijing shares Iran's deep worries about US unipolarism culminatingin, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, unilateral militarism. Various advocatesof US preeminence, such as William Kristol, openly write that the USshould "work for the fall of the Communist Party oligarchy in China".Unhinged from the containment of Soviet power, the roots of USunilateralism, and its military manifestation of "preemption", must belocated in the logic of unipolarism, thinly disguised by the "coalition ofthe willing" in Iraq; the latter is, in fact, as aptly put by variouscritics of US foreign policy, more like a coalition of the coerced andbribed than anything else. But, realistically speaking, what are the prospects for any regional andor continental realignment leading to the erasure of US unipolarism,notwithstanding the US military and economic colossus bent on preventing,on a doctrinal level, the emergence of any challenger to its globaldomination now or in the future? The strategic debates in all threecountries, Russia, China and Iran, feature similar concerns and questionmarks. For one thing, all three have to contend with the difficulty ofsorting the disjunctions between the different sets of national interests,above all economic, ideological and strategic interests. This aside, apertinent question is who will win over Russia, Washington, which pursuesa coupling role with Moscow vis-a-vis Beijing, or Beijing, trying to wrestaway Moscow from Washington? For now, Russia does not particularly feelcompelled to choose between stark options, yet the situation may bealtered in China's direction in case the present drift of US powerincursions are heightened in the future. The answer to the above questionshould be delegated to the future. For now, however, the quantum leap ofChina into the Middle East and Caspian energy markets has become a faitaccompli, no matter how disturbed its biggest trade partner, the US, overits geopolitical ramifications.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions inIran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and "Iran's Foreign Policy Since9/11", Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former deputyforeign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003. He teaches political science atTehran University.
