MOSCOW’S EFFORTS TO STENGTHEN GRIP ON CSTO AND CIS SEEK GREATER IDEOLOGICAL UNITY
By Erica Marat (7/24/2008 issue of the CACI Analyst)
At the July 2008 Council of CIS Defense Ministers in Bishkek, members agreed to boost air defenses and jointly celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in the Second World War. Both agreements exposed the CIS’s wish to follow the abrupt success of its smaller branch, the CSTO, whose structures multiplied and military cooperation have widened. While being a military organization, the CSTO’s formation was primarily driven by the common Soviet identity among its members, therefore allowing further expansion of its functions beyond military cooperation.
KASHAGAN LEADS KAZAKHSTAN TO INCREASE TRANS-CASPIAN OIL EXPORTS
By Robert M. Cutler (7/9/2008 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have culminated years-long negotiations with agreements that increase the amounts of Kazakhstani oil to be shipped across the Caspian Sea, supplementing Azerbaijani crude in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Still more significant, redevelopment and expansion of ports on Georgia’s Black Sea coast now prepare the way for Kazakhstani crude to enter the Odessa-Brody pipeline (OBP), which will be reversed again so as to flow east-to-west, and so to reach world markets by way of Gdansk. This oil will come from the massive offshore Kashagan field or even the onshore Tengiz field itself.
MONGOL-RUSSIAN URANIUM COOPERATION
By John C.K. Daly (7/9/2008 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Foreign investment in Mongolia is largely directed towards the country's vast, largely untapped mineral resources. Russia, Mongolia's second largest trading partner, has an inside advantage, as it provides approximately 90 percent of the country's oil imports and nearly all of its wheat imports. Moscow is now focusing on acquiring a dominant position in developing Mongolia's uranium resources, but Russia’s heavy-handed capitalist policies are provoking a political backlash.
STAKES AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE CONSTRUCTION BOOM IN TURKMENISTAN
By Sebastien Peyrouse (7/9/2008 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, regarded as a new Dubai, has been being remodelled in line with the first president’s, Saparmurat Niyazov’s, taste for giant-scale projects. If there is one area in which Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov’s policies have not changed from his predecessor but have actually magnified them, it is precisely in the construction sector. The economic stakes of this boom are important, and have provoked a growing competitiveness between French company Bouygues and Turkish firms.
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