Putin's Giant Chess Game: 'Petrostate'

The New York Sun ^ | June 18, 2008 | MARTHA MERCER

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

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As news outlets pointed out, most of the G-8 countries have little control over production. One, however, does, and it has leveraged that control, and its enormous reserves, to regain status as a world power.

----snip----

He does have a stern warning for Western Europe, however. The region has become dangerously dependent on Russia for natural gas, he writes. With its spreading network of pipelines, Gazprom now has the power to let Europe freeze if it so chooses.

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While the Europeans and Americans have sought to break Gazprom's pipeline monopoly by promoting the construction of a bypass gas pipeline under the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey, they are getting a late start to what Mr. Goldman calls Mr. Putin's "giant chess game." Russia's power today, he writes, now exceeds the military might it had during the Cold War. With no mutually assured destruction, there is no mutually assured restraint, giving Russia more economic clout than Europe or even the kingdom with the world's largest proven oil reserves, Saudi Arabia.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

GAZPROM.

[Brett66]

No worries, the pansies of Pelosi will save us. We won’t drill for a drop of our own oil, we’ll just get it from Russia.

[the invisib1e hand]

Been saying that Russia was cornering the energy market for years.

Been asking, rhetorically, "to what end."

People are finally connecting the dots.

Gotta love Gazprom's press releases lately predicting oil goes to $250 a barrel. Can't neglect the propaganda front.

[jaz.357]

[ThePythonicCow]

Been saying that Russia was cornering the energy market for years.

I recall reading once that Reagan, sometime in the early 1980's, talked the Saudi King into keeping the price of oil low enough that Russia couldn't afford to bring it up. Saudi Arabia has lower production costs than Russia.

That succeeded, for a while.

But now Saudi Arabia has lost control of the price, and can no longer control the market enough to keep Russia out.

So it's a mad rush for petro-dollars, and for the Russians, sweet but crude revenge for our messing with their Soviet empire. The cold war never ended; it just went into apparent remission for a while.

If only it were just the Russians gunning for our hide ;).

Sometimes the ebb and flow of power on the world stage seems more like the power struggles of rival drug gangs than it does a discussion at a Quaker Society prayer meeting (or whatever Quakers call them.)

[iThinkBig]

666, the seal of Nero and the number of the beast. Russia is the feet of the bear, mentioned by John in Revelations.

Russia will dominate Europe for a short time. It is the willing instrument of destruction but the USA wins in the end. As does Israel against it’s own arch nemesis’. But our price becoming apathetic is going to be high. Doesn’t make us bad, it makes us human and our nature as a species is cyclical. The idea of true freedom, we are all created equel. That idea will go on far beyond our lifetimes.

[wildbill]

Using commodities such as oil and gas as a weapon has its own drawbacks.

1. What will happen to Russia’s economy if it shuts down its major source of money via exports?