191
advocated an aggressive and wide-ranging energy policy toward the region. Newly
Independent Countries welcomed the opportunity and opened their economy to
massive investments, aid, and trade. This was in fact the rational response by all
countries of the region including Russia. The United States believed that the region
was rich in oil and gas and trusted exaggerated figures and reports published and
updated regularly by different regional and international sources. In fact, the Obama
and Trump policies were in harmony with what was originally designed by
Ex-President Bush, though in the course of time new realities emerged that involved
certain ups and downs and proportional modifications (Author’s interview with Dr.
Fereidoun Barkeshli, May 24, 2020).
The Greater Caspian Region: A New Silk Road, with or Without
a New Belt
Transit project and supporting Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priorities for the
US under Trump. TCP has been subject to strategic plans for more than two decades.
However, there might be some promising new signs for the project. Several references were made to the letters written last spring by the US President, D. J. Trump,
to the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—I. Aliyev and
G. Berdymukhamedov, respectively—to celebrate their Novruz holiday to show
that the USA was politically supporting TCP. During his visit to Uzbekistan at the
beginning of February and his recent visit to Kazakhstan, the US Secretary of State,
Mike Pompeo, underlined the fact that the US intended to support the countries in
Central Asia by creating alternatives, such as TCP, to China’s BRI and Russia’s
Eurasian Economic Union for the establishment of interregional economic cooperation. In fact, Azerbaijan may currently be economically interested in TCP. Even
though Azerbaijan is producing significant volumes of natural gas at Shah Deniz
and other fields, it is still incapable of satisfying industrial demand solely with
domestic supplies owing to the country’s prospering petrochemical sector. The solution could lie in importing additional gas from Turkmenistan. On the other hand,
Moscow is making firm movements toward maximizing the transport of Central
Asian crude oil through Russian pipelines instead of the Azerbaijan-Georgia corridor. In collaboration with the state-owned oil companies, Transnet and Rosneft,
Russian authorities have been making substantial investments in the Caspian Sea
port of Makhachkala, the capital city of the Russian Republic of Dagestan (www.
atlanticcouncil.org 2020a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i). Thus, there was an increase of 200%
and another 100% of oil imports into Makhachkala in the years 2018 and 2019,
respectively. The increase in the year 2019 stemmed from the conflict between
SOCAR and Vitol, the Swiss-Dutch oil trading giant, which caused the oil flows
from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to Baku to change their path to Makhachkala in
2019 (Nordin and Weissmann 2018:233).
The most important current priority of China in international politics can be considered the advancement of the mega-project of the Silk Road economic belt—a megaproject whose understanding and place in the Chinese and world economies is of great
Trump Foreign Policy Toward the Caspian Sea Region
advocated an aggressive and wide-ranging energy policy toward the region. Newly
Independent Countries welcomed the opportunity and opened their economy to
massive investments, aid, and trade. This was in fact the rational response by all
countries of the region including Russia. The United States believed that the region
was rich in oil and gas and trusted exaggerated figures and reports published and
updated regularly by different regional and international sources. In fact, the Obama
and Trump policies were in harmony with what was originally designed by
Ex-President Bush, though in the course of time new realities emerged that involved
certain ups and downs and proportional modifications (Author’s interview with Dr.
Fereidoun Barkeshli, May 24, 2020).
The Greater Caspian Region: A New Silk Road, with or Without
a New Belt
Transit project and supporting Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priorities for the
US under Trump. TCP has been subject to strategic plans for more than two decades.
However, there might be some promising new signs for the project. Several references were made to the letters written last spring by the US President, D. J. Trump,
to the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—I. Aliyev and
G. Berdymukhamedov, respectively—to celebrate their Novruz holiday to show
that the USA was politically supporting TCP. During his visit to Uzbekistan at the
beginning of February and his recent visit to Kazakhstan, the US Secretary of State,
Mike Pompeo, underlined the fact that the US intended to support the countries in
Central Asia by creating alternatives, such as TCP, to China’s BRI and Russia’s
Eurasian Economic Union for the establishment of interregional economic cooperation. In fact, Azerbaijan may currently be economically interested in TCP. Even
though Azerbaijan is producing significant volumes of natural gas at Shah Deniz
and other fields, it is still incapable of satisfying industrial demand solely with
domestic supplies owing to the country’s prospering petrochemical sector. The solution could lie in importing additional gas from Turkmenistan. On the other hand,
Moscow is making firm movements toward maximizing the transport of Central
Asian crude oil through Russian pipelines instead of the Azerbaijan-Georgia corridor. In collaboration with the state-owned oil companies, Transnet and Rosneft,
Russian authorities have been making substantial investments in the Caspian Sea
port of Makhachkala, the capital city of the Russian Republic of Dagestan (www.
atlanticcouncil.org 2020a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i). Thus, there was an increase of 200%
and another 100% of oil imports into Makhachkala in the years 2018 and 2019,
respectively. The increase in the year 2019 stemmed from the conflict between
SOCAR and Vitol, the Swiss-Dutch oil trading giant, which caused the oil flows
from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to Baku to change their path to Makhachkala in
2019 (Nordin and Weissmann 2018:233).
The most important current priority of China in international politics can be considered the advancement of the mega-project of the Silk Road economic belt—a megaproject whose understanding and place in the Chinese and world economies is of great
Trump Foreign Policy Toward the Caspian Sea Region