People's Democracy

 Exports Of Democracy: US Style --- II

 Dipak Basu

RUSSIA has planned a trade and security alliance that would incorporate some of the republics of the former Soviet Union in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, in which Russia would be the dominant power. Wherever Moscow attempts to reassert its influence, it meets with opposition from the Euro-American alliance, which has the strategic aim of incorporating Russia’s periphery --- especially in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus --- into the western system of market economy and the NATO. Ukraine is now a candidate for admission to the European Union and NATO.

AFFAIRS IN GEORGIA

During the Soviet Union era, historically evolved large groups were treated as nations. Small groups of people who spoke a separate language or had a separate history were designated autonomous areas. Most of the Soviet investment went into building up these backward, mostly Muslim ‘nations’ and areas rather than Russia proper. The result is well-educated and well-organised republics such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, and Azerbaijan among others. These countries are sitting on top of or are in close proximity to Caspian Basin oil.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States moved to establish its strength in the Caspian area. They practically bought up Georgia, a key Caspian country. Tiblisi has been the main oil exporting area for the erstwhile Soviet Union, but it is in Georgia. Both the former and the current head of the Georgian government, Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikhail Saakashvili, are bitterly anti-Russian and very pro-US. The war in Chechnya is nothing more than a reflection of this.

The most important factor in Georgia is that the country is an essential link in the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline that will carry oil from the Caspian Sea to the West. Control over Caspian Sea oil is perceived by the Western capitalist powers, led by the United States, to be a vital strategic interest. Uppermost in Western policy towards the entire Caucasus region is the goal of sufficient political stability to guarantee that the oil will flow. A secondary aim is to contain Russia’s moves to regain its influence in the region. Georgia’s strategic importance has resulted in an American military presence in the country to train its armed forces and assist in operations against Chechen fighters and Islamic revolutionaries who cross the border from Russia. Saakashvili, who has contributed a small contingent to the American-led coalition in Iraq and is otherwise firmly committed to the West, including eventual membership for Georgia in NATO and the European Union, would like to have active American support. American firms are now building a major pipeline through this volatile area. Stretching a perilous 1,000 miles from Baku in Azerbaijan through Tbilisi in Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey, it is eventually slated to carry one million barrels of oil a day to the West. This American presence is likely to expand in future when the pipeline begins to transport oil and fighting in the area intensifies.                   

In the re-election of Georgia in January 2004, “cleaver and strong man” (this is the characteristic given to Mikhail Saakashvili by ex-president Eduard Shevardnadze) won not less than 96 per cent of votes. That implies, following the report of the Election Commission, that over 100 per cent of the electorate had taken part in the election. Leaders of European countries and the US have welcomed the “peaceful and normal” election in Georgia.

Saakashvili, who forced president Eduard Shevardnadze to resign on November 23, 2003 after three weeks of peaceful demonstrations, during which the population challenged the results of the general elections that were held on November 2, 2003, has colossal support from George W Bush himself. Mikhail Saakashvili, who is 36 years old, after having worked for a legal practice in the USA for nine years, was appointed justice minister in 2000 in Georgia. More than half of the 4.5 million Georgians, who used to have the highest standard of living during the days of the Soviet Union, now live below the poverty line, established at 65 dollars per month. The state coffers are empty, taxes are only partially collected, and civil servants are paid irregularly. The former president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, who himself voted for his rival candidate and the new president Saakashvili, was Mikhail Gorbachev’s foreign secretary and was instrumental in destroying the Soviet Union in 1991. The result of the new election is the withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia and their replacements by the US army, which the former president Shevardnadze had resisted.

VELVET REVOLUTION IN KYRGYZSTAN      

The former Kyrgyzstan president Askar Akayev said in his book, Thinking of the Future with Optimism: Ideas on Foreign Policy and the World, that “Installation of the new regime in Georgia is a challenge to all CIS countries. Proliferation of the technology of velvet revolutions aims to weaken the Commonwealth.” Akayev became the president in 1990 and was re-elected in 1995 and again in 2000. His latest triumph was castigated by the opposition that challenged his right to run for president for the third time. Kyrgyzstan will elect its president in October 2005. Akayev initiated a nationwide referendum in 2003 and amended the constitution. The Kyrgyz opposition is determined that a new regime should be installed in the country in 2005. The opposition’s candidate is Felix Kulov, Akayev’s ardent supporter in the early 1990s, who eventually became the president’s bitter political enemy. The West and the local opposition will not recognise the election unless Kulov would be elected, and mass protests staged by the opposition recently already resulted in a government crisis in Kyrgyzstan after Akayev fled to Moscow in April 2005.

THE GAME WILL REPEAT

Georgia yesterday, Ukraine today, Kazakhstan tomorrow --- an activist of Kazakh opposition said at a protest rally in Kiev to install the pro-western president Yushchenko in early December 2004. Delegation of the Kazakh opposition was dispatched to Ukraine to study methods of the so-called Chestnut Revolution. Hearing it, organisers of the rally screamed, “Dictators Nazarbayev and Kuchma, get out!” and 300,000 protesters paid by various western organisations repeated the slogan.

Election of the president of Kazakhstan is scheduled for early 2006, but preparations are ready to force Nazarbayev, the existing president to give up. Nazarbayev’s former adviser James Giffen is facing trial in the United States. The prosecution claims that figgen transacted $78 million worth of bribes from American oil companies to Nazarbayev and his inner circle. When the sentence will be passed the verdict may become a catalyst of another velvet revolution in Kazakhstan.

Already 3,000 Americans are based in Uzbekistan, and are believed to run both overt and covert operations in Afghanistan from there. Commanders are setting up new facilities in Kyrgyzstan for a combat air wing and humanitarian missions, with 3,000 more troops. A deal has been struck with Tajikistan. Up to 200 American advisers will soon be helping Georgia.

STAGES OF EMPIRE BUILDING              

The first stage of this American empire began with the Mexican-American war, but began to flourish at the conclusion of the Civil War. All the states east of the Mississippi river had been brought by force back under the rule of the federal government. For many years prior, Americans had been pushing into the western lands occupied by native peoples. In the process, the vast majority of Native Americans were erased from the book of history. By the time Woodrow Wilson assumed the presidency, the first stage had expanded to include Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Imperial footholds had been established in South America and East Asia.

Despite the eventual victory in Europe in the First World War, the second stage took many more years to flower and flourish. American armies and navies were essentially dismantled in the aftermath of the First World War. The 1930s saw the near-collapse of the American economic system. The advent of and eventual victory in World War II not only cemented the second stage, but also resurrected and forever changed the fundamental underpinnings of the American economy. From that victory to now, the American economy has been based centrally on preparation for and fighting of wars. By the end of World War II, the influence of the American empire stretched throughout Europe to the borders of the new foe, the Soviet Union. The central reality of the second stage was the Cold War.

The transition from the second stage to the third stage of American empire came slowly. When the Berlin Wall fell, when Gorbachev and Sheverdnadze refused to support the East European allies of the Soviet Union and gave away these countries to the NATO, the third stage of empire came into being. For the first time in history since the apex of the Roman rule, one nation, one government and one military ruled supreme over the known world. Permanent war and rule by fear are accepted without question. The dominance of the military/industrial/petroleum combine is unquestioned. The idea that America is engaged in a holy war has been widely disseminated.

Now, as the United States wages its war in Afghanistan and Iraq and deploys troops for the first time in the energy-rich regions of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the borders of a new American empire appear to be forming. Central Asia and the Caucasus, which were in the Russian and later soviet sphere of influence since Napoleon’s day, are now home to 60,000 American troops. These soldiers are building long-term bases at Central Asian outposts, raising critical questions about America’s future role. The declared aim is the containment of so-called Islamic extremism. The real aim is to protect the growing economic interests of USA in Central Asia and the Caucasus, which are crisscrossed by oil and gas pipeline. US secretary of state Colin Powell said in December 2004 that Kazakhstan’s oil was becoming of “critical importance.” Jane’s Foreign Report said recently that “Caspian reserves could be critical to future global energy supply,” this is in line with the doctrine of ‘full-spectrum dominance’ that now seems to govern American foreign policy and is manifesting itself in the Caucasus and Central Asia.”

(To Be Continued)