For the last decade and a half, the main theater for U.S.-Russian fireworks has been pipeline politics. Washington won the first battle with the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which broke Russia's monopoly on energy exports from the Caspian Sea. But Moscow zoomed ahead in the second round, winning overwhelming backing for its proposed new natural gas pipelines to Europe. Then came the global financial crisis, and the plunge in world energy prices. Suddenly pipelines have seemed passe, and the rivalry instead turned to who controls what military base in Central Asia.
< " target="_blank" href="http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/or/48913.htm">Matt Bryza was still talking up the virtues of Nabucco.
Against that backdrop, Morningstar fell in with Mann's line of thinking: "Pipelines are just part of the puzzle," Morningstar said in Sofia. "Nabucco is not the Holy Grail that will solve the problem."
Morningstar's aim seemed to be to take down the temperature. After all, as much as Nabucco is a politically driven project targeted against Gazprom dominance of Europe, South Stream is an equally political response to Nabucco. So if the imperative for Nabucco is removed, what is the place for South Stream?
Hence, Morningstar When I met with Joseph Ellis at Mt. Holyoke, part of my interest was the art of historical writing. Ellis' work is elegant; it sparkles. But he has also attracted a broad audience -- and a Pulitzer -- because he breaks new ground. Ellis clearly has a knife out for critics who say he is a mere popularizer; he also seemed to have slight regard for colleagues who are happy in the weeds. (To be fair, Ellis has his own skeleton -- the matter of his vivid imagination regarding Viet Nam). Here is an edited version of this part of our chat:
O&GA – We know more about Abig
четверг, 2 апреля 2009 г.
Reset: Russia, yes; Iran, Kinda
Rose Gottemoeller, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation, will be the chief U.S. negotiator for nuclear arms reductions with Russia. The goal is to sign a completed deal by Dec. 15, when Start I expires.
That's not a surprise -- Gottemoeller negotiated one of Washington's single most-important successes in the post-Soviet era, which was the removal during the Clinton administration of 4,000 nuclear warheads from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
It's also not a su er agreement on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program.
All of this has an economic component -- energy. Geopolitics in the region are highly inter-connected: Better relations with Russia can help fertilize the ground toward a thaw of U.S. relations with Iran, which could then significantly improve global natural gas supplies, particularly to Europe, which is highly dependent on -- who else? -- Russia. It's all fairly circular. Iran has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves, and whenever the financial crisis tamps down, Europe's energy thirst is going to resume its rise.
What Obama officials said on the four-page Obama-Medvedev statement itself: "I'll tell you honestly, I was not optimistic when we started this process of negotiating this that we would get it done for this meeting. ... It started very differently several weeks ago, and that he got his government to engage in it in a very serious way and get it done br />
On Iran, progress isn