Russia draws Europe into its orbit

Putin's visit to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan on May 9-12 resulted in a dramatic agreement over a trilateral deal involving the three countries: to build a pipeline along the Caspian Sea coast for transporting Turkmen gas to the European market via Kazakhstan and Russia.

The pipeline is expected to be operational by 2009, and is estimated to carry 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas annually. Simultaneously, the presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also announced an agreement involving Uzbekistan, revamping the entire Soviet-era pipeline grid connecting Central Asia to Western markets via Russia to enhance its capacity to 90bcm annually in anticipation of increased exports of gas by the Central Asian countries.

Putin's visit was about energy cooperation - Russia and Kazakhstan also agreed on a joint uranium-enrichment venture and discussed cooperation in nuclear power generation - but its political and strategic implications are equally far-reaching. Its outcome constitutes a great strategic setback for the United States' obsessive campaign in recent years to secure oil and gas from the Caspian and Central Asian region that would be independent of Russian control.

With 40-odd weeks remaining in his presidency, Putin has categorically established that Russia's intention is to stage a comeback in Central Asia, which he underscored as a priority seven years ago soon after taking over power in the Kremlin. Arguably, what must have lent a sense of urgency to Moscow's diplomacy was the arc of encirclement that the US began putting around Russia.

The reverberations of last week's development are already being felt in European capitals. The "old-new" Europe divide surfaced at a European Union foreign ministers' meeting on Monday in Brussels as leaders bitterly debated a common policy toward Russia. Poland and Germany aimed pointed barbs against each other.

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said at a meeting of the International Energy Agency in Paris on Monday that the Russian-Turkmen-Kazakh gas pipeline deal is "not good for Europe". But Bodman sidestepped the harsh reality that US energy diplomacy, too, must now painstakingly claw its way back from Square 1. And not only that.

Tehran will have sensed by now - just as it is about to sit down for negotiations with the US over Iraq - that it has virtually become the last frontier in the energy war. Europe's remaining hope of diversifying its energy sources (away from Russian supplies) will significantly depend on its access to Iran's gas reserves.

Not by coincidence, the secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolai Bordyuzha, seized the moment in Moscow on Monday to make a startling suggestion that Iran could become a member of the CSTO. In yet another sign of the new cold war, Bordyuzha also announced the CSTO's intention to have a common air-defense system and create a large military contingent. (The CSTO's current members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia and Uzbekistan.)

If the CSTO is so forthcoming toward Iran, can the Eurasian Economic Community and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) lag behind? More important, with a consolidation of Russian influence over the energy-producing countries of the Central Asian region, is Moscow finally moving toward the "SCO energy club"? The annual SCO summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in a few weeks should provide some interesting answers. (The SCO's members are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran has observer status.)

To be sure, Putin's visit to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan last week heralded a profound shift in the co-relation of forces in the Caspian and Central Asia. This shift is discernible from many angles.