Brian M Downing
Russian actions in the Eastern Ukraine have taken hold of world attention. The US has responded by sending military aircraft to Poland and Rumania and by seeking to coordinate with EU partners an array of sanctions on Russian political and business elites. Responses, however, will be constrained by the EU’s reliance on Russia for approximately thirty percent of its hydrocarbons and by the US’s reliance on Russian help with logistics in and out of Afghanistan. Nonetheless, Russia’s actions in the Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine present options for American and EU foreign policy, especially in regard to Iran which after all lies only six hundred miles from Sevastopol.
Afghan logistics
The US uses two main supply routes into and out of Afghanistan: a southern route through Pakistan and a northern one which goes through Russia and several states influenced by Moscow, including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. The southern route is subject to the whims of the Pakistani state and army and vulnerable to attacks by the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas and in the port city of Karachi, which has a large Pashtun refugee population and a growing al Qaeda presence.
This logistical nightmare could have been foreseen twelve years ago when the US opted for a sizable presence in Central Asia. The present grim situation underscores the overconfidence and wrathfulness that underlay the US response to the September 11th attacks. Today, a Pakistani general and a Russian autocrat can maroon tens of thousands of American troops in Central Asia.
America’s future in Afghanistan is up in the air. The administration would like to retain a sizable training and counterterrorism force there, but President Karzai’s irksome remonstrations over the Status of Forces Agreement have many in Washington throwing up their arms in dismay. Some are attracted to the “zero option” which would quit Afghanistan altogether, save for continued subsides to the government in Kabul. As logistical headaches reach migraine levels with the Ukrainian crisis, the zero option may be even more attractive.
Iranian route?
Someone knowledgeable of logistics but untutored in world politics would look at a map of supply routes and wonder why Iran is not a key part of the network. The same observer, upon being apprised of US-Iranian relations since 1979, would wonder why a rapprochement hadn’t been initiated. After all, Iran aided the US in ousting the Taliban in 2001 and has provided developmental aid to the Kabul government ever since. Iran did in fact seek a rapprochement in 2003 and it was welcomed by then Secretary of State Powell. It was rejected, however, by the White House.
Supply lines into Afghanistan could run from Iranian ports on the Arabian Sea to Zahedan and Zabol from which they could connect to Afghanistan’s Ring Road. (It may be noted that General Petraeus did not object to coalition partners’ using Iranian routes amid one of Pakistan’s curtailments of the southern route.) An Iranian route would face fewer insurgents and bandits and be independent of Mr. Putin’s control.
Iran enjoys considerable support in Afghanistan, especially in the north. Tehran supported northern peoples during the Russian war and during the long civil war. Continued Iranian support will be helpful after US combat troops are gone at the end of this year, and could make the zero option a realistic option rather than a dubious threat.
Iranian oil and gas
The EU depends on Russian hydrocarbons. As offensive as Russian actions have been, European countries are unlikely to risk economic hardship over them. They are, however, likely to look upon Russia as an unreliable business partner, one that will alter existing arrangements as opportunities present themselves. Modern businesses want rational, bankable hydrocarbon supplies, independent of extraneous events, geopolitical schemes, and personal dictates.
There is no short-term solution for the EU’s energy dilemma but Europe can rethink its opposition to fracking and more importantly begin to look elsewhere for energy supplies. Libya may be back online in the near future; the eastern Mediterranean holds promising fields; and the US will be exporting natural gas in a few years. Iran, too, may provide an alternative. Existing sanctions have eased in recent weeks and will end almost entirely upon successful negotiations on the country’s nuclear program. An influx of western investment and technology could greatly increase world supplies and Iran’s share of it.
Iran has been close to Russia in recent years – an inversion of its traditional hostility to the country that lopped off and annexed portions of the country in centuries past and that occupied the north during both world wars. Today, cooperation includes arms sales and support for the Assad government in Syria. However, Iran would be pleased to have its oil and gas reach world markets, regardless of its impact on Russian ambitions. In any case, the two countries are experiencing a rift as Russia has moved closer to Iran’s nemesis, Saudi Arabia. Moscow and Riyadh have cooperated on arms sales to the armies of Lebanon and Egypt, which threatens Tehran’s ally, Hezbollah, and risks bringing the strongest army in the Sunni world under Saudi influence with all that could portend amid rising sectarian animosities.
A fuller rapprochement with Iran could also lead one day to a pipeline stretching from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Iranian export terminals. This would reduce the significance of the Russian pipeline system for Central Asian hydrocarbons and further weaken its leverage in the EU and Central Asia as well.
Copyright 2014 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.