238
This book examines the essential principles of US policy toward Central Asia and
the Caspian Sea between 2001 and 2020, over the course of which time the US was
governed by George W. Bush, and then by Barrack Obama and Donald Trump.
Energy remained a major component of the United States’ foreign policy throughout this era, as it had done since World War II when the focus on gas and oil shifted
from economic incentive to security requirement in the minds of policymakers. US
energy policymakers have emphasized the benefits of diversification of supply since
the 1970s, along with encouraging investment in technology aimed at reducing
dependency on oil, and on increasing energy efficiency. For many decades, the US
thus fought to ensure that country open investment climates could take hold in
resource-rich states, with secure transportation routes available to help deliver oil
onto the global market. Indeed, the protection of the free market itself was maintained as a component of US security in and of itself.
These policy drives manifested themselves in different ways in different places
and eras. How they manifested in the Caspian was particularly unique in some
respects. For one, due to historic reasons, the US only first developed a policy
toward the region at all when it opened up with the fall of the Soviet Union. The US
was one of the first nations to aid in the establishment of economic and political
autonomy of the newly independent and resource-rich Caspian states of Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Crucially, this was seized as an opportunity to pull
the states away from the local spheres of Russia and Iran, both states significantly
beyond the reach of US influence.
After the enormously active Clinton administration policy on the Caspian,
American interest in the region gradually waned, with Bush, and finally Obama
administrations slowly vacating the space. Although Bush remained engaged in
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia was a point in
which Bush showed the limits of this engagement, failing to act decisively;
Azerbaijan has since moved away from the US. But given the age of US shale gas
and shale oil is upon us, the Caspian has had much less strategic importance to the
US. As for Russian policy, the two administrations both began with an attempt at
thawing or “reset” in Obama’s words, in US–Russian relations. However, fundamentally the two administrations ended up in the same place—at loggerheads, with
a deep suspicion of Putin.
The first phase of US diplomacy in the region depended on supporting governments in creating intergovernmental and transit agreements and was characterized
by some gains by US companies in the region, particularly Kazakhstan. In the second phase, toward the latter half of the 1990s, the foundations were then laid for a
Southern Gas corridor, inspiring various route projects to be pored over and inevitably dragged out due to diplomatic and economic concerns, not to mention the sheer
number of actors involved in each. However, with Russia still economically and
politically recovering from the collapse of the USSR, progress was made in the
form of the BTC, which was the first project in which Caspian energy resource
transit to the world energy market without using Russian infrastructure, territory,
and resources. The success of the BTC, with its unifying of state diplomacy and
private company investment, was the West having found a foothold and a blueprint
for the future bolstering of ties with the region.
7 Conclusion
This book examines the essential principles of US policy toward Central Asia and
the Caspian Sea between 2001 and 2020, over the course of which time the US was
governed by George W. Bush, and then by Barrack Obama and Donald Trump.
Energy remained a major component of the United States’ foreign policy throughout this era, as it had done since World War II when the focus on gas and oil shifted
from economic incentive to security requirement in the minds of policymakers. US
energy policymakers have emphasized the benefits of diversification of supply since
the 1970s, along with encouraging investment in technology aimed at reducing
dependency on oil, and on increasing energy efficiency. For many decades, the US
thus fought to ensure that country open investment climates could take hold in
resource-rich states, with secure transportation routes available to help deliver oil
onto the global market. Indeed, the protection of the free market itself was maintained as a component of US security in and of itself.
These policy drives manifested themselves in different ways in different places
and eras. How they manifested in the Caspian was particularly unique in some
respects. For one, due to historic reasons, the US only first developed a policy
toward the region at all when it opened up with the fall of the Soviet Union. The US
was one of the first nations to aid in the establishment of economic and political
autonomy of the newly independent and resource-rich Caspian states of Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Crucially, this was seized as an opportunity to pull
the states away from the local spheres of Russia and Iran, both states significantly
beyond the reach of US influence.
After the enormously active Clinton administration policy on the Caspian,
American interest in the region gradually waned, with Bush, and finally Obama
administrations slowly vacating the space. Although Bush remained engaged in
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia was a point in
which Bush showed the limits of this engagement, failing to act decisively;
Azerbaijan has since moved away from the US. But given the age of US shale gas
and shale oil is upon us, the Caspian has had much less strategic importance to the
US. As for Russian policy, the two administrations both began with an attempt at
thawing or “reset” in Obama’s words, in US–Russian relations. However, fundamentally the two administrations ended up in the same place—at loggerheads, with
a deep suspicion of Putin.
The first phase of US diplomacy in the region depended on supporting governments in creating intergovernmental and transit agreements and was characterized
by some gains by US companies in the region, particularly Kazakhstan. In the second phase, toward the latter half of the 1990s, the foundations were then laid for a
Southern Gas corridor, inspiring various route projects to be pored over and inevitably dragged out due to diplomatic and economic concerns, not to mention the sheer
number of actors involved in each. However, with Russia still economically and
politically recovering from the collapse of the USSR, progress was made in the
form of the BTC, which was the first project in which Caspian energy resource
transit to the world energy market without using Russian infrastructure, territory,
and resources. The success of the BTC, with its unifying of state diplomacy and
private company investment, was the West having found a foothold and a blueprint
for the future bolstering of ties with the region.
7 Conclusion