BRINTON, WILLIAM-An Abridged History of Central Asia PDF

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA 1
AN ABRIDGED HISTORY
OF CENTRAL ASIA
By William M. Brinton
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Chapter 1: Turkey
Constantinople : City of the World's Desire 1453-1924

by Philip Mansel
The Rommel Papers by Liddell Hart
The Dawn of Peace in Europe by Michael
Mandelbaum
Chapter 2: Armenia and Azerbaijan
The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the

21st Century by Robert D. Kaplan
Chapter 3: Iran
The Prize by Daniel Yurgin

The Iranians, Sandra Mackey
God Has Ninety-Nine Names by Judith Miller
Chapter 4: Iraq
Republic Of Fear by Samir AlKhalil
Chapter 5: The Peoples Republic of China
The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress by Andrew J.

Nathan
The Coming Conflict with China by Richard Bernstein
and Ross Monro
Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker
Chapter 7: Russia
Das Capital by Karl Marx

The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire by David
Pryce-Jones

Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

by Michael Dobbs
Afghanistan:Soviet Vietnam by Vladislav Tamarav
Without Force or Lies: Voices from the Revolution of
Central Europe in 1989-90, an anthology with essays
by Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Norman Manea,
and Adam Michnik. Edited by William M. Brinton and
Allan Rinzler.
Lenin by Dmitri Volkogonov
The World Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR
The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Moscow and Beyond 1986 to 1988 by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
Lenin:The First Account Using All the Secret Soviet
Archives by Dmitri Volkogonov
Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. by Dmitri Volkogonov
Russia: People and Empire. by Geoffrey Hosking
Chapter 8: Threat Perception and China's Role in Asia
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc : The Dynamics of a

New Empire by Willem van Kemenade
Chapter 9: The Viability of Central Asia
Requiem for Modern Politics by William Ophuls

Ecology of and the Politics of Scarcity by William
Ophuls
Death by Default A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's
State Orphanages by the Human Rights Watch
Chapter 10: The Black Sea


Interesting links to other Web sites:
AKA-Kurdistan
http://www.akakurdistan.com/
Contested Borders in the Caucasus

http://www.vub.ac.be/POLI/ch0101.htm
British Information Centre

http://www.britain-info.org/
United Nations
http://www.un.org/
ABC News Archive

http://archive.abcnews.com/

http://www.cpss.org/books/ecocide.htm

INTRODUCTION
Global demand for oil, particularly in Asia, has been growing since 1985.
In that year, oil prices collapsed, and the Persian Gulf region suffered a
substantial decline in real income. In peacetime, oil is indispensable to
fuel expanding economies around the world. In wartime, oil is
indispensable to fuel the military forces of the various combatants. In
1918, for example, Germany surrendered because its military machine was
about to run out of oil.
In World War II, Germany saw its oil supplies cut off at Ploesti in
Rumania. American bombers led the attack on refineries and storage tanks
there. Adolph Hitler looked even further afield than Ploesti which
provided only 58 percent of Germany's oil imports in 1940. Hitler saw
Baku in Azerbaijan as the objective of his Panzer divisions. Baku and the
other Caucasian oilfields were central to Hitler's concept of his war against
Russia. This war was launched on June 22, 1941 and Germany's war
ended far short of Baku and Grozny in what is now Chechnya. Nazi
divisions were defeated just short of Stalingrad, about 200 miles from the
Caspian Sea. A violent confrontation for access to oil in the Caspian Sea
Basin could very possibly occur between Russia and China early in the
21St. Century.
In this remote part of the world, oil has been discovered in vast quantities
not yet measurable. Some familiar with the find estimate the oil reserves at
over 95 billion barrels in the Caspian Sea fields. In nearby Turkmenistan,
gas reserves are estimated at well over 18 trillion cubic metres. And only
recently, has Kazakhstan captured the interest of the international business
community. In addition to oil, Kazakhstan is thought to have the largest
reserves of gold in the world, together with copper and silver. The
People's Republic of China has more than a casual interest in Kazakh oil;
it must more that double its daily consumption of crude oil by the year
2000.
In October, 1996 Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, was recently the
site of a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE). Human Rights Watch/Helsinki sent copies of its letter for
publication on the Internet. The letter addressed to America's am ii
bassador in Uzbekistan charged that OSCE's human rights staff was giving
its tacit approval to strict government control of the media and fierce
repression of free speech, not withstanding Article 67 of Uzbekistan's
constitution. In part, it read: "the mass media shall be free...censorship is
impermissible." Constituent countries once part of the Soviet Union, like
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan was once one of the constituent republics of the

Soviet Union but now is independent within the Confederation of

Independent States (CIS). Chechnya has been recognized by Russia as a
state, but Grozny, its capital has been the site for two years of bloody
guerilla warfare with independent status as the objective. In early 1996,
General Alexandr Lebed signed an agreement with the rebel's leader, and
Russian forces withdrew with Boris Yeltsin's approval In May, 1997
Yeltsin went even further. He helped reinforce Aslan Maskhadov by
signing a peace treaty with this newly elected president of Chechnya.
Yeltsin promised "never to use force or threaten to use it in relations
between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Ichkeria." This is the
new name for Chechnya. According to a map prepared in Moscow by the
Russian Oil Industry in cooperation with Rosneftegaz, Chechnya and the
nearby Krasnodar area has some fifteen oil fields and one refinery with a
capacity of 22 to 28 million tons of oil per year. The same map shows that
only a small percentage of Chechnya's oil is exported. The bulk of this oil
is sold to Russia. By controlling the Chechen economy devastated by
years of bloody fighting and widespread destruction, Russia will probably
continue this arrangement. However, leaders in Chechnya have sharp
policy differences with Russia. One of them is capital punishment for
certain offenses under Islamic law. Boris Yeltsin publicly denounced one
such filmed execution. He still sees Chechnya as a province of Russia, not
the independent country it has been since 1991. Except for Belaurus, the
other countries on the Soviet periphery -- Georgia and Ukraine -- have
preserved their independent status but probably not without promises of
economic support from Moscow. The western geography of Russia
includes Ukraine, and Belarus in an arc turning north from the Black Sea.
The rulers of Russia have cut off Turkmenistan's oil and gas via pipelines
to Ukraine and on to Europe. Turkmenistan cut off Ukraine's supplies until
it agreed to pay in hard currency, not the inflated ruble.
Any attempt to present the search for oil in a region of the world iii riven
by the cultural wars and conquests during some two thousand years of
history must omit some facts considered relevant by students of history. I
refer, of course, to the Caspian Sea, a landlocked body of water
surrounded by Russia, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and
Kazakhstan. This latter country shares a common boundary with the
People's Republic of China, and its national neighbors include Uzbekistan,
Kyrgystan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. With the exception of
Russia, Armenia, and China, the populations of all the other countries in
this list are united by a common religion, Islam. While not now the lingua
franca of these Moslem nations, Turkic or some variant will become the
common language, probably by the next generation. According to Central
Asian expert, Martha Brill Olcott, "Few people in the world have ever
been forced to become independent nations. Yet that is precisely what
happened to the five Central Asian republics Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan in 1991 when the Soviet

Union dissolved," she said, " these people wanted civil liberties, but not
necessarily freedom as citizens of new states. Each republic was named
for a local nationality, but was based on the borders of a state that had, in
fact, never existed. Therefore, all these groups have border claims on one
another, and large populations in the other's territory on which to base
such claims. " Stalin, for example, created Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan by
dividing the Kyrgyz nation into two republics.
In November, 1996 the Chevron Corporation announced the

consummation of an agreement allowing it and its consortium partners to
export up to at least 700,000 barrels of oil per day from the Tengiz oil
field in the Caspian Sea. The oil will be delivered by pipeline to the newly
constructed Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. Oil reserves
in the entire Caspian Basin are estimated at ninety-five billion barrels.
Natural gas in Turkmenistan is estimated at more than eighteen trillion
cubic metres, enough to supply Russia with most of its industrial energy
needs. Russia once had adequate supplies of both oil and gas. However, its
pipelines and pumping stations have obsolesced and much of the Russian
plant and equipment have deteriorated. Furthermore, some of its wells
have been almost depleted over a period of ninety or one hundred years.
Besides Chevron, other companies with an interest in the consortium are

Lukhoil, the huge Russian oil company, Mobil Oil, AGIP S.pA., a unit of
ENI of Italy, British Gas, and Oryx Energy, based in Dallas, Texas. iv The
agreement signed in Moscow on December 6, 1996 was of major
importance to Chevron. Currently, it was shipping only 120,000 barrels
day. Its ability to ship more was limited by the current pipeline in Russia
which has run within a few miles of Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya.
For the last two years, there has been heavy fighting in that country. It got
its independence from Russia, now known as the Confederation of
Independent States (CIS). The government of Turkey has expressed
disappointment with the route chosen by the consortium. Turkish officials
had prepared a position paper with reasons for getting Caspian Sea oil on
the international market by shipping it through pipelines via Turkey to
Ceyhan for delivery to European markets. Except for Kurdish nationalists
in the southeastern area of Turkey, a pipeline from, for example, Baku to
Ceyhan, might well work under conditions of relative political stability.

Central Asia
Seven time zones to the east of the Caspian Basin, Chevron announced a
new crude oil discovery in the South China Sea in the Pearl River Mouth
Basin. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation will own 51 percent
of the oil discovered in this prolific Huizhou area, with AGIP and Texaco
being the other consortium partners. This latest discovery in October, 1996
brought total production to 120,000 barrels a day during a period that
began in 1983 with the formation of what is now known as the CACT
Operators Group. Each of the three corporate partners own a 16 1/3
percent interest in the South China Sea oil field, while CNOOC owns a 51
percent interest.
On June 10, 1997 the official China Daily Business Week reported that
China would have to import nearly one million barrels of oil a day by the
year 2000, twice the normal level. With the domestic oil industry
struggling to maintain production at about 3.1 million barrels a day,
imports must increase sharply to keep up with China's rapidly expanding
economy. China will continue as a net importer of oil well into the 21st
Century, while its population continues to expand at an exponential rate.
With this expansion, China needs far more oil than it will ever discover in
either offshore or onshore oil drilling. Over the long term, Chinese
economic growth will require the import of more oil. By 2010, China must
quadruple its oil imports to at least 14.5 million barrels a year. Only two
areas in the world produce oil on this magnitude, the Middle East and the
Caspian Basin. Oil v from the Indonesian wells is barely enough to satisfy
the requirements of Japan and the Malaysian Peninsula countries. On June
3, 1997 China announced a $4 billion deal under which Kazakhstan would
deliver its oil to Sinkiang, a UighurHan Chinese province in the Northwest

of China via pipeline. China National Oil Company also announced an

agreement with Iraq to develop two major oilfields with about 340,000
barrels of oil per day. Some officials note that Russian intransigence over
pipeline routes to Europe via Turkey caused Kazakhstan to negotiate with
the China National Oil Company, a statewide company.
In 1994, China was considered to be the sixth largest oil producer, but the
country consumes most of its own output. China refined 2.5 million
barrels of oil per day in 1994, but is still 300,000 barrels short of its target
for 2000. The present government in Beijing has other policies related to
energy development. It is interested in American refinery technology and
crude oil in the ground in countries like Kazakhstan and Russia. However,
ever since the end of World War II, Russia has been a net importer of oil;
its own oil facilities have become hopelessly inefficient, and its nuclear
power reactors are dangerously unsafe. With the collapse of the old Soviet
Union in 1991, some of its national areas have spun off into independent
states. Georgia is one of them, and other states like Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan have become the key players in the search
for oil and gas.
Republics on the periphery of the former Soviet Union -- now the

Confederation of Independent States (CIS) -- are often at war over issues
of power. Belarus, for example, recently had a referendum which left the
status of President Alexandr Lukashenko in some doubt. He had
announced the referendum to seek near absolute power of a country of
about 10.5 million people still living in the shadow of the radioactive
fallout after Chernobyl in 1986... Belarus its capital is Minsk lies between
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine (World War II in Ukraine). In
1994, Belarus established its own currency, the ruble, but its value against
the dollar is practically nil. The Ukraine has no serious internal disputes,
but it does have a boundary dispute with Rumania going back to the
MolotovRibbentrop Pact in 1939. Ukraine's population is estimated at 52
million, and its capital city is Kiev. Ukraine shares access to the sea with
Georgia via the Black Sea. Chechnya shares a border with Georgia to the
south and Dagestan to the east. The vi status of Chechnya was on hold in
1996 after an agreement was signed suspending hostilities between it and
Russia for five years. However, Yeltsin finally signed a treaty with
Chechnya in 1997. As already noted, China and Kazakhstan have a
common border in western China where no substantial oil drilling is likely
to take place without some assurance of results in commercial quantities
of oil or gas. Chevron recently signed an agreement with China allowing it
to explore for oil on land.
China has a badly split personality. As of 1992, the Chinese economy was
growing at an annual growth rate of 12.8 percent. Despite the one child
per family policy, its population is growing at a rapid clip. By 2010, the

population is expected to increase by 25 percent. Expansion on such a

scale is simply not sustainable because of environmental degradation.
Arable land has nearly lost its capacity to grow crops sufficient to feed the
growing population. About 25 percent of the entire population in rural
China has less arable land than the Bangladeshis. Over the next fifteen
years, this already disastrous condition of agriculture will become
dramatically worse. As of 1990, about 77 percent of China's agricultural
land was being irrigated, but this irrigation water has become increasingly
polluted by industrial wastes. Anyone who has seen what an American
forest looks like after clear cutting will recognize a grotesque scene. As
river beds silt up from soil washed out by normal rainfall, the river beds
rise above the normal surface and increase the danger of floods. Water and
air pollution are increasing rapidly, as the population grows and has to
feed itself. As the population expands, its rural component moves closer to
the coastal population centers.
Internationally, China has been criticized for its repressive human rights
violations. Western businessmen tend to ignore all this for the lure of low
wages and high profits on exports. Faceless Chinese bureaucrats routinely
describe criticism of China's dismal human rights record as interference in
the internal affairs of the Peoples' Republic of China. However, Europe
has worked with the European Convention on Human Rights since 1951,
and the thought of complying with this convention didn't even slow down
the race to the banks by American businesses anxious to make money in
Europe.Turkey has the worst record of human rights violations of the
convention. Furthermore, the Council of Europe just rejected Russia's
application to become a member of the Council of Europe. The Council
vii executive ruled that Russia could not satisfy the requirements of the
European Convention on Human Rights.
The Peoples' Republic of China cannot survive without access to far more
oil than it has in 1996. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Reform
with its Red Guard excesses were both utter disasters. The terrible famine
in the years between 1959 and 1962 caused the deaths of some 30 million
peasants in the rural areas of China. Then, when Lin Biao was Minister of
Defense beginning in 1959, he moved to politicize the army. Military
professionalism must yield to strict ideological controls.
Deng Xiaoping himself was a victim of the Red Guard cadres in 1966. He
was humiliated in public rallies and attacked in insulting posters. He
retired in time to avoid the blame for the chaos of 1967 caused by the Red
Guard units. By 1968, these units were at war with one another, and the
government infrastructure all but collapsed. Mao Tsetung was close to
presiding over social breakdown. Mao distrusted Lin, so he is thought to
have had Lin removed. Actually, Lin was reported to have died in a plane
crash in 1971. This was the year in which the PRC got Taiwan's seat at the

United Nations, and Mao saw it might be time to cultivate the United
States. So he was receptive to a visit in 1972 by President Nixon. Mao
died in 1976, leaving a battle for the Party succession behind him.
Miraculously, Deng was recalled from retirement because of his vast
knowledge of the Party apparatus. Deng was very old then -- he died in
February, 1996 -- but probably still powerful enough to suppress most
dissent. The current Secretary General of the Party is Jiang Zemin who
serves with Deng's blessing. He also used the army to quell the Shanghai
demonstration occurring at the same time as the violence in Tiannanmen
Square.
Even a short account of Chinese culture, which has been a success in

terms of economic development, should be an incentive to avoid
commercial diplomacy by, among other things, denying China its MFN
status without conditions. At least three generations of Chinese have been
the victims of human rights violations. In late 1996, the China
Communists turned their attention to the United States and humiliated its
government. General Chi Haotian, who carried out the order to crush the
Tianenman Square student uprising in 1989 was sent to Washington as a
guest of honor of the Clinton Administration. The Clinton Administration
sees more trade viii with China, and corporate America has been Clinton's
willing executioner of human rights. President Clinton has refused to see
the Dalai Lama or once imprisoned political dissidents. The international
business community has an obligation to know the culture and react to its
excesses. Free enterprise does not lead to a free society. Even with the
rapid expansion of China's economy, there is abundant evidence that the
same factors that produce serious abuses of human rights are also
detrimental to trade. Have American corporations forgotten the economic
sanctions that finally helped end apartheid in South Africa? During 1995,
for example, China exported $47.3 billion worth of goods to the United
States, but imported only $11.5 billion. This deficit has been used
principally to finance arms for use by the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA)
and other capital needs. Chinese enterprises are required to sell their
foreign exchange earnings to Chinese banks.
The Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years

published by Random House in December, 1996 has this to say: "China's
foreign policy was assertive since 1989. The collapse of the Soviet Union
-- perhaps reassuring in an odd kind of way to those in the [Beijing]
leadership who warned of the perils of unplanned democratization without
a visible economic base -- presented a completely new arena for maneuver
among the newly independent republics in central Asia. China, as the new
central power in that region, might gain access to water, fuel, and new
markets for its own far west. At the same time, powerful Muslim forces in
many of these republics raised disquieting prospects of possible unrest in
Xinjiang, where the Uighur Muslims demonstrated energetically for a

measure of increased religious autonomy and control in 1989. The

Russians' deactivation of their main naval base at Vladivostok, when
followed by the American abandonment of its own huge naval base at
Subic Bay in the Philippines, made China -- in the absence of a significant
Japanese fighting force -- the dominant naval power in the immense
region extending from the South China Sea to Sakkalin. China took an
aggressive stance against Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Brunei , and Indonesia over the disputed oil and natural gas deposit in the
Spratly Islands, although the area was 500 miles from China's shores.
China's warships patrolled the area, and set up boundary markers in
strategic locations. Its expanding nuclear submarine program, its
successful launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles, its projected
purchase of an aircraft carrier, and its mastery of in-flight fueling
techniques for its fighter bombers, all highlighted the risks to the other
claimants should confrontation escalate." This overstates China's actual
sea power. It has no carrier, and one will not be enough; there must be two
carriers. China's air power has little range even with in-flight fueling. Its
surface fleet of frigates is vulnerable to anti ship missiles, and its "smart"
weapons have not been designed or produced within China.
In 1992, a rail link between Beijing and Alma Ata in Kazakhstan which
more or less followed the Silk Route used by Marco Polo in the 13th
century makes the use of Chines forces in Kazakhstan quite simple. These
two countries share a common border, so conventional military forces may
travel through Sinkiang to the border and perhaps beyond like the nomads
of history. About six hundred years ago, the Mongols led by Genghis
Khan almost penetrated Europe, and they traveled by horse.
On July 1, 1997 the British left Hong Kong, and the PRC moved in. Hong
Kong has been widely seen as Beijing's economic engine; it is the city
where most Taiwanese money has been invested, expanding China. Now
Beijing wants to reclaim this island republic as its own. There is a problem
with this. Taiwan wants its independence, and China does not yet have the
military might to mount an amphibious landing, and its air force consists
of obsolete Soviet jets. Furthermore, Beijing has said it will reclaim
Taiwan peacefully. This claim exists at the same level of truth as its
human rights policy. A possibility exists, however. Circumstances might
be created by Beijing that could cause Taiwanese to rebel against their
present leadership.

Modern Turkey is a nation which has been a bridge between Asia and
Europe from the beginning of time. Once, as the Ottoman Empire, it ruled
a huge area of the region around its borders as far southwest as Egypt
including what is now Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. As the end of the
millennium approaches, Turkey finds itself embroiled in a religious war
within its own boundaries. In mid-May, 1997 Turkey was ruled by a
fragile coalition including the Welfare Party headed by Necmettin
Erbakan who vacillates between a secular state and one true to Islam and
the True Path Party headed by Tansu Ciller. She has been charged with
financial corruption, but denies any wrongdoing. On November 24,1997
The New York Times reported that Erbakan had just completed three days
of a hearing before Turkey's Constitutional Court. A case had been
brought that might impose a ban on his party, the Welfare Party. The
prosecutor had alleged that this party had undermined the country's secular
government and turned it into an Islamist state. The ruling coalition had
been reorganized. Necmettin Erbakan had resigned, having seen the
handwriting on the wall. His successor was Mesut Yilmaz who inherited
an ugly civil war between Turkey and the Kurds. No one believes it has a
military solution, and one member of Parliament, Leyla Zana, waived her
parliamemntary immunity so she could make her point from prison. In
1994, the State Security Court convicted her of supporting Kurdish
terrorism in violation of the AntiTerror Law (Law 3713). In 1991, Human
Rights Watch described this law as A "New Restrictive AntiTerror Law."
Mrs Zana's letters to Prime Minister Yilmaz and President Clinton noted
that "Being in prison is an inevitable, unavoidable and necessary price to
be paid for peace, brotherhood, and a democratic Turkey." Mrs Zana is a
widely known in Europe as a symbol for Kurdish nationalists who are
working for an autonomous Kurdish or independent state in Southeastern
Turkey. It is no accident that this location may be used to transport
Caspian Sea oil to the West through this area via pipeline, but this Turkish
coverup of its brutality against Kurds and those who help them should
have a negative effect on support for these proposed pipelines.
In mid-December, 1997, Turkey's 33 year bid to enter the European Union

was rejected. The decision angered Turkish officials, who threatened to
reduce, if not eliminate their contacts with Europe. EU leaders had offered
Turkey a new role in the European Conference, but Turkey declined to
accept a role that did not lead to almost immediate membership. The EU's

western leaders commented that Turkey had made no progress on human

rights. Moreover, it continued its aggressive policy against Cyprus. More
recently, Kurdish refugees had landed in Italy where they were welcomed.
Germany, a leader in allowing Turkish workers to find employment in
Germany, led the vote against inviting Turkey to become a member of the
EU. Both countries are members of NATO, as is Greece, which imposed
unaccepteble conditions on Turkey's bid to become a member of the EU.
A political survey taken for the Turkish Daily News on April 25, 1997
suggested an overwhelming majority of the voters polled favored the
termination of this coalition which favored Islam. They also see anti-
secular trends as more serious than the threat of Kurdish separatism.
Traditionally, the Turkish army has acted as a brake on Islamic
fundamentalists acting to upset the secular coalition. Since 1960, the
Turkish army had intervened three times to install a secular government,
i.e., non-Islamic. In an interview in Ankara, Turkey's Deputy Chief of
Staff, General Cevik Bir pointed to the country's constitution as the army's
rationale for displacing a civilian, but anti-secular government. Article 2
of the Constitution established that Turkey shall be a secular nation.
Article 4 declares that this provision may never be changed.Finally, it was
not until mid-January, 1998 that the Constitutional Court ruled that the
Welfare Party should be banned as threatening to undermine a secular
state. This case appears headed for the European Court of Human Rights.
To defuse protests from NATO, Bir emphasized the military's duty was to
defend the political system as defined in the constitution. NATO,
however, insists its members rely on civilian democracy, not a military
government. On June 18, 1997 Erbakan stepped down pending elections to
be scheduled at least four months from the date of his resignation. Erbakan
remained as a caretaker until his successor was selected by the President
of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel. As the guardian of the constitution, the
army has often noted there is no Muslim formula for running the nation's
affairs and deplored the retreat from secular government adopted in 1925
under Kemal Ataturk.

Turkey
In 1923, modern Turkey was largely secular, but almost seventy years
later, secular Turks, (and they include a vast majority of the military) are
threatened by fundamentalists. In the southeastern area of Turkey, a region
known as Batman -- an administrative region -- is unsettled by Kurds.
They resent the loss of Kurdish identity; Kurdish newspapers have been
closed and Turkish schools will not allow the Kurdish language to be
taught, and this war costs Turkey an estimated $5 billion a year. Turkey
has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1954,
and it is also a member of the Council of Europe. The Council's members
accept the European Convention on Human Rights as an article of faith.
However, Turkey's record on human rights is the worst of any of the
Council's twentyone members. Turkey, for example, invaded Cyprus in
1974 and brought about a de facto partition of Cyprus, conduct
condemned by the European Commission on Human Rights, the division
of the Court of Human Rights that hears evidence and makes findings of
fact. Turkey has no oil of its own, but it would like to see one or more
pipelines carry Caspian Sea Basin oil to one of its ports on the
Mediterranean Sea, such as Ceyhan or Iskenderum. However, its
responsible leaders see the potential for pipeline disruption if its route
goes to Ceyhan via territory occupied by Kurds (PKK). The territory
occupied by Kurds has no fixed boundaries. However, World War I ended
with a series of treaties in which the former Ottoman Empire was
dismembered. The Treaty of Sevres was one of these, and it came close to
establishing an independent Kurdistan. No contemporary map shows
Kurdistan; the Kurds were betrayed by Great Britain and France. The
Kurds were not permitted to establish their own state; they were divided
up among Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Today, Kurds claim some oilrich
portions of Iraq as their own, but France and Great Britain sided with
Ataturk who suppressed the Kurds at various times from 1925 to 1937.
Iraq was an artificial creation of Great Britain after World War I, but the
Kurds boycotted the referendum in which the British sought local approval

of their selection of Emir Faisal as the King of Iraq in 1921. After World
War II, the Kurds tied their policy to the Shah of Iran who needed a
fighting force to keep Iraq at bay. Jonathan C Randall, author of After
Such Knowledge What Forgiveness: My Encounters with Kurdistan,
charged Richard Nixon with "unwittingly contributing to the Shah's
downfall and to epic instability in the Middle East by encouraging the
monarch's naturally autocratic ways and his insatiable appetite for U.S.
military hardware. This combination helped burn out Iran's economy and
undermine confidence in the Shah, thereby paving the way for the
Ayatollah Khomeine's Islamic revolution a halfdozen years later." When
Islamic Iran was attacked by Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds allied themselves with
Iran. Saddam Hussein did not forget this alliance. After his defeat in 1991,
Iraqi aircraft pursued the Kurds who had to retreat in the face of superior
firepower. As one observer noted, the Kurds were never more than a
political or diplomatic card to play in the Middle East. The United States
betrayed the Kurds by selling arms to Iraq during the war with Iran.
Hussein used this generosity to launch the first use of gas after World War
I in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical
weapons. Some 110,000 Kurds were killed by Iraqi gas between 1987 and
1990. Were fighting to break out in the Middle East in the next few years,
Iran might well resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Russia has sold the
technology to Iran and sent experts to advise Iranian physicists.
By early in the 21st century, Turkey may find itself on the brink of a
struggle over oil and gas. On the east, Turkey borders Armenia,
Azerbaijan, and Iran. To the south Turkey shares a border with both Syria
and Iraq. On the northeast, Turkey shares a border with Georgia, one of
the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) made independent after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Most of Turkey lies in Asia; its
capital city is Ankara. Turkey controls the two exits from the Black Sea,
the Straits of Bosporus and the Dardenelles. Ships leaving the Black Sea
must transit the straits via the Sea of Marmara before moving into the
Mediterranean Sea. Great Britain almost succeeded in closing the Straits
of Bosporus in 1915 when it had naval forces off Gallipoli. As Phillip
Mandel wrote in his book, Constantinople, "Panic swept Constantinople
(now Istanbul) when a British submarine broke through the Dardenelles
and started sinking ships in the Bosporus: by the end of the year Allied
submarines had brought daytime traffic on the Sea of Marmara almost to a
halt."
Russia has different ideas. It has invoked the 1936 Treaty of Montreux
which guarantees free passage through the Bosporus and the Dardenelles
during peacetime. Recently, however, there were as many as 110 vessels
weighing as much as 200,000 tons, often carrying oil, gas, chemicals,
nuclear 9 wastes, and other hazardous materials pass through the straits
each day through the tortuous route that literally splits Istanbul, a city of

eleven million people, in two. In 1994, Turkey, citing environmental

concerns, adopted regulations regulating sea traffic through the Bosporus
Straits. Two potential disasters had already occurred. In 1994, the oil
tanker Nassia collided with an empty cargo ship at the entrance to the
Bosporus. The Nassia was carrying 19 million barrels of crude oil from
the Russian Black Sea port of Novorosisk. The Nassia caught fire and
burned for a week causing damages of about $1 billion. In 1979, a
collision occurred between a Greek freighter and a Rumanian tanker near
the lower entrance to the Bosporus. The resulting explosion shattered
windows on shore, and the cargo of oil burned for weeks.Turkey has
solicited bids to build a radar system making the Bosporus more
navigable. However, nations using these straits have been reluctant to say
they would help pay for an expensive system.
With the increase in oil traffic projected as a result of the Central Asian oil
fields, it seems grossly unfair for Turkey to assume the risk for the health
of both the environment of the straits and the inhabitants of Istanbul. With
these concerns quite evident to Turkey, it approached the International
Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, and successfully got
I.M.O approval of the 1994 regulations. See " Regulating Traffic Flow in
the Turkish Straits: A Test for Modern International Law at 10 Emory
International Law Review 333. The flow of oil from the Russian terminal
at Novorosisk has more than doubled since the end of the Cold War in
1991. It is evident that Russia resents the possible loss of its monopoly of
transportation of oil by Russian pipelines. Many experts argue that a
pipeline through Turkey bypassing the Kurdish separatists is by far the
best route for oil from Central Asia.
Turkey touches Europe at Greece and Bulgaria. During the Gulf War in
1990 and 1991, the United Nations approved sanctions with the effect of
cutting Iraq off from the world markets for oil; it closed the oil pipelines
that cross Turkey carrying oil from Iraq. In late 1996, the Security Council
allowed Iraq to sell $2 billion worth of oil so the government might buy
food and medicine for people suffering because Saddam Hussein had tried
to seize Kuwait's oil in August, 1990. Turkey could close off water to Iraq
flowing through the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers around Baghdad, 10
because water for these huge rivers originates in Turkey. The Ottoman
Empire was probably one of the two or three great empires that survived
into the early 20th century. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire
disappeared. Some of its territory was taken to form the wholly invented
boundaries of Iraq. Part of its land was set aside as the Mandate for
Palestine to be ruled by Britain until 1948, and another part was set aside
for the French and became Lebanon. Syria was carved out of this land in
what was really a cartographer's nightmare.

The part of Turkey located in Asia has been named Anatolia since ancient
times going back 5,000 years. Late in the third millennium B.C. waves of
invaders speaking IndoEuropean languages crossed the Caucasus
Mountains into Anatolia. These were the Hittites who lived during the
bronze age. They took their name from the Hatti indigenous tribes whom
the invaders subjugated. The Hittites adapted their language, using the
cuneiform alphabet. The invaders also imposed the political and social
organization they brought with them, probably from the Balkan Peninsula,
on their subjects in the Anatolian interior and northern Syria. The
indigenous peasantry supported the Hittite warrior caste with rents,
services, and taxes. In time, the Hittites won the reputation of being
merchants and statesmen who schooled the ancient Middle East in both
commerce and diplomacy. However, the Hittite state collapsed in 1200
B.C. when the Phrygians rebelled and burned the ancient city of Hattusas.
In 1906, systematic excavation of the site yielded archives containing
cuneiform tablets that had been baked by the same fire that consumed the
city. The deciphering and interpretation of this material brought to light
the history, literature, laws, and religion of a people initially known by
language from the Bible with references to "Hittim" in the Old Testament.
During the period between the twelfth and ninth centuries B.C. Anatolia
was in constant turmoil. The Assyrians from Mesopotamia, now part of
Iraq, were on the march. The kingdom established by the Assyrians was
overthrown by the Cimmerians, a nomadic people who had been pursued
over the Caucasus into Anatolia by the Scythians. They in turn were
overcome by the Lydians, a Thracian warrior caste who enriched
themselves from gold found in great quantity in the area ruled by Croesus.
The successive Lydian kings controlled western Anatolia until the
kingdom fell to the Persians in 546 B.C. Part of the Persian Empire is now
modern Iran. Armenians and Kurds also shaped the linguistic diversity of
Anatolia. Armenia had been established as a client of the Roman Empire
to guard the frontier against the Persians. The Roman empire gained
control of Anatolia in 138 B.C. Cicero, a great writer -- he wrote in Latin -
- said of this acquisition of Anatolia that its importance lay in "the richness
of its soil, in the variety of its products, in the extent of its pastures, and in
the numbers of its exports, it surpasses all other lands." Under a
succession of Roman emperors, Rome expanded over the next three
hundred years.
In 285 A.D., Emperor Diocletian undertook the reorganization of the

Roman Empire, dividing jurisdiction between its Latinspeaking and
Greekspeaking halves. In 330 A.D. Emperor Constantine reigned from
306 to 337. He had established his capital at the Greek city of Byzantium
strategically situated on the European side of the Straits of Bosporus at its
entrance to the Sea of Marmara. There he could watch both Persia's
empire and the Goths across the Danube River. For nearly seven centuries

the city, renamed Constantinople, remained the capital of the Roman

Empirebetter known in its continuous development as the Byzantine
Empire. John Julius Norwich has written an engrossing history of this
period, A Short History of Byzantium which grew after 330 AD and ended
in 1483. Norwich had written a three volume history of this period. They
first told the story of the Empire from its foundation to the establishment
of its western rival, the Holy Roman Empire, with the coronation of
Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800. The second followed its fortunes
through the dazzling dynasty of the Macedonians to the apogee of its
power under the terrible Basil II Bulgaroctonus, the BulgarSlayer, but
ended on a note of ill omen: the first of three great defeats of Byzantine
history, suffered at the hands of the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071,
only five years after William the Conqueror landed in Great Britain in
1066. The third and last volume showed just how fateful the defeat at
Manzikert proved to be, robbing the Empire of most of Asia Minorthe
principal source of its manpower weakening it and impoverishing it to the
point that, rather more than one hundred years later it was powerless to
resist the onslaught of the grotesquely misnamed Fourth Crusade. That
obscenity, and the fiftysix years of Latin rule that followed it, proved to be
the second blow from which Byzantium never recovered. The the Ottoman
Empire emerged. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had an exhibit, The
Glory of Byzantium, which finally closed on July 7, 1997. No ruler in all
history can equal Constantine the Great. It was his decision to adopt
Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and he
transferred the capital of that Empire from Rome to the site of old
Byzantium where it was to be known for the next sixteen centuries as
Constantinople.
Christianity was introduced into Anatolia through the missionary activity

of St. Paul, a Greekspeaking Jew from Tarsus. Christians already
constituted a majority of the population in Anatolia; this religion had been
granted official toleration under the Edict of Milan in 313. The Armenians
of Anatolia had been converted to a form of Christianity at variance with
the orthodox tradition of the Greek church. They were Greek Orthodox in
religion, a fact that would have fateful consequences in 1915. However,
the Byzantine Empire tolerated all religions including Muslim by the end
of the Seventh century. It ruled not only Anatolia and Greece, but also
Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Sicily, most of Italy, and the Balkans. It lost Syria
to Muslim conquest in the seventh century. While the Byzantine Empire
slowly diminished in size with frequent waves of Goths, Slavs, Persians,
and Arabs, it generally remained on the offensive until the eleventh
century. During this period of perhaps 700 years, migrations out of Asia
continued with Turks leading in numbers and settling in Anatolia. Thus,
did the beginnings of the Ottoman Empire emerge from the remains of the
Seljuk Empire with an intervening spasm following the Mongol invaders
led by Genghis Khan in the 13th century. Mongol horsemen assembled the

largest land empire the world had ever seen, including most of what is
now the Peoples' Republic of China. This empire stretched from the
Yellow Sea bordering on Korea to the Mediterranean Sea. Even today,
there are traces of the Mongol presence in parts of Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan, together with Kiev in Ukraine. Mongol hordes sacked Baghdad
in 1221 and occupied Samarkand in 1219.
In their march into Asia Minor, the Mongols drove nomadic Turkoman
tribes before them. They in turn spread terror through the Seljuk Empire.
Its rulers were threatened with extinction and finally disappeared never to
emerge again. Mongol power itself, like the power of other nomadic
peoples over a settled society, proved ephemeral, lasting in Asia Minor --
essentially all of Anatolia -- only a single generation. Other refugees third
volume was the story of the Empire's last two centuries, from which
driven before the invaders were Muslim who had fled from Turkestan and
Persia. They rekindled Turkish enthusiasm for war against the infidels in
Anatolia. They were reinforced by Turkoman tribes. Collectively, these
two groups were known as Ghazis. These Ghazis were driven by religious
fanaticism and poured unresisted into western Anatolia beginning about
1300. This century marked the rapid decline of the Christian Byzantine
Empire and the rise of the Moslem Ottoman Empire. In 1453, Mehmed II
marched into Constantinople as conqueror of all before him. This city's
population was overwhelmingly Christian, a remnant of the Byzantine
Empire.
Islam is a religion with revolutionary implications. Rulers are considered

legitimate only if they live by and enforce the sharia, or Islamic
jurisprudence. Its holy laws are based on the teachings of the Koran.
Conflict between dynastic power and Islam emerged throughout the
history of Constantinople. The Ottomans were all Moslem, and this single
fact was to affect the destiny of eastern Europe, the Republic of Venice,
Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, and Austria. In Constantinople, however,
Mehmed II gave Christians protected status. He also supported the
restoration of the Orthodox Christian faith with the appointment of an
Orthodox Patriarch who played an important role in raising taxes for the
Sultan Mehmed II. The Sultan was short of military manpower in
Constantinople, so he ordered Turks from Anatolia to move to the capital
city and supplement his fighting Janissaries for conquest outside of his
immediate domain.
In 1529, the Ottomans had decided to invade Europe with the excuse that a
dispute with the Habsburg family in Hungary had not been settled to
Suleiman's satisfaction. Turkish forces were stopped at the gates of Vienna
after an army of professional soldiers had been assembled to defend
Vienna. Suleiman, the Ottoman Turkish ruler tried again a few years later,
but once again the Austrians defended themselves well. The invaders were

forced to withdraw. Even before this unsuccessful invasion of infidel

Europe, the Ottomans had created what would become an empire. By
1512, the empire began its expansion by various wars against Italy and
Spain; even France was not immune from Suleiman's soldiers. Perhaps the
only positive feature of all this violence was that people were just
beginning to establish a few of the boundaries that would endure until the
20th century. Suleiman waged war on two fronts at times. He moved
against Persia three times as his other forces were engaged elsewhere.
Persia was the enemy on the basis of religion. The Turks were orthodox
Sunnis, while the Persians were heterodox Shi'ites. In 1533, Suleiman
marched against Baghdad -- Iraq was not then a nation with defined
boundaries -- entering its gates in 1534 and liberating this city from the
Persian Shi'ites. On the western front, another naval encounter ended in a
disastrous defeat for the vessels of the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571.
Here, the Turkish Crescent and the Christian Cross met in the last great
naval battle in the history of Europe. A year later, a new Turkish fleet
sailed into the waters surrounding Crete. This threat caused the Venetians
to cede Cyprus to the Ottomans. In today's world, the Turks felt they had a
right to occupy half of Cyprus after the slaughter of many Greeks on the
island.Three years after Lepanto, the Ottomans struck again. By the end of
the 18th century, they claimed Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli as territory of
the Ottoman Empire. The Turks had made seven different attempts to
breach the gate to Europe, either at Vienna or at Budapest. All of them
failed. The Ottoman Empire, however, had a new determined enemy, Peter
the Great of Russia. He was determined to gain access to the
Mediterranean Sea via the Black Sea. During most of the 18th century, the
Ottomans struggled to reacquire what they had lost to the Austrians.
During this period, diplomacy flourished. France, for its own reasons
worked out various arrangements with the Ottomans, while Russia failed
in its war against Sweden's King Charles VII, the socalled Baltic War. The
Treaty of Belgrade in 1737 settled some disputes that had led to war in the
past. This treaty, having humiliated the Austrian Habsburgs, frustrated the
Russians and gave relief to the Ottoman Empire. No Russian vessel,
whether warship or merchantman, could enter the Black Sea. The survival
of the Ottomans now depended on agreements with the powers of
Christian Europe. Catherine the Great ruled Russia, and she was
determined to extend her empire to the shores of the Bosporus by
dismembering the Ottoman Empire. She also sided with Prussia's
Frederick the Great to partition Poland. Russian warships finally entered
the Mediterranean Sea after first resupplying their ships in England. It was
Catherine the Great's ambition to liberate Greece from the Turks.This
effort failed, but the Turkish fleet was almost totally destroyed. Its admiral
failed to consider access to the Black Sea from the south. The delay
allowed the Turks to erect fortifications on both sides of the Dardenelles.
In the meantime, however, the fortunes of war favored the Russians in the

main theater of operations. In 1771, Russia overran the Crimea, and three
years later, the Turks agreed to peace which, among other things, allowed
Russia access to the Black Sea.
The last of the Ottoman sultans was Abdul Hamid II who assumed the
mantle in 1876. One year later, Russia declared war on Turkey. Its sultan
had to fight without Great Britain whose Queen Victoria had denounced
the Turkish barbarians. This war was settled by the Treaty of Berlin which
did little more that recognize German and Bulgarian spheres of influence
and adjust a few boundary lines. Abdul Hamid had tried an experiment in
democracy by offering a new constitution. It was approved by fraud, and
Abdul Hamid finally dissolved parliament in 1878. It was not to convene
again for thirty years To assure his own personal safety, Adbul Hamid ran
a police state and used the newlyinvented telegraph system to issue orders.
Moreover, Abdul Hamid saw himself as the ruler of his part of Islam. To
reinforce his position, he had to persecute the Christian Armenians who
once had protected status. Turkish army units carried out the bloody
slaughter of Armenians that followed the Turkish fury fanned by
Armenian revolutionaries. This slaughter of Armenians by the Ottomans
was the beginning of genocide in the 20th century.
In 1915, the Turkish government regarded its Armenian population as a

dangerous Christian element in a Moslem society. Hundreds of thousands
of Armenians were driven from their homes, massacred, or marched until
they died. This genocide lasted until the dust from World War I had
settled, and Armenia became an independent nation carved out of eastern
Turkey. Its independent status did not last long. By the Treaty of
BrestLitovsk in 1918, Russia was forced to cede all of Turkish Armenia
and part of Russian Armenia to Turkey. However, early in 1918, Armenia,
Georgia, and Azerbaijan formed the Transcaucasian Republic. Diversity of
objectives brought about the dissolution of this republic. Then, in 1920, a
coalition of Armenian guerillas and the Communists proclaimed Armenia
a Soviet Republic. In 1922, an overwhelmingly Armenian area,
NagornoKarabakh was awarded to Russia by the Treaty of Sevres which
imposed order and suppressed Armenian nationalism. This surfaced again
in 1990, and led to Armenia's independence in 1991 free of Soviet rule.
However, ethnic violence began in 1988. Azerbaijan claimed some of the
territory occupied by Armenia, and from time to time, violence still erupts.
In retaliation, Azerbaijan imposed a blockade on Armenia, and huge
segments of the Armenian population emigrated to other countries,
including the United States.
The first three decades of the 19th century saw a spectacular expansion of
Russia's frontiers in the Black SeaCaspian Sea Caucasus. In two wars with
Persia, the first in 180413, and the second, in 18268, Russia expanded the
Tsar's domain by acquiring Baku, Georgia, Dagestan, Ereven, and

northern Azerbaijan and part of Armenia. The 19th century saw the
extension of sovereignty over what were to become colonies of the great
European powers: England, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and the
Netherlands. This period has been described as the "New Imperialism,"
and it lasted until the outbreak of World War I. In this same period, the
Ottoman Empire saw a decline in its territorial base and corruption in
Constantinople. In 1903, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany announced a plan
to build a Berlin to Baghdad railroad, but only after he had signed a treaty
with Turkey. Even though the Suez Canal was opened in 1867 providing a
route for Britain to send arms and personnel to India quickly, Lord
Palmerston, Britain's Foreign Secretary, saw the BerlinBaghdad railroad
as a major threat to the heart of Britain's empire in the Middle East and a
threat to India. In fact, the railroad ended in Anatolia on the Black Sea and
was never extended to Baghdad.
In 1883, German officers began training the Turkish army and

modernizing it with arms and equipment made in Germany. When Kaiser
Wilhelm II succeeded to the German throne in 1888, he saw that Asiatic
Turkey could become a major sphere of German influence. Two years
later, Wilhelm II dismissed German Chancellor Count Otto von Bismarck
who opposed extending German influence to a Muslim nation ruled as an
autocracy. Greece was unhappy with Abdul Hamid and chose to invite the
Ottomans to declare war against Greece. In a thirtyday war, Greece was
humiliated by the Ottoman forces, but fifteen years later they struck back
at Turkey whose military power was illusory. A declining Ottoman
Empire had sought alliances with Great Britain whose answer was that
Britain could not save Turkey, unless the Turks could save themselves
from the internal and external forces producing major cracks in the
Ottoman establishment. A war in Europe seemed inevitable, and when
Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian Habsburg throne was
assassinated by a Serb fanatic. Turkey turned to Germany and soon wound
up as an ally of Germany during World War I.
For the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War I,

investors outside the Ottoman Empire and indeed, a few of them in the
United States, oil derivatives -- kerosene, gas, and illumination -- offered
enough profit to attract John D. Rockefeller. In fact, by 1868, he had put
the Standard Oil Company together and invested massive amounts in
acquiring production wells, refineries, and pipelines. Until Thomas Edison
invented the light bulb, there was very little incentive to build electric
utility plants to generate electricity. Henry Ford, however, gave the oil
business something to think about, the gasoline engine to fuel the
combustion engines of automobiles. Oil and gas in great quantities had
been found in California and then, in 1901, Texas, where the best known
gusher of all time, Spindletop, came in and started a land rush to Texas.
Initially, Spindletop produced 75,000 barrels a day. Sir Marcus Samuel in

London heard the news of Spindletop and saw it as a way of diversifying

world production, instead of relying entirely on production from one area.
He and Henry Deterding, a Dutch oil entrepreneur, finally put Royal
Dutch Shell together, and it became Standard Oil's largest, worldwide
competitor in 1906. Even this early in history, Joseph Stalin was a
troublemaker. He organized oil workers' strikes, one of them in the Baku
oilfield on the Caspian Sea. Stalin had been in Tsarist jails eight times and
saw the strike as the Great Rehearsal for the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
In 1908, Tsarist officials were fearful of revolution and provided arms to
the Moslem Tatars. This Russian largesse allowed the Tatars to slaughter
Christian Armenians in what is now Azerbaijan, an echo of the genocide
over which the Sultan Abdul Hamid had presided in 1878.
Persia -- Iran since 1935 -- found oil in 1908. It had agreed to a concession
with the Burmah Oil Co. backed by British interests. After finding oil, all
the concessionaires united to incorporate the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
The British now saw Germany as the new threat. The Kaiser supported the
modernization of the German Navy with emphasis on oilfueled naval
ships. Initially reluctant, Winston Churchill enthusiastically endorsed oil
for the expanding British Navy, moved by German belligerence. In 1914,
Parliament approved a measure that would guarantee the British Navy
access to oil in peace or in war, and Anglo-Persian Oil Co. would be 51
percent controlled by the British government. On June 28, 1914, eleven
days after Parliament approved Winston Churchill's bill, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo. Austria declared war
against Serbia, Russia mobilized while Germany declared war against
Tsarist Russia, and Great Britain declared war against Germany for
violating Belgium's neutrality. The world was at war.
After waiting long enough to see what might happen in Europe, Turkey
finally declared war on Russia, and of necessity joined Germany. Indeed,
by 1915, Turkey was deeply involved with Germany; its army was being
trained by German officers and its bankers were so involved with Turkey
that joining the Allies would have been unthinkable. Russia, however, had
not really prepared for war and applied to Great Britain in 1915 for
military intervention. Winston Churchill saw British help as essentially
naval in its composition. However, when some opposition to this order of
force was heard by the Asquith Cabinet, Britain sent some 249,000 British
troops to Gallipoli. This change exposed Britain to the great losses of
manpower to Turkish arms led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who later
became the father of modern Turkey. By the end of 1915, this land
invasion had failed in two costly offensives against Turkish forces, and the
British forces had to withdraw. In 1916, however, Great Britain succeeded
on another front and destroyed the Rumanian oil fields including Ploesti. It
took the Germans a year to restore the Rumanian wells to just 35 percent
of their 1914 production, which was not enough to fuel the German army

in Europe. Then, advancing through Persia, British forces reached the

Baku oil fields. These forces denied the Germans the oil from the Caspian
Basin, despite efforts of the Turks to reach Baku first. An exhausted
Germany surrendered in November, 1918 and the war was over. The
Middle East was effectively rearranged in Paris, where the Allies
negotiated the Treaty of Versailles and separate treaties with the defeated
Germans and Turkey.
British interests had been responsible for setting up companies controlled

from London even before World War I began. One of these companies
was the Turkish National Bank. It had been set up to advance British
economic and political interests in competition with Germany. London
was alarmed when the Turkish Petroleum Company appeared on the scene
in 1912. The Deutche Bank and Royal Dutch Shell each owned 25 percent
of the stock, and the Turkish National Bank held the remaining 50 percent
of the stock. One individual, Calouste Gulbenkian, owned 30 percent of
the Turkish National Bank. This very wealthy Armenian therefore owned
15 percent of the Turkish Petroleum Company. When World War I ended,
all the Allies knew that oil and its location would dominate their meetings.
The United States, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands all knew that
Middle East oil was up for grabs. Walter Teagle of Standard Oil of New
Jersey, Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch, Ernest Mercier of France, and
Charles Greenaway of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company were the principal
players. Calouste Gulbenkian was the odd man out who could block any
progress by the others. And it was not until 1928 that an agreement was
signed covering oil rights in what is now Iraq. A year earlier, a gusher had
been brought in near Mosul, so the players knew oil was there; however,
they had difficulty agreeing on shares. In the final or Red Line Agreement
dated July 1, 1928 -- Gulbenkian had drawn a red line around all the major
oilproducing states, except for Persia and Kuwait -- each major player got
23.75 percent of the oil, and Gulbenkian got his 5 percent.
Britain and France played hardball Real politik in the postwar Middle
East. Winston Churchill, head of the Colonial Office, got Cabinet approval
of his candidate for King of Iraq. Faisal was crowned in August, 1921. His
brother, Abdullah was named King of what is now Jordan. Syria was a
French mandate under the League of Nations, and Palestine was ruled by
Britain as its Mandate for Palestine. Iraq had actually been carved out of
the old Ottoman Empire and was a mixed bag of Muslims and
nationalism. The Kurds wanted an independent nation, Kurdistan, but
Russia opposed this, as did a defeated Turkey. The Bolshevik revolution
of 1917 had so alarmed Britain that it had to protect its northern flank
against a threat from the Russian Bear and the protection of the British
Empire including India.

Before, during and after World War I, Great Britain, France, Germany,
and Belgium the New Imperialism controlled what the governments of
these countries saw as objectives. Economics was the most important
single factor in this New Imperialism (1870 to 1925). The Industrial
Revolution created large surpluses of European capital and a heavy
demand for raw materials. Colonies in Africa and Asia had the raw
materials, except for oil which was abundant in certain areas of the Middle
East. Great Britain was spread thin from Suez to Singapore, Malaysia, and
India. Its navy had to have oil so its warships might stop at any one of
these sites plus Cyprus to refuel. Britain's governments had learned an
important lesson in World War I. Without oil, Germany could not
continue the war, and no British Cabinet would ever let the British Navy
run out of oil. The major players were only marginally sympathetic with
British access to oil for its Navy. They needed worldwide markets for their
oil, and production wells that were located in a stable political
environment. Postwar Arab nationalism and religious fundamentalism
made the latter objective difficult, if not impossible. However, the most
important objective for the major oil companies was to insulate and
protect themselves against government intervention. A single ruler of an
oil producing state can cause problems, as Persia's Shah was to
demonstrate.
Sir Arthur Cadman of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company -- the British

government owned about 50 percent of the stock -- Walter Teagle,
president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Henry Deterding, president
of Royal Dutch Shell were the movers and shakers of oil production and
distribution around the world. However, in 1928, they had a major
problem; there was an oversupply of oil world wide, and prices were
volatile. The Great Depression was to occur a year later, and with new oil
from East Texas, it was selling at far less than cost of production, even oil
sold in Europe from such countries as Russia, Rumania, and Persia. Its
Shah, Reza Pahlevi, unilaterally cancelled Anglo-Persian's concession; oil
royalties had declined to the vanishing point, and the Shah was infuriated.
Nationalism was only one reason behind this move, as was money.
Finally, a settlement was negotiated, but it set a precedent that other oil
producing states would find useful in the future. The rulers of host
countries would henceforth share in the worldwide profits of the majors,
and Persia supplied a higher percentage of workers to these companies.
And a huge annual payment to the ruler was guaranteed regardless of any
other events. During this period that ended in 1933 with the Persian
settlement, Turkey had emerged as a modern nation ruled by Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk as a democracy.
Women were emancipated and given the right to vote and hold office. The
harem and plural wives were both abolished. Ataturk abolished the Arabic
script that had been used for centuries in the written language of Turkey.

The Latin alphabet replaced it. Ataturk negotiated with the British over
Turkey's share of oil from Mosul in what was Iraq. Turkey got 10 percent
of the profits from the sale of oil produced in Mosul. Equally important
was Ataturk's decision to end the sultanate that ruled Turkey for so long.
In the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, Turkey had renounced its claim to
Cyprus, a claim it raised again in 1974. Ataturk also established the seat of
government at Ankara, essentially to end any lingering attachment to
Istanbul, the home of the sultanate for generations. During his rule, the
Kurds raised the banner of revolt in the name of Islam. It was put down in
1926, but has surfaced almost every year since then. Ataturk died in 1938
and his memory has lasted until today as the Father of Modern Turkey.
During the period Turkey was modernizing its government and culture.
Germany was moving toward war. In 1933, Adolph Hitler was fully aware
of German dependence on foreign oil, so he was moved to support I. G.
Farben A.G; it had patents on a process that produced high grade gasoline
from coal. Farben's scientists had discovered that aviationgrade gasoline
could be made from lignite, the cheapest of all coals. In 1926, a Berlin
professor devised a way of making this gasoline synthetically, and even
more important, inexpensively. Jersey Standard's Walter Teagle toured the
German facilities producing synthetic fuel and was shocked. He saw this
production as a threat undermining Jersey Standard's dominant position of
oil in the worldwide market. Hitler had other objectives. In 1936, he
inaugurated his FourYear Plan. The synthetic fuels industry occupied a
central place in this plan. By September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded
Poland, some fourteen synthetic fuels plants were in operation with six
more under construction. A year later, they were producing about 72,000
barrels per day, accounting for 46 percent of total oil supply. About 95
percent of German aviation gasoline came from the hydrogenation process
in these plants. Rumania, a German ally in World War II, furnished the
rest of the oil Germany needed. It was produced in Ploesti, an oilfield that
had been a target in World War I. Indeed, the safety of Rumanian oil was
not far from the thoughts of Nazi officials, By early 1942, Albert Speer
was Minister of Armaments appointed by Hitler. Speer was responsible
for repairing Allied bomb damage to the synthetic fuels plants in
Germany. Until June 22, 1941 Germany also imported Russian oil, since
Hitler had signed a nonaggression treaty with Stalin in August, 1939.
Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941. A few months later,
Hitler told his generals who had made rapid progress toward Moscow, that
"The most important objective to be achieved before the onset of winter is
not to capture Moscow, but to seize the Crimea and the industrial and coal
region on the Donets and cut off the Russian oil supply from the Caucasus
area." Baku and the oil of the Caspian Sea Basin was the ultimate
objective. However, German forces were finally defeated before
Stalingrad, thousands of miles from Berlin, but only 200 miles from the
northern tip of the Caspian Sea. Germany's Sixth Army surrendered in

February, 1943 with only enough fuel in their tanks to drive some 30
miles. In North Africa , the story was no different.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's legendary Afrika Corps finally outran its
source of fuel for both tanks and aircraft. From the island of Malta, the
RAF aircraft could sink vessels carrying more fuel from Italy to German
forces in North Africa. Then, when American forces landed in Morocco
and Algeria, blocking Rommel's retreat route, Rommel's position became
untenable. In a book edited by Liddell Hart, Rommel's Papers, the general
himself complained bitterly about not getting the fuel he needed to win.
Between mid-May and June 6, 1944 the American Strategic Air Force
bombed Ploesti, Rumania and German synthetic oil plants within
Germany. The theory was that by denying the Luftwaffe gasoline for its
aircraft, German fighters would be less able to interrupt the D-Day
invasion of Normandy scheduled for June, 1944.
The Air Force continued its heavy bombing of synthetic gas plants after
D-Day. Luftwaffe fighters remained on the ground for lack of gasoline.
Germany's synthetic gas plants were producing 6 percent of average
production in early 1944, from 92,000 barrels per day to just 3,000 barrels.
This German fuel shortage may have shortened World War II by as much
as six months. As a result Allied ground forces advanced rapidly toward
their goal of Berlin. See Chapters 1 and 6 of An Abridged History of the
United States for more detail .
The war with Japan had the same problems. Initially, Japan had sufficient
oil for its Navy and ground forces. However, beginning in May, 1943 the
United States waged a war of attrition against Japanese tankers. American
submarines proved very effective. By 1944, tanker sinkings were
outrunning new tanker construction. Oil imports in Japan reached their
peak in the first quarter of 1943. A year later, its imports were less than
half the 1943 figure. Fuel shortages began to affect strategic decisions of
the Japanese Navy. Carriers had to remain based in Japan to make rapid
use of new carrier aircraft and pilots. On the other hand, its heavy
battleships and cruisers were stationed at or near Singapore to take
maximum advantage of oil from Sumatra and Brunei. The result was a
divided fleet at the very time Japan needed a combined fleet strong enough
to deal with the massive American task forces of the Third and Seventh
fleets. Their warships could refuel at sea, while the Japanese warships
could rarely get enough fuel for any extended operation. The Battle of
Leyte Gulf was a complete disaster for Japan. It lost three battleships, all
its remaining carriers, ten cruisers and twelve destroyers.
While there is some documentation of the importance of oil in warfare, it

is reasonable to state that Russia, the Peoples' Republic of China, the
United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and the United States all accepted

this as an article of faith. Certainly, the foreign policies of all these

countries reflected a deep concern for the protection of their access to oil.
The main contribution to the Allied cause by Middle Eastern countries
was the use of their territories, resources, and facilities. In most of those
countries, this was made possible by the military garrisons established
during the post-World War I period, in Iraq, Iran, and the oilrich states of
the Persian Gulf. Indeed, one of the most important changes in this century
was the discovery, exploitation and use of petroleum. Indeed, on the eve
of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russia had supported the search for
oil in Azerbaijan. At this time, oil from the fields in Baku on the Caspian
Sea was providing some 95 percent of all Russia's oil.
Notwithstanding the battles near its borders, Turkey remained neutral

during World War II, that is, until the last few weeks when Turkey
declared war on Germany in order to qualify for a seat at the victors' table.
As one observer noted, Turkey wanted to be on the guest list, not the
menu. When the dust settled after World War II, the Cold War began. In
1949, the United States took the lead in organizing the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), and Turkey was admitted in 1954. The
language of the NATO treaty had the familiar text; an attack on the
territory of one member was essentially an attack on all members.
NATO was essentially a defensive alliance designed to meet a Soviet

military threat in central Europe. In 1951, the Council of Europe had
established the framework for solving problems of postwar human rights.
Both the Republic of Turkey and the Kingdom of Greece acceded to the
treaty in 1952. The Council of Europe invited Turkey to join it. The Court
of Human Rights and the Commission of Human Rights were both created
and accession to the European Convention on Human Rights was an
article of faith for all members of the Council of Europe. Turkey has not
accepted all its obligations under the human rights convention. In 1974,
Turkish military forces landed in Cyprus with the intention of preventing
Greece's move toward Enosis or Union with mainland Greece.
Furthermore, Turkey has consistently denied Kurds in Turkey the
opportunity of preserving their language and culture. To the government
in Ankara, the Kurds are a quarrelsome minority, and the government has
not hesitated to use force against them. See
http://www.odysseyphoto.com/major/turk.html
In mid-January, 1997, the United States warned Turkey against attacking

Greek Cypriot forces on Cyprus. Turkey had accused the Greek Cypriot
government of trying to change the balance of forces on the island by
buying some Soviet antiaircraft missiles. Washington reacted strongly,
arguing that installation of the Soviet missiles would introduce a
destabilizing new military element and complicated peace moves. Both
Turkey and Greece are members of NATO. The Turks have more to worry

about than Cyprus. Each major city in Turkey is about one-sixth Kurd.
Turgut Ozal, who died in office in 1993, was the second greatest
revolutionary of the twentieth century. He was president of Turkey until
his death. Ataturk led the way, but he had one fatal flaw. Both Ataturk and
Ozal tried westernizing Turkey, but the Kurds were forgotten. Today,
some twenty million of them live dispersed in Iraq and Iran. The war
against the Kurds threatens Turkey's social peace, and Ozal died just as he
was moving toward a compromise with the Kurds. Turkey has dreams of
dominating the area in which it is centered.
The Southeastern Anatolia Project, when completed, will allow Turkey to

stop the water flowing into Syria and Iraq for up to eight months without
overflowing Turkish dams. This project (GAP for its name in Turkish)
will be the world's fourth largest rockfilled dam known as the Ataturk
Dam. While it may seem out of place, the manager of this dam sees it as a
way of controlling the political conduct of the Arab world. It needs water,
and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers rise in Turkey and flow through
Baghdad. The Turks saw water as a weapon to be withheld if
circumstances required it. The Ataturk Dam, when completed, will supply
power and irrigation for the agricultural area of Turkey.
Early in 1997, the Clinton Administration, going through high level

personnel changes had to deal with expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). President Clinton wanted to expand NATO to
include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. At least one reporter on
National Public Radio, January 14, 1997. Lee Cullum, a columnist of the
Dallas Morning News offered a few cautionary views. "It is awkward, of
course, to have to admit that the alliance is being expanded against a
[potential] threat from Moscow," she said, "[Russia] is NATO's ally in the
partnership for peace..." She also mentioned Michael Mandelbaum, a
professor at Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book, The Dawn
of Peace in Europe, was published in late 1996, and NATO was covered
in depth. In fact, however, the NATO Participation Act enacted by
Congress would have to be amended to include these countries, and then
the treaty would have to be ratified by the Senate, twothirds concurring.
The earliest it could be amended and the treaty ratified would be the year
1999.
George Kennan, who provided the intellectual underpinning of the

doctrine of "containment" of the Soviet Union in 1947, has written a
column in The New York Times for February 7, 1997. In it he notes that
"expanding NATO would be the most fateful error in American foreign
policy in the entire postcold war era."
"Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic,

antiWestern, and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to
have an adverse effect on the development of Russian

democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-

West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions
decidedly not to our liking. And last, but not least, it might make it
much more difficult if not impossible to secure the Russian
Duma's ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve
further reductions of nuclear weaponry. ... And it [NATO
expansion] is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any
necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities
engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West
relations become centered on the question of who should be
allied with whom, and, by implication, in some fanciful, totally
unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?"
The problem has been and still is the reality of postCommunist Europe.
Just about everything in Central Europe and run from Moscow for the last
forty years has turned into ein Drecknest. This translates from German to
"a filthy mess." Bulgaria is a splendid example. One might think a
government faced with an unpayable international debt would reject the
idea of printing more money with inflation running at 20 percent per day
and look for a more sensible solution. In Bulgaria, the Socialist
government has lost billions of dollars in trade by adhering to the
sanctions imposed on Serbia, even though its most important transit route
and trading partner disappeared. Bulgaria's desperate plea for
compensation has so far fallen on deaf ears. Rumania, Macedonia, and
Albania are in the same boat The International Monetary Fund has not
shown any disposition to postpone payments on Bulgaria's huge debt of
$12 billion. And the European Union will not lift a hand, until Bulgaria
rationalizes its economy, i.e. balances its budget.
Petar Stoyanov, elected as president of Bulgaria in November, 1996, leads

the Union of Democratic Forces -- the nonCommunist alternative to the
Socialists -- had gone to Brussels to get it to admit Bulgaria as a new
member of the European Union. Thousands of demonstrators have
blocked the downtown of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria since January 2,
1997. They were protesting against the ruling Socialist Party and mass
poverty in this Balkan state. About 80 percent of Bulgaria's population of
nine million live below the poverty level. In Ankara, another protest was
organized by secular activists. The target of the protesters in mid-April,
1997 was Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey's Prime Minister who governs a
coalition that includes Tansu Ciller, Foreign Minister. She is under
investigation for alleged financial improprieties during the time she was
Prime Minister. However, the protesters were anti-Israel, and they wanted
to end the new relationship between Turkey and Israel.
Over the last two years, Turkey and Israel have forged a remarkable
program of military cooperation. In April, 1997 David Levy was in
Ankara to discuss it with highly placed Turkish officials, including

General Ismail Hakki Karadayi, Turkey's chief of the military staff. As

The New York Times story said:
The relationship between Turkey and Israel is continuing to

develop improving the security of both countries, even as
relations between Israel and the Palestinians deteriorate, and as
the entire region faces the rise of fundamentalist Islamic
movements. In particular, the relationship can only make Israeli
leaders more confident they can take tough positions in dealing
with their Arab neighbors. An alliance with Turkey could go a
long way toward neutralizing Syria in any major crisis. It could
also make Syria think twice about stirring up trouble to Israel's
north, however preoccupied Israel may be with quelling unrest
among the Palestinians.
Turkey ruled a great deal of the territory now known as Syria and
Palestine. Both were once part of the Ottoman Empire which ended after
World War I. Today near the end of the 20th century, the miniarea
surrounding Syria -- Israel, Turkey, and Greece -- has been compared to
the Bermuda Triangle, a place where objects mysteriously disappear. In
1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and in effect divided this traditionally Greek
island nearly in half. In 1948, Israel was attacked by Lebanon, Syria,
Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq. For its own security, Israel has to reduce the level
of trading land in the West Bank for an ephemeral peace with the
Palestinians. For its part, Turkey is faced with Islamic fundamentalism by
those who seem determined to roll back the progress made by Ataturk in
1925; he created a secular state that has remained secular with the army
warning religious militants not to press it too far. In addition to this state
of tension, major American and European oil giants are locked in a dispute
over the route that pipelines from Kazakhstan must follow to avoid Iran
and probably Russia. Ironically, the People's Republic of China was the
winner, signing a development contract for oil and gas in Kazakhstan's
Uten field. China has said it will construct two multibillion dollar
pipelines. This deal signaled a new Chinese determination to pursue its
economic interests abroad. In the waning days of 1997, Iran and
Turkmenistan signed a deal selling 12 billion cubic feet of natural gas to
Iran, using a 130mile pipeline from Korpedzhe, Turkmenistan to Iran's
Kurd Kui. Oil companies in the United States are handicapped by the
IranLibyan Sanctions Act of 1996. Republicans designed this nonsense,
and Clinton signed it. Unless it's repealed or modified to meet domestic oil
companies objections, no U.S. company can route a pipeline through Iran
This area of the world is engaged in a high stakes power game.
The center of the action has been Azerbaijan. Since October, 1996, the
estimate of oil reserves in this Caspian Sea Basin has escalated wildly to
the point where oil in the ground is said to be more than any other region
outside the Persian Gulf. The Tengiz field, only a small fraction of the
total, is in Kazakhstan, and natural gas has been estimated at over 18

trillion cubic meters is in Turkmenistan. The principal foreign oil

consortium in Azerbaijan is the Azerbaijan International Operating
Company, known as AIOC. The only real obstacle to participation of
American companies in this new field was the 1992 Freedom Support Act.
A provision inserted by Armenian supporters in Congress prohibits direct
U. S. economic aid under certain circumstances. However, the Azrebaijani
Chamber of Commerce with heavy weight American politicians is moving
toward persuading Congress to remove the existing limitation.
Armenians have never forgotten the genocide of the period from 1915 to
1924. See http://www-scf.usc.edu/~khachato/genocide/ An Armenian
produced this semi-documentary at a site on the Web. Beginning in the
year 1915, Turkish soldiers indiscriminately slaughtered Armenians. By
1924, 1.5 million Armenians had been killed by these Turks. Armenians
were Christians so they received help from the Soviet Union. Its Soviet
military aid helped Armenia, but it tended to muddy the waters for
negotiations of the "Minsk Group", which included the United States. In
neighboring Azerbaijan, Armenians won a war with Azzeris and occupied
about 20 percent of Azerbaijan. Understandably, Armenians feel
passionaltely that they will never give up the land known as Nagorno-
Karabakh. However, in an election in 1998, Levon Ter-Petrosian,
President of Armenia was ousted by the Armenian military for
compromising on the process leading to peace between Armenia and
Azerbaijan. The central issue of the political campaign was the fate of
Nagorno-Karabakh, the small mountainous ethnic Armenian enclave it
had won from Azerbaijan in a war lasting six years. Unfortunately, the
breakdown in the peace process has made the economy in Armenia
decline even further. In 1998, some 45 percent of the workers in Armenia
were unemployed. This misfortune exists in double-measure. Armenia was
being considered for an oil pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil to a Turkish
port. Now the oil companies will have to deal with Georgia, and Armenia
will lose the income from oil transit fees.
In its own backyard, Turkey has an ugly war with the Kurds. It has lasted
some ten years and costs an estimated $5 billion annually. Turkey seems
determined to destroy it a crime to be found with even photographs of the
Kurds at war. See http://www.akakurdistan.com/. This site offers new
insight into this ugly war and should be studied by all historians. The
pictures were taken by various photographers and used in Kurdistan: In
the Shadow of History, with the Internet version condensed from one by
Susan Meiselas in 1997.
While ugly political struggles plague Turkey, its next door neighbor offers
the intractable Nagorno-Karabakh problem. The Armenians have occupied
about 20 percent of Azerbaijan and were responsible for creating a refugee
class of some 1 million people. A small group in Azerbaijan publishes a

magazine, Azerbaijan International. Its most recent issue -- August, 1997

-- has dedicated many pages to the revival of Azerbaijan's once flourishing
film business. It goes back about 100 years according to one article. The
more recent films produced before 1991 feature Communist story lines,
and the plots are quite predictable. Azerbaijan has a growing musical
culture, and the CD playing features Aziza, a talented performer
keyboarding Seventh Truth in the Mugam mode. Essentially Mugam is
improvisional piano, and Aziza has performed before audiences in
London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv. See
http://www.azer.com/audio.aziza.four.html
In early 1997, St Martin's Press released a new book, The Kurds and the
Future of Turkey by Micheal M. Gunter. Densely written, this book should
be on the desk of anyone studying Turkish policy and how it has been
challenged by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In the Introduction,
Mr. Gunter wrote that "In analyzing the failure of Turkey to solve its
Kurdish problem, I have been impressed by what I call the authoritarian
tradition of the Republic of Turkey. This Tradition not only has influenced
the general attitudes of most government officials against a successful
political solution, but has negatively affected human rights. Turkey has
been prevented from taking the final steps towards becoming a genuine
democracy, and there is a real possibility that the state will be split up, due
to its failure to satisfy the legitimate demands of its citizens of Kurdish
ethnic heritage, who constitute approximately 20 to 25 percent of the
overall population."
By 1990, some 13.7 million Kurds were living in Turkey, a figure that
constituted 24.1 percent of the total population of Turkey. If present
demographic trends continue, as they are likely to, in about two
generations' time, the Kurds will replace the Turks as the largest ethnic
group in Turkey, reestablishing an Indo-European language (Kurdidh) as
the principal language of the land. While other considerations were and
will continue to be a factor in determining Turkish policy, language was
by far the most important. Suleiman Demirel, once Prime Minister of
Turkey beginning in May, 1993, observed; "if we let the Kurds have their
language, we will have to agree that Kurdistan is a state."
The Persian Gulf War in 1990-91 left Turkey in debt. At the request of the
United States, Turkey closed the Iraqi pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq, to
Yumurtalik on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. It did not reopen until late
1996 , and by then had cost Turkey about $30 billion.
In March 1998, Iran made a significant gesture in once again opening a

dialogue with the United States. It stopped oil sales made by Iraq in
violation of Security Council Resolution 687. During the period from
1991 to the present time, some members of Hussein's family had somehow

gotten around the oil sanctions of Security Council Resolution 687. Iran
announced a crackdown on shipments of some 100,000 barrels a day that
earned Iraq millions of dollars in violation of the sanctions. Iran has been
able to restrict the flow of petroleum because most tankers carrying Iraqi
oil ave used forged Iranian papers and passed through Iranian's waters
until the oil could be delivered to buyers in the United Arab Emirates.
Proceeds of these illegal sales generated about $600,000 daily for Saddam
Hussein's regime, after bribes and discounts paid by Uday Hussein,
Saddam's son, or by some other lower level official. This oil trade was so
effective that only about 5 percent of the illicit oil sales were intercepted
by the American-led coalition sent to the Persian Gulf in 1990. All of this
money from the very beginning should have been paid to Turkey, it
suffered a huge loss for the closing of the above-mentioned pipeline.
In its foreign policy, there are plenty of Kurds who would welcome the
export of Kurdish aspirations to Germany, France, Britain and the Benelux
countries. In Germany alone, some 450,000 Kurds in the 1.8 million
citizens of Turkey. Amongst this group, some 4,800 were activists given
to violence. In June, 1993, for example, Kurds attacked Turkish
consulates, banks, airline offices and travel agencies in some twenty
different cities in Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and
Denmark. This violence continued until the European Union voted to deny
Turkey any membership in the EU. The PKK has been subjected to
criticism for its tactics designed to frustrate the objectives of American oil
companies. Amongst other things, the PKK is thought to have cooperated
with the Armenians as a way to block a possible oil pipeline between
Azerbaijan and Turkey.
In late 1995, the PKK pulled significant numbers of its fighters out of
southeastern Turkey due to the relentless Turkish pressure and positioned
them in northern Iraq. It was clear that the PKK had emerged as a third
force in northern Iraq. In the summer of 1996, the situation again
deteriorated in Iraqi Kurdistan, as Iran began to support the PUK in its
civil war against the KDP headed respectively by Barzani and Talabani.
The government has also organized a national symphony and local

composers have written music for performances in a new symphony
auditorium.

The greatest oil rush in decades occurred after Western oil companies had
spent billions in exploratory and development costs in the Caspian Sea
Basin. At least one major obstacle has frustrated businessmen and Central
Asia politicians alike. The oil and gas pipelines must still be built along
politically stable routes. The Caspian Sea Basin and Western oil
companies expect to make piles of money, add several million barrels of
oil a day to the current daily output of seventy million barrels, and help the
struggling economies in the region. They include Georgia, Azerbaijan,
Chechnya, Kazakhstan,and Turkmenistan, all of them having recently --
since 1991 -- established their independence from Russia. The stakes are
huge. At current oil prices per barrel, the participants expect to sell some
$4 trillion worth of oil and a very great deal from the sale of natural gas
found in Turkmenistan.
The borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were a political hodge podge and
senseless established by ethnic and/or linguistic disputes during the period
from 1921 to 1991. During Stalin's life -- he died in 1953 -- Stalin killed
off the Moslem intelligentsia and deliberately transplanted entire
populations, drawing illogical borders in and importing huge minority
populations in a region where the lack of natural frontiers had permitted
volatile and arbitrary Soviet-drawn boundaries. The Armenian enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh was itself surrounded by vengeful Turkish clans. They
are a symbol of the violence and genocide of the Turks in 1915; an
estimated 600,000 Christian Armenians were killed by the Moslem Turks
during World War I. The northern border of Armenia touches on the
former Soviet Republic of Georgia. To the south, Armenia shares a border
with Iran, and Azerbaijan to the east. A bigger problem was that less than
half of the Azeri Turks lived in Azerbaijan; the rest lived in Iran to the
south. In his recent book, The Ends of the Earth, Robert D. Kaplan put it
this way:
In 1828, Russia made a deal with Persia that split Azerbaijan

between them. This illogical frontier obviously had no historical
or geographic meaning. In fact, the first flash point of the Cold
War was here: In early 1946, Stalin tried to grab all of Azerbaijan
up to Tabriz [in Iran] when President Truman forced him to
withdraw to the international border. Azerbaijan's borders were
merely a colonial fiction that had little to do with demographic
and ethnic realities.

In this little corner of Transcaucasia, there are a few small countries spun
off from the Soviet Union. Georgia is one of them, and a quarrelsome bees
nest including Ossetia, Ingustia, Chechnya, Karachay-Cherkassia,
Kabardino-Balkania, and Dagestan are the others. These petty
principalities wouldn't matter, except to their inhabitants, and on the map
of this area, they straggle along like snails on the back of Georgia.This
country gained independence from Russia in 1991, even though Russian
border guards still patrol Georgia's frontiers. Eduard Shevardnadze,
formerly a Soviet minister of foreign affairs, is the president of Georgia;
Tbilisi is its capital city. Ever since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet
Union, Georgia sought to direct its economy away from Russia and toward
the West, and Turkey is now Georgia's main trading partner. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the only foreign organization with
an office in Tbilisi. The IMF is the source of credits and foreign
assistance. Georgia is already emerging as a transit route for Uzbek cotton,
the first time Uzbekistan has been able get its cotton to foreign markets
without crossing Russian territory.
Armenia & Azerbaijan
There are other problems. Rail and road links between Georgia and Russia
have been cut, a casualty of instability in the breakaway Georgian
province of Abkazia to the northwest of Tbilisi and the war in neighboring
Chechnya which wants to break away from Russia. Abkhaz secessionists
have a large area on the Black Sea. Without any foreign aid from the
West, Shevardnadze was forced to agree that Russia might retain five
military bases on its territory in exchange for help in regaining control
over Abkhazia "Russia has a key to Abkhazia," Shevardnadze noted, and
if it uses this key correctly, then it will get the bases. If Georgian territorial
integrity is not restored, the agreement on Russian military bases will not
be ratified by the Georgian parliament." Georgia now sees itself as a
trading crossroad for Uzbek cotton and Caspian Sea oil. In early 1997,
construction is scheduled to begin on a pipeline to carry oil from the

Caspian Sea to the Black Sea port of Supsa. For its part, Russia would like
to formalize its presence in Georgia, thereby gaining more leeway under
the East-West accord limiting conventional forces in Europe. The Abkhaz
secessionists have not been the only source of instability. Armenia is still
looking at the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave as essentially theirs.
Geographically, this idea doesn't work; Armenia is an enclave within
Azerbaijan. For their part, the Azeris were confronted with the problem of
the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave populated mainly by Armenians. Armenia
is a Christian enclave surrounded by Islam. Moscow cannot be seen as
favoring Armenia at the expense of Muslim ethnic constituencies. In
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the political movements in both did not
begin as anti-Soviet, but initially included demands for the Kremlin to
ensure the validity of their respective claims: in the case of Armenia, the
Nagorno-Karabakh to be connected to it, and in the case of Azerbaijan to
prevent this. It was the inability of the Kremlin to satisfy both that set the
political movements in both republics on a path to independence. In July,
1997, Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a secret deal on the disputed
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, allowing a multinational force to monitor
the performance of this agreement.
In 1989, Soviet authorities felt that scheduled elections in Baku, the

Azerbaijanian capitol city would lead to the election of pro-Armenian
candidates. And Gorbachev had sent a signal that violence paid by his
failure to use force to protect civilians in the Azeri riots to expel
Armenians. There were pogroms in which the Armenians were the
victims, but that is what Soviet leaders wanted, a pretext for military
intervention. Curiously, the same tactic was being used in Beijing in
Tiananmen Square. There, students were the victims. In Baku, the
Armenians were victims and had been ever since 1915. It seems clear that
the pogroms had been organized for months before the local elections in
Baku, and Moscow was aware of this. The pogroms needed only an event
to flare up. A decision of the Armenian Supreme Soviet to incorporate
Nagorno-Karabakh was the fuse. After brutally killing many Armenians in
Baku, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet imposed a state of
emergency in Baku and near the border with Iran. During this period, the
Soviet Army systematically shot civilians and engaged in wanton acts of
violence. The tanks and armored cars of the Soviet Army had to move
barricades often defended by unarmed Azeri students. This sorry episode
was not reported in the Western press. However, the official version put
out by Mikhail Gorbachev's people blamed Azeri nationalism for the
violence. President George Bush saw the intervention in Baku as justified
by Gorbachev's "need to keep order." One needs to see these regional
conflicts as the inevitable aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union
beginning in 1989. Seven years later, the son of Azerbaijan's president,
Gaidar Aliev, complained about Black January in 1993. Soviet troops
attacked and killed many civilians in Baku. And in an interview published

in the magazine Azerbaijan International, Ilhan Aliev noted that some

million Azeris were refugees after the fighting over Armenia's dispute
with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh.
Geopolitical changes on the periphery of the Soviet Union have been the
main underlying causes of ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus. Just as in
191821, when the Caucasian conflicts followed the demise of Tsarist
Russia, these have come on the heels of the weakening and then the
breakup of the Soviet Union. Geopolitics is a function of the vital interests
of states and societies. Thus, the Warsaw Pact served the purpose of
preserving the social system as a counter to the NATO forces. With the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, these interests changed abruptly.
Moscow had to adjust to the disappearance of Communist rule from the
center. There were no more common ideological interests. It is no accident
that ethnic groupings and autonomous republics of the periphery were the
first to showcase the conflicts. Chechnya, for example, got more
worldwide attention from the brutal intervention of Russian troops than
ethnic or religious conflicts where different groups fought among
themselves. The fighting between Georgia and the secessionist Abkhazia
is an example of this type of conflict with Moscow always asserting its
own version so as to retain its sphere of interest. In terms of Communist
doctrine, the move toward independence of regional governments, even on
the periphery is inconsistent with "Socialist unity," (friendship of peoples).
At least one other regional difference produced armed hostilities in a
geographically insignificant political district of the Soviet Union. Fighting
between the Ingush and North Ossetian populations broke out in 1990.
Ingush were a "punished people" from the days of Stalin. Large parts of
the population were deported to Siberia, and the Ossetes were settled in
their place adjoining Chechnya. Moscow, as it usually did, tried to satisfy
both sides by calling for rehabilitation of Ingush deportees but made no
provision for a welcome by the North Ossetes. Boris Yeltsin, then
Chairman of Russia's Parliament, signed this law in 1991. It was criticized
by political scientists, as being in contravention of Russia's constitution
which stated that borders of the republics inside the Russian Federation
could not be changed without the consent of the relevant subjects of the
Federation. The same principle was incorporated in the Federative Treaty
signed by the republics and regions of Russia in 1992. Later the Russian
Parliament imposed a moratorium on border changes within the
Federation until 1995. However, during his 1991 presidential election
campaign, Yeltsin promised the Ingush to settle their problem by the end
of that year, but Yeltsin never redeemed his promise to the Ingush. The
virtual secession of Chechnya from Russia prompted members of the
parliament to set up a separate Ingush Republic, and this dispute escalated
to an acute stage. Moscow ordered action in the area, hoping that General
Dzhokhar Dudaev of Chechnya might send troops to help the Ingush, thus
giving Russian troops the opportunity of destroying the self-proclaimed

Chechen Republic. Dudaev proclaimed neutrality. Then, acting on

Yeltsin's orders, the Russians agreed to pull out of both Chechnya and the
area claimed by the Ingush. By 1997, the dispute had not yet been
resolved. Dudaev was killed in April, 1996. General Alexandr Lebed was
sent to Grozny by Yeltsin and directed to negotiate a Russian troop
withdrawal in early 1996. Lebed was visiting the United States in early
1997 to make his case for succeeding Yeltsin who was in poor health after
heart surgery followed by pneumonia.
Moldova is not really located in the Caucasus, but it recently gained its
independence from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and identified with
Rumania. At the end of World War II in 1945, some 3 million Rumanians
were geographically incorporated in the FSU. With the collapse of the
Ceauauscu regime in December, 1989, these Rumanians opted for
independence. In December, 1996, Petru Lucinschi , who promised to halt
and reverse Moldova's economic decline, captured the presidential
election by defeating the incumbent, Mircea Snegur, in a runoff election.
Even within Moldova, secession crops up in the potential breakaway
Trans-Dnieste region, along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. This
area has been tense since a bloody 1992 conflict between ethnic Slav
separatists and Snegur's troops. Snegur got about 46 percent of the vote in
December, mostly from the Rumanian portion of the total population.
Contested Borders in the Caucasus, edited by Bruno Coppieters is

available on the World Wide Web at www.vub.ac.be/POLI/ch0101.htm.
Coppieters was of the opinion that "glasnost, with the conflicting decisions
of republican bodies, backed by popular mobilizations, with the party un
able to gratify the relevant ethnic groups, not only flouted the communist
international doctrine (friendship of peoples), but made the party unable to
govern. As the party was the cement binding together all of Soviet society
and its institutions, the erosion of party rule -- led to the collapse of not
just the party, but also the USSR itself. Subsequent experience, especially
in the Caucasus, has shown, however, that in a state of disunion the
peoples of the exist have had even less chance of reconciling their national
demands."
Thus, republics on the western periphery of the Russian Federation are

hotbeds of conflict. Belaurus is another. In November, 1996 Moscow
attempted to forge a compromise between the nation's autocratic president,
Alexander Lukashenko and his principal opponents. Lukashenko, a
Stalinist and open admirer of Adolph Hitler, initiated a referendum
process that if approved, would have given near absolute power, a step
toward totalitarian power in the heart of Europe. A compromise was
signed by the President, by their Speaker of the Parliament, and by the
visiting Russian Prime Minister, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. No sooner had
Moscow proclaim a diplomatic breakthrough than the Belaurus Parliament

refused to ratify it on the ground that it left Lukashenko with too much
power. Belaurus is simply another republic with conflicting interests. On
the one hand, Moscow welcomed the ardently pro-Moscow policies of
Lukashenko, but Moscow did not welcome the prospect of instability on
Russia's doorstep. Lukashenko was not without power. He threatened that
if Parliament did not ratify the compromise, he would consider the
referendum expanding his powers as binding. The large majority of his
votes came from rural areas, and many of the voters had been
contaminated by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl in1986. President
Yeltsin has treated Lukashenko gently to avoid endangering the federation
endorsed by Yeltsin to please Russia's nationalists and Communists who
argue strenuously that Yeltsin gave in to easily to NATO's expansion
eastward.
The failure of the Russian Federation to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, at

least in part, has led to some unpredictable problems. Nuclear power
plants have a useful life of about forty years, and disposing of the highly
radioactive waste has been neglected in parts of Russia. Slightly over ten
years ago -- 1986 -- one of the four nuclear reactors at Chernobyl in
Ukraine went into meltdown. The radioactive cloud that it generated
contaminated some 40,000 square kilometers in Belaurus. Russia's three
operating plutonium production reactors are over thirty years old and share
design characteristics with the Chernobyl-style reactors, including the lack
of a containment structure. When these power plants were first built, many
of them were built in clusters, with three or four at each site. Chernobyl
and Novovorenesh are two examples. Prior to 1987, 13 plutonium
production reactors operated at three sites, Krasnoyarsk. Tomsk, and
Chelyabinsk. Ten of these reactors have been shut down. In Russia,
Gosatomnadzor (GAN) is the agency responsible for safety at nuclear fuel
cycle facilities, including plutonium production reactors. The Russian
Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM) is responsible for most nuclear-
related activities in the entire country, including the nuclear weapons
production complex and electricity generated by their power plants. Since
the breakup of the Soviet Union, the discipline of operators at these
facilities has significantly deteriorated according to one MINATOM
official. He also said that the Soviet era emphasis on meeting production
goals rather than maintaining safety had hampered efforts to improve
safety. GAN inspectors do not have the legislative or other power to
enforce compliance with official decrees of the inspectors, nor has GAN
been adequately funded to carry out its mission. Furthermore,
environmental concerns from Russia's waste disposal policies have
received increasing international attention in recent years.
In 1993, for example, the government in Moscow released a report

describing over three decades of Soviet era dumping of radioactive waste
in the ocean. During this period, Soviet personnel dumped two reactor

compartments without spent nuclear fuel into the Sea of Japan, and sixteen
reactors into the Kara Sea, six of which had spent or damaged fuel.
Without centralized control of nuclear facilities, some of the breakaway
countries have no idea how many nuclear facilities are even located in
their country. Nor is there anyone willing to disclose this sort of
information. The possibility of nuclear theft is too much of a possibility. In
fact, in countries like Chechnya, the devastation from two years of
bombing and shelling has been almost total.
In his article published in Foreign Affairs for May/June, 1997, Michael

Mandelbaum describes the Russo-Ukrainian border as a "flash point" and
one of the [two]most dangerous spots on the planet. The other is the Straits
of Taiwan. His description was given in terms of the Russia-China
position at the end of the 20th century. Even though Moscow has
recognized the independent status of Ukraine, it still asserts a claim to this
territory with almost 1000 miles of a common boundary with Russia.
Within the last seventy years, Ukraine has had to endure territorial
division mostly controlled in Moscow. In the period between 1922 and
1939, drastic efforts were made by the USSR to suppress Ukrainian
nationalism. Ukraine suffered terribly from the forced collectivization of
agriculture and the expropriation of foodstuffs from the countryside; the
result was the famine of 1932 to 1933, when more than seven million
people died. Just over twenty-seven years later, the People's Republic of
China produced a carbon copy of this famine when over thirty million
people died from starvation. Chinese peasants uncritically followed
Russian scientific socialism and suffered accordingly under Communist
rule. Following the Soviet seizure of eastern Poland in September 1939,
Polish Galicia, comprising nearly 24,000 square miles, was incorporated
into the Ukrainian SSR. When the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941
during World War II, Ukrainian nationalists hoped that an autonomous or
independent Ukrainian republic would be established and governed by
Germans. The Nazis, however, came as conquerors. Ukraine was retaken
by the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1944. In the same year, parts of Bessarabia
and northern Bukovina were added to it, and the region of Ruthenia of
Czechoslovakia was added in 1945. The Ukrainian SSR became a charter
member of the United Nations in 1945. The Crimean region in Russia was
added to Ukraine in 1954, a year after Joseph Stalin died. Communism
collapsed in 1991, and the USSR ceased to exist. Ukraine became an
independent republic in the same year.
After independence in 1991, political tensions developed in Ukraine over

several domestic and international issues. Crimea, which was part of the
USSR until 1954, became a source of contention between Moscow and
Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine. Some of the ethnic Russians proposed
secession from Ukraine. It succeeded only in changing the status of the

Crimean oblast (county) to that of an autonomous republic. Crimea also

issued a declaration of independence, which was rescinded in May, 1992.
In the same month, however, the Russian Supreme Soviet declared the
1954 transfer of the Crimea null and void. The Russian Supreme Soviet
also laid claim to the Crimean port city of Sebastopol, the home port of the
350ship Black Sea Fleet, despite an agreement to divide the fleet, which
was signed by President Kravchuk and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in
August, 1992. Other major issues dividing the two countries include the
possession and transfer of nuclear weapons for treatment in accordance
with various international treaties, delivery of Russian fuel to Ukraine, the
division of Soviet assets and military and political integration within the
Confederation of Independent States (CIS). In 1989, Ukraine had a
population of 51 million people and is the second most populous country
of the former Soviet Union. Its entire population recalls with fear the
nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. It is surprising that so little has been
said about this even in 1996, its 10th anniversary.
The United States has a major interest in Ukraine. In the tripartite accord
with Russia and Ukraine in January, 1994, under the terms of which
Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the
Soviet Union, the United States offered a very general security guarantee
to Kiev. The American obligation to each has, implicitly, a nuclear
dimension. Both Taiwan and Ukraine could have had their own nuclear
weapons but both forswore their use in part at the urging of the United
States. Now the United States may have to support Ukraine in the event it
becomes the target of an armed attack.
This pact was not the end of nuclear issues. In 1991, three now
independent states became nuclear powers after independence, Ukraine,
Belaurus, and Kazakhstan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union,
followed by that of its legal system, Russia and the United States tried to
resolve most nuclear issues on an emergency basis, relying primarily on
their own conceptions of security. Their shared conception may be
summarized as follows: the Soviet Union's position as a nuclear state may
be occupied by only one country, and that country is Russia. Hence,
nuclear weapons must be withdrawn from the territories of Ukraine,
Kazakhstan, and Belaurus. The most convenient way to de-nuclearize
these three republics has to be via START I, which provides for a 50
percent reduction of the former Soviet Union's strategic potential. The
Lisbon Protocol of START I states that this 50 percent reduction shall
consist of the weapons located on the territory of the three republics.
Ukraine and Belaurus are adjoining states, each with sharply divergent
views of nuclear security. Belaurus acceded to the Nuclear Non-
proliferation Treaty on July 22, 1993, while Ukraine became the indirect
beneficiary of a treaty between Russia and the United States. Kazakhstan's
position is still ambivalent. In late 1993, it and the United States held

intensive negotiations. They resulted in the signing of a framework

agreement on U.S.participation in, and financing of, the dismantling of
Soviet SS19 ballistic missiles. Kazakhstan evidently has been more
moderate that either Belaurus or Ukraine. The reason seems fairly clear.
For years, it has opposed the Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk. No
other country in the world has had to endure as many nuclear tests as
Kazakhstan: 459 nuclear explosions were carried out on Kazakh soil, 113
of them in the atmosphere. The People's Republic of China directly east of
its border with Kazakhstan, has conducted a large but unknown number of
nuclear tests at Lop Nor in Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan). Even before its
independence from Moscow, Kazakhstan's leadership had repeatedly
raised the issues of the test ban and China's status as a signatory to it.
Grozny, Chechnya's capital city, is a patchwork of burnout buildings and

rubble. There is still no running water, and people line up for hours to fill
buckets from standpipes in the cluttered streets. With the urban destruction
from two years of shelling by Russian troops, the Chechen people still
managed to hold an election on January 27, 1997. There were sixteen
candidates, and all of them supported independence from Russia. Aslan
Maskhadov won handily, leading his closest opponent, Shamil Basayev,
with enough votes to eliminate a runoff election in February. Basayev, a
military hero, led the deadly hostage raid on a Russian hospital in
Budyonnovsk in June, 1995. Maskhadov negotiated and signed the
agreement with Russia in August, 1996. The only important issue during
the campaign was the fact that crime had run out of control in Chechnya.
Neither of the two leading candidates had much to say about just how
crime might be brought under control. Were the bandits and thugs put to
work rebuilding Chechnya's infrastructure they would not have time to run
around waving guns and stealing. Another feature of the country's
economy is oil. However, the pipelines used to carry it were converted
into a tangled mass of steel by a war lasting two years.
Had Russia not signed a peace agreement with Chechnya in August, 1996,
it would not have been able to join the Council of Europe. This is an
international association of forty states which are signatories to the
European Convention on Human Rights.. The Council of Europe's main
arm is the European Court of Human Rights with offices in Strasbourg,
France. The Council of Europe is not connected with the European Union,
but all EU members are signatories to the Convention. In 1993, the
Council had good reason to hold in camera meetings in Chechnya;
Russia's brutal intervention in the internal affairs of that beleaguered
country troubled Mde Leni Fischer, president of the Council of Europe's
Parliamentary Assembly. In December, 1996 she affirmed the Council's
right to hold such hearings. "Human rights violations are never an internal
affair." she said. Russia had applied for membership in the Council of
Europe. Its application was held up pending an investigation of human

rights violations in Chechnya. Mde Fischer added that "the Assembly's

favorable opinion on Russia's request for membership was largely based
on Russia's specific commitment to find a peaceful solution to the
Chechen crisis." The so-called Dagestan Agreement was signed by Aslan
Maskhadov, General Alexandr Lebed, and Vladimir Lukin, advisor to
Lebed and Chairman of the Russian Parliamentary delegation. For very
much the same reason, the application of Belaurus for membership in the
Council of Europe was put on hold. The constitution drafted for the
referendum in Belaurus fell far short of the requirements of the European
Convention on Human Rights. As of January, 1997 the Belaurus
membership application had not been approved by the Council of Europe.
In fact, there is even a possibility that Belaurus may decide to rejoin
Russia.
Chechnya had held free elections monitored by representatives of the

Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They were
fair, according to a consensus opinion of the monitors in late January,
1997. The Council of Europe may have to reconsider its admission of
Russia, if that country now decides to ignore its agreement of August,
1996. In that agreement Russia agreed it would not raise the issue of
sovereignty over Chechnya for five years from the date of the Dagestan
Agreement. In fact, Russia has been using Chechnya's secession as a
pretext for retaining control of the pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea
Basin to Europe. While some of the oil field's equipment may have been
destroyed by Russia's shelling of targets during its brutal shelling of
Chechnya, major oil companies have been in the wings ready to finance
construction of new pipelines bypassing Iran -- Clinton Administration
objections -- and Russia. This route could allow dockside loading of oil
using a Turkish site on the Mediterranean Sea with tanker loading
facilities, e.g. Ceyhan or Iskanderum. A pipeline to either one would
eliminate passage of tankers through the Black Sea and the always
possible oil spill on Turkey's front door. The majors are patient, because
they have to be. The water level in the Caspian Sea has increased by about
two meters in the last twenty years. As a result, most of the oil wells in the
Caspian Sea Basin are flooded by water runoff. There are other
consequences. Questions of mineral rights are arising, and treaties that
have been painstakingly negotiated are being invalidated by changes in sea
level.
Just next door is the Aral Sea lying partly in Uzbekistan and partly in
Kazakhstan. Eons ago, it was the fourth largest body of water in the world.
Today, in 1997, there is virtually nothing left of it. The Aral Sea is a
closed system and gets its water from two rivers, the Syr Darya and the
Amu Daraya. However, there is no outflow of water; a great deal of it, is
lost by evaporation Water from the rivers just mentioned has been diverted
to irrigate land for cotton, a major export crop. After the Soviet Union

replaced the Russian Tsar, traditional agricultural practices were destroyed

by Soviet collectivization, and Soviet planners sought products that could
be exported for hard currency.
They placed cotton high on the list, and the Soviet Union became a net
exporter of cotton in 1937. Change accelerated in the 1950s, as Central
Asia farmers irrigated agriculture, expanding and mechanized the entire
process. The Kara Kum Canal opened in 1956, diverting large amounts of
water from the Amu Darya into the desert of Turkmenistan, and millions
of acres came under irrigation after 1960. After that year, the level of the
Aral Sea began to drop, while diversion of water continued to increase.
Gradually the seabed became exposed and dried out. Winds picked up an
estimated 43 million tons of sediments laced with salts and pesticides,
with devastating health consequences for surrounding regions.
In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union planned and began construction of a
canal to carry water from Siberia to the Aral Sea. It was abandoned by
Mikhail Gorbachev, and some authorities said it was planned to fail. Even
after its cancellation, water meant for the Aral Sea continued to be
diverted for agriculture. Critics of the canal said the diversion continued
because cotton was the only cash crop in the region. Soviet obsession with
central planning and the bottom line caused the impending death of the
Aral Sea. The only way money may be useful in dealing with the
consequences of environmental disaster is from the sale of oil and gas to
Europe. In 1994, there was a meeting of the countries of the region, and
not enough of them had contributed the share they had promised a few
years earlier. The San Diego State University has organized the Central
Asia Research and Redemption Exchange to study what might be done to
restore the Aral Sea area, but hardly anyone is counting on concrete results
from countries just learning to vote in free elections. In the meantime,
some 75,000 people had lost their livelihood; some were fisherman, and
some were farmers. The remaining water is too saline to drink, and there
has been no commercial or other fishing since 1982. Russia's
environmental record in the Caucasus amounts to criminal indifference.
There is no reason to believe it will be any better when oil and gas are the
two commodities are transported by pipeline via Chechnya or via the
Black Sea. Turkey has adopted regulations covering tanker passage
through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The passage through the
Bosporus Channel is too narrow for big oil tankers; there are four sharp
right-angle turns and a 250,000 ton oil tanker simply could not negotiate
passage without closing this channel for at least three days. As a matter of
interest, revenues from the Suez Canal have declined for the last ten years,
and the big tankers choose to take the route around the Cape of Good
Hope rather that the expense, risk, and delay of using the Suez Canal. It's
not deep enough for the 250,000 ton tankers.

On March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez rammed the rocky Bligh Reef in
Alaska's Prince William Sound spilling 240,000 barrels of petroleum in
those pristine waters. The final cleanup costs were in excess of $2 billion.
Other spills were not as large as this one, but French and Spanish residents
have done more than their share of cleanup in well-publicized disasters of
oil tankers. Environmentalists don't have to look too far for evidence of
degradation. In 1922, for example, oil was discovered in Venezuela. By
1929, it was producing 135 million barrels a year, thereby enriching
President Juan Vicente Gomez beyond belief. Then Standard of Jersey
developed a new approach to drilling wells under water. In no time at all,
Lake Maracaibo was a textbook example of what not to do to prevent
environmental degradation. All the lake's fish were dead or dying. A
spectator could stand at the entrance to Lake Maracaibo and see the
evidence of water pollution from the long lines of oil well towers to the
south of this entrance. Environmental pollution is not the only practice for
which the major oil companies could be and have been criticized. All the
majors had marketing problems, so they used price cuts to enter a market.
In 1959, Standard of Jersey made a unilateral price cut without consulting
Middle East countries whose oil was being sold. Naturally, the price cut
reduced national revenue, and the rulers were furious. Out of this rage, the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC) was formed
with only one objective, to defend the price of oil. OPEC on balance, was
a colossal failure, and it has more or less disappeared in terms of fixing the
price at which its member companies could sell their oil. Oil was
discovered in Algeria and Libya, and prices of oil fell sharply. The supply
of oil was far greater than the demand, and the rulers of Iran and Iraq were
more interested in revenue than seeing OPEC flex its muscles.
Furthermore, OPEC was never designed to deal with major oil fields about
to go online.
In October, 1995 representatives of the world's major oil companies

gathered in London to see the latest find from the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan
had oil since the turn of the century, but its output was never developed to
use deep drilling over water. In fact, the oilfields near Baku were set afire
in 1908 to prevent Russia's Tsar from seizing them. Today, oil experts are
openly stating that the oil in the Caspian Sea Basin greatly exceeds the
reserves publicly disclosed. The reserves are conservatively estimated at
125.5 billion barrels. And the one pipeline already in place runs through
Chechnya and north to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
Chevron Corporation reported oil discoveries in Kazakhstan with eventual
output of 700,000 barrels per day. British Petroleum and Amoco found
wells in both the Chirag and Azeri fields, and it estimates at least 4.5
billion barrels in these two fields, and other fields remain untapped but
with very large reserves of oil. According to a member of Clinton's
National Security Council, "The Caspian and Kazakh basins are going to
be the major source of world energy in the twenty-first century. The

reserves are up there with the Persian Gulf." Presi dent Clinton made it
quite clear that no pipeline route would be allowed to run through Iran, nor
would any partner in the consortium sell any of its interest to Iran.
Recently, however, the Clinton Administration has changed its position on
Iran and will probably not oppose the construction of a pipeline through a
part of Iran ending in Turkey. Both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan had
huge natural gas reserves, some say in excess of 18 trillion cubic meters.
To develop these oil and gas resources, the majors and Azeri entrepreneurs
have put a consortium together, the Azerbaijan International Operating
Consortium (AIOC). The Azeri, Chirag, and Deep-Water Gunashli fields
have a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with seven countries: British
Petroleum (17.1267 percent ), Pennzoil (US 4.8175 percent), Exxon (US
8.0006 percent), Unocal (US 10.0489), Amoco (US 17.01 percent), Delta
(Saudi Arabia 1.68 percent), TPAO (Turkey 6.75 percent), Itochu (Japan
3.9205 percent), Statoil (Norway 8.5633 percent), Lukoil (Russia 10
percent), SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic 10 percent),
and Ramco 2.0825 percent).
A different group has been formed to develop the Karabakh Prospect:

AGIP (Italy 5 percent), Pennzoil (US 30 percent), SOCAR (7.5 percent),
Lukhoil (7.5 percent), and LukAGIP (50 percent). The latest prospect to
receive parliamentary approval in Azerbaijan was the Shah Deniz
Prospect. British Petroleum and Statoil (51 percent), TPAO 9 percent),
National Iranian Oil Co. (10 percent), Elf (France 10 percent), Lukoil (10
percent), and SOCAR 10 percent). Some of the same oil companies are
developing fields in the South China Sea. Chevron is the largest such
company.
Both the major oil companies have expressed real concern for the security
and environmental consequences of exporting oil either by pipeline or
tanker via the Black Sea. There are oil ports on the Black Sea but only one
route for tankers to follow in getting oil to the Western markets: through
the Turkish straits to the Mediterranean Sea. The straits consist of three
connected bodies of water. The first is the Bosporus, the narrow channel
from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and the third is the
Dardanelles.
The Bosporus is the crux of the matter. Passage through it is difficult, in

both nautical and legal terms. Supertankers may use the route only by
prior agreement. Ship's captains or pilots have to navigate a 17.5mile
passage between the Black Sea and the heart of Istanbul which involves
four right-angle bends. At Kandili, where there are two tight bends in just
a few hundred yards, the waterway between Europe and Asia is just 2,200
feet wide. Since there are some 4,000 ship movements in the strait every
day, this passage requires prodigious effort. Even with medium-sized

tankers, the waterway has to be closed for almost three hours. For a tanker
of 250,000 tons, a supertanker, the waterway must be closed for much
longer. Thus, in addition to the snail's pace of tankers, they all face the
danger of a collision and an oil spill. The Black Sea is already seriously
polluted, and Turkey seems determined to prevent further degradation of
its waters. The Montreux Convention of 1936 makes the straits
international waterways, and the Constantinople Convention of 1889 also
makes the straits open to all vessels. However, the size of the tankers is
quite limited because of the height limit of 58 meters. Furthermore, no real
supertanker may possibly transit the Bosporus without the real danger of
running aground because of its draft. These daunting issues are not the end
of the problem. Like China, Turkey has a minority problem. The Kurds
live in southeastern Turkey, and any pipeline through disputed territory
might be sabotaged by rebellious Kurds.
China is a major player in this game. It too, has unruly tribal dissidents on
its borders in Xinjiang. China's remarkable growth rates required huge
new energy sources and promised to revolutionize the economics of oil.
China is now a net importer of oil, and it needs huge finances to develop
its Karamay and Tarim basin oil fields. In November, 1993 China became
a net importer of oil, and its trade deficit ballooned to 600,000 barrels a
day by the end of 1996. Kent Calder's article in the March/April 1996
Foreign Affairs, entitled Asia's Empty Tank offers more detail, but the
need for oil in huge amounts exists. Unless China is willing to rely on
synthetic gas as Adolph Hitler did during World War II, it may have to
resort to other means to ensure a reliable supply of oil. The first move in
this great game was an agreement in August 1997 between China and
Kazakhstan to build a pipeline some 1,300 miles to a destination in
China's Xinkiang Province or even further east.
In late April, 1997, Chinese officials signed agreements with General

Motors calling on that company to manufacture about 100,000 cars per
year. It's unfortunate that a country already so burdened with problems
arising out of pollution decided to create more; it had a golden opportunity
to avoid the need to build highways, filling stations, and refineries to
service a growing flood of cars. China could have opted for French,
German, or Japanese high-speed trains to various cities, instead of
highways and the urban sprawl associated with the automobile.
Beijing is not concerned with environmental degradation from the

automobile; the arrival in China of General Motors and other American
companies merely feeds China's dollar reserves. The vindication by force
of its interest in Taiwan would unquestionably bring military
confrontation with the United States. However, the Taiwan Relations Act
of 1979 declares that the United States expects the future of Taiwan to be
settled peacefully and that any effort to decide it by force would be of

"grave concern" to the United States. For the time being, China seems
willing to rule Taiwan from Beijing and occasionally flex its muscles as it
did when the Taiwanese president accepted an invitation to visit the
United States and his old college in 1996. President Clinton did not
hesitate to send two carrier forces to the Straits of Taiwan as China
conducted "live fire" exercises during the elections on Taiwan. Clinton has
seemed more cautious recently. He saw the Dalai Lama in Washington,
but along with other officials not known for their anticline policies.
However, in no case should the United States appear indifferent to the
safety or the independence of Taiwan. The proper American goal is the
continual deferral of any change in Beijing's view of Taiwan as a wayward
province it will eventually reclaim.
In the meantime, Azerbaijan has problems with its neighbors. In Volume

143, No. 59 of the Congressional Record for May 8, 1997, Senator Robert
Byrd described one of them. Entitled American Interests in the Caspian
Sea Region, Senator Byrd stated in part:
Mr... Byrd. Mr... President, American involvement and interests

in the Caspian Sea Region, have been increasing recently. While
this region is new on the political map of American policy
makers, in that the newly sovereign nations there were formerly
Republics under the rule of the former Soviet Union, they
represent very substantial new opportunities for the United
States. From the point of view of energy reserves, the
tremendous hydrocarbon resources which are available for
development in the region are of world-class potential. The
extent of the resources which apparently exist, particularly in
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan could well serve as
an long term alternative to Western dependence on vulnerable
supplies of Persian Gulf oil...
Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act enacted in 1992 reduces the
assistance the United States might offer to Azerbaijan It provides that U.S.
assistance "may not be provided to the government of Azerbaijan until the
President determines and so reports to Congress, that the government of
Azerbaijan is taking demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other
offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh." Thus,
the government of the United States may not provide financial support
through the Export Import Bank or risk insurance via the Overseas Private
Insurance Corporation (OPIC). Furthermore, Armenia can freely accept
arms from Russia to use in its low level dispute with Azerbaijan.
According to a letter to Senator Byrd, the Azerbaijan ambassador to
Washington noted in part: "I would remind you about the one billion of an
illegal arms shipment from unofficial sources in Russia [delivered] to
Armenia," creating a strategic imbalance for my country. Signed by Hafiz
M. Pashayev, Ambassador, on May 8, 1997.

Russia engages in these deceptions to ensure the continuance of the low

level dispute with Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow has no interest in helping
Western countries to ship oil out of the Caspian Sea basin via pipelines
controlled by major Western oil companies. Control of the pipeline routes
is a Moscow objective. Some authorities suggest this opposition springs
from attempts by the United States to expand NATO.
Boris Yeltsin said with respect to the expansion of NATO: "Just a the
document says, decisions are to be made only be consensus. If Russia
opposes any decision, it will not be adopted." Clinton Administration
officials deny that Russia has any such veto. In that case, Russia will drag
its heels on ratification of Start II, the treaty that reduces the number of
Soviet nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. Poland and the Czech
Republic argue that Russia will be allowed to join NATO before them,
while Clinton officials say that NATO expansion was only intended to
stabilize Central Europe by admitting Poland, the Czech Republic, and
Hungary. The Clinton proposed NATO expansion was and continues to be
a major mistake. Instead of being admitted to NATO, Poland, the Czech
Republic, and Hungary should be satisfied with their membership in the
NATO Partnership for Peace.
The Partnership for Peace began in 1994. As an initiative of the United

States, the PFP existed to establish strong links between NATO and its
new democratic partners in the former Soviet bloc. Some twenty-six
countries have joined. It is obvious from a list of these countries that they
would not be entitled to a security guarantee under Article 5 of the North
Atlantic Treaty of April 4, 1949 with the exception of those countries
already members of NATO. Russia is a member of the PFP and NATO.
They include Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belaurus, Bulgaria,
the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan,
Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Sweden, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan Despite the
right of any member to consult with NATO, its Secretary General has not
yet dealt properly or at all with a serious dispute on its agenda, the civil
war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. NATO
was established in 1949 to serve as a defensive shield against Russia in
Western Europe, and this treaty worked well to absolutely deter the first or
any use of nuclear weapons. Russia has now refused to forswear a first use
of nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice issued an Advisory
Opinion on July 8, 1996 concerning the legality of the threat or use of
nuclear weapons. The justices of the ICJ were unanimous in concluding
"that any use of nuclear weapons contrary to Article 2 (4) of the United
Nations Charter, and not vindicated by Article 51 [would be] unlawful."
See 91 American Journal of International Law 64 (1997). In only one
dispute, Armenia seems to have prevailed in 1992, when Congress enacted
the Freedom Support Act.

On behalf of the Secretary of State, the report required by Congress was

sent to Senator Byrd by letter of April 15, 1997. It stated in part that "This
report to Congress addresses the request of the FY statement of managers
accompanying the FY Foreign Operations bill as incorporated in P.L
104208. The Caspian Basin region is made up of the five littoral states of
the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan.
With the exception of Iran, these littoral states are all mem beers of the
PFP. With potential reserves of as much as 200 billion barrels of oil, the
Caspian region could become the most important new player in world oil
markets over the next decade..."
A month earlier than the letter from Azerbaijan's ambassador, the State
Department sent a letter to Senator Byrd dated April 15, 1997. In part, it
read:
Dear Senator Byrd: On behalf of the Secretary of State, I am

transmitting to you a report as requested by the Joint Exploratory
Statement of the Committee of Conference accompanying the
Foreign Operations Export Financing and Related Programs
Appropriations Act, 1997, as enacted in P.L. 104208, that
contains a plan for action for the United States Government to
assist and accelerate the earliest possible development and
shipment of oil from the Caspian Sea region to the United States
and other Western markets...
Resolution of regional conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya is

also critical for successful and comprehensive energy development in the
region. It is utterly absurd to allow one party to a dispute -- Russia in the
civil war between Armenia and Azerbaijan -- to prolong that dispute by
shipping arms unofficially to Armenia. Yet, that is exactly what Russia
did. It seems obvious that Russia is trying to sabotage Start II as retaliation
for expansion of NATO. Instead, Clinton should abandon the expansion
proposal and substitute the Partnership for Peace in the interests of
collective security. NATO was originally intended to deter nuclear war in
Europe. The Partnership for Peace now includes every country in Europe -
- Russia is a member. The Partnership fills the void in Central Europe,
resolves disputes and provides troops for Nattered peacekeeping.
American foreign policy should concern itself with reducing the number
of nuclear weapons controlled by Russia. At least one of its former
republics; Ukraine has already sold nuclear missiles to Libya and Russia
has sold some to Iran. By midday, 1997 it was too late for Clinton to
abandon the idea of enlarging NATO. However, he may want to consider
positioning existing NATO forces closer to its southern flank. Defense
planners argue that the gravest risks of future military conflict spring from
myriad centers of instability along this flank. Turkey, for example,
threatens Cyprus. Kurd dissidents within Turkey and Iraq are a threat to
Turkey itself, and brush-fire disputes in Abkhasia, Armenia, and North
Ossetia could turn into larger fires. The next war in this unstable area

might grow out of explosive factors, such as economic difficulties, water

shortages, religious fanaticism, or immigration. And the Mediterranean
region supports the world's busiest shipping lanes; to keep oil flowing and
commercial goods moving among the Western economies. Furthermore, at
least one of the countries on NATO's southern flank still has nuclear
weapons. Too many NATO forces are committed to Germany, an area
where the Russian threat has all but vanished. Some of the 84,000
American forces in Germany as part of NATO might be better positioned
in Azerbaijan.
The oil in Azerbaijan has now become a huge source of petroleum which
Russia has been trying to control. No official estimates of oil reserves
have been released, but the major oil companies -- mostly American -- are
thought to be looking at 200 billion barrels in the Caspian Sea Basin.
Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, once a seasoned Communist trained
in the old Soviet Union, has now seen the wisdom of seeking hard
commitments from Washington and the oil majors. During the 199294
war, Armenian troops seized some 20 percent of Azerbaijan, known as
Nagorno-Karabakh and still occupy this region. An unnamed diplomat in
Baku noted that "The reception Aliyev got in Washington would have
been totally unthinkable even two years ago. The [high level meeting:
President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen] certainly had
an impact on the Armenians. They see Azerbaijan making very important
gains in the West, and also enjoying a new closeness with Israel and
therefore with the Jewish lobby in Washington. Either the Armenians
make peace now or wait until Azerbaijan builds up its lobby and uses its
oil money to build a powerful army, possibly one trained by the American
military. In a few years this army is going to be strong enough to crush
Armenia militarily, so it's in everyone's interest to negotiate a settlement
[of the Nagorno-Karabakh] now." An American pipeline financed by the
major oil companies seems even more certain to run through Turkey to
Ceyhan, a port on the Mediterranean Sea and bypassing the Black Sea.
Passage through the Bosporus is fraught with navigation hazards, and
tankers still have the Dardanelles to navigate. If the route through Turkey
is chosen, the choice will have been approved by the United States; the
Clinton Administration will have agreed to help the Kurds of south central
Turkey. President Clinton will have to redeem American promises to the
Kurds going back to 1991 and even earlier.
Russia's President Boris Yeltsin has been frustrated by his own diehard
financial people. And Western oil companies have become equally
frustrated by roadblocks raised by the new Russian capitalists; they want
the oil to remain in the ground so they can keep more of the oil profits for
themselves. Western oil companies have begun to cut their Moscow staffs
and redirect their attention to the Caspian Sea Basin, including
Kazakhstan. In 1987, Russian oil production was about 12 million barrels

a day, but it has now dropped to 6 million barrels per day in 1997. Victor
Orlov, Russia's Minister for Natural Resources recently said that "without
new financial support, Russia's oil production could drop to 3.6 million
barrels a day. However, the sheer vastness of Russia and its harsh climate,
its limited network of pipelines and the burden of outdated Soviet era
technology have made oil development a herculean task. Pennwell's
pipeline map for 1994 shows few pipelines to the Northern reaches of
Russia. In Siberia, for example, the cost of drilling for and recovering
slow-flowing oil is very high. Even so, Orlov's deputy argues that foreign
companies are making a mistake in insisting that all of their new
investments take the form of production-sharing agreements because of
the difficulties and delays in arranging them. The major oil companies
would rather wait. Amoco, for example, has put its Priobskoye project in
central Siberia -- 4.5 billion barrels in reserves -- on hold. There were too
many investors trying to divvy up the spoils and demanding more from
Amoco. This bureaucratic mess has led the Western majors to move on the
Caspian Sea.
Kazakhstan is a nuclear power by virtue of the fact that certain Soviet-

made nuclear missiles are located in that country and have been ever since
the years before the Soviet collapse in 1991. The United States could help
terminate this status by persuading Kazakhstan to accede to the Nuclear
Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The United States and Russia have
promised Kazakhstan they would guarantee the territorial integrity and
security of Kazakhstan following the destruction of Soviet ballistic
missiles and the elimination of nuclear-armed aircraft on Kazakh territory.
To make matters more complicated than ever, Kazakhstan remains
dependent on Russian oil, and Russia has been actively undermining
Kazakh efforts to develop and export its own petroleum resources.
In the waning days of 1997, Iran struck it rich. President Mohammed

Khatami opened the first gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Iran. Until
four years ago, Turkmenistan's natural gas was exported to Europe
through pipelines controlled by Russia. In 1993, however, Russia shut off
its pipelines asserting of its Soviet-era domination of the Caspian Sea
Basin. That act by Russia left Turkmenistan starved for cash. Two days

earlier, President Khatami and the Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Wilmaz,
endorsed plans by Royal Dutch Shell to study the feasibility of a 940mile,
$1.6 billion natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, crossing Iran and
ending in Turkey. France's Total SA has already signed a $2 billion deal to
develop Iran's huge South Pars gas field. These in-your-face deals by
Total SA and Royal Dutch Shell have clearly weakened sanctions. Expect
more denials from Washington that a particular deal violates the Iran-
Libyan Sanctions Act. At the end of the millennium, one of the real
dangers to be found in Iran is its persistent attempt to buy or steal nuclear
technology and missiles to launch a Russian-made nuclear weapon,
probably at Israel. Despite the partial embargo, Iran has enough loose
money to either buy the components or use foreign experts to assemble
one or more nuclear weapons. Furthermore, Iran sponsors terrorism, and
the mere possession of one of these weapons of mass destruction would
play out as nuclear blackmail. Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin of
Russia and Vice-President Al Gore of the United States both agree that
Iran was making a vigorous effort to acquire the critical components of
nuclear weapons and missiles to launch them. Ruses have denied their
country is selling the technology to Iran, but nonproliferation experts said
the larger problem was with the vast, unprotected military-industry
complex. In other words, the Russians don't have anything even close to
an accurate inventory of weapons grade plutonium or uranium. These
radioactive materials could once have been found in Russian research
facilities, fabrication plants, and storage facilities, but many so-called
"suitcase-size nukes" have simply disappeared. Currently in 1997, Russia
was helping Iran build a nuclear power plant near Bushehr in Iran.
Bushehr is located on the Persian Gulf, not far from Iran's border with
Iraq. Elections in Iran may ease the way toward establishing better
relations with the United States. Its unilateral sanctions have not been
successful, and its friends in Europe resent accepting this aspect of
American policy in the Middle East. An independent and economically
accessible Central Asia is in the best interests of the United States, and
major American oil companies may have to deal with Iran as more stable
for any alternative pipeline route. The French oil company, Total, has
signed a $2 billion contract with Iran, and President has foolishly said he
will apply the sanctions of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to this contract. It
is rather difficult to determine just what the Clinton Administration might
do without jeopardizing relations with France. That country will simply
not accept any claim that Washington may export its policy by interfering
with one of France's domestic oil companies in dealing with Iran.

Iran
On May 25, 1997 Iranians went to the polls in record numbers. When the
votes for president were counted, Mohammed Khatemi had won with
some 60 percent of all votes cast. Khatemi is thought to be a moderate
Muslim, and he is unlikely to have enough power to change the system.
Indeed, he won't even try. Iranian authorities seemed to believe that the
vote was not to change the system, but only to establish an environment
for new ideas and new people, and a more responsive government.
Ultimate authority will continue with Iran's religious leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. The outgoing president Hashemi Rafsanjani must step down
because he may only serve two terms. However, he will retain great
influence as head of a newly-expanded Expediency Council. The Council
of Guardians will continue its role screening candidates for Parliament and
the presidency. For all his revolutionary credentials, Khatemi, a Shiite
Muslim, is considered a relative liberal whose election could presage a
gradual warming of relations with the West. If so, the incidents like that in
Berlin might end.
On April 10, 1997 Bonn, the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany
sent a telefax to its consulates around the world. In part it stated:
The German Government is greatly dismayed by the Berlin

Court's determination regarding the participation of Iranian
government bodies in the crime committed in the Mykonos trial.
These determinations, which were made by an independent
German court, must be taken into serious consideration in
Germany's assessment of its relations with Iran. The
participation of Iranian government bodies in this crime, as
established in the opinion of the court, represents a flagrant
violation of international law. Such conduct in the sphere of
international relations is unacceptable. The German Government
therefore prevails upon the Iranian Government to abide strictly
by the rules of international law.

Two weeks after the so-called Mykonos Affair, in which four Kurds were
shot and killed in Berlin's Mykonos Cafe, ended with exchanges at all
levels. The assassins were Iranians acting with the approval of the highest
level officials in Teheran. The rapid disposition of this affair suggests that
the United States might profitably discuss the end of sanctions against Iran
that have accomplished no valid American policy initiative and may do its
legitimate policy objectives a great deal of damage. Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Brent Scowcroft, and Richard Murphy have written an article in Foreign
Affairs for May/ June, 1997, in which all three make the same point. The
dual containment of Iran and Iraq in the Middle East has simply not
worked. Six years after the end of the Persian Gulf War, Saddam Hussein
is still in power, and the international consensus on continuing the
containment of Iraq has frayed noticeably. The strident campaign of the
United States to isolate Iran has driven Iran and Russia together, and the
United States and its Group of Seven allies apart. And the presence of
American military units for the express purpose of helping the Gulf
Cooperation (GCC) from external threats has been exploited by hostile
elements to take advantage of internal social, economic and political
problems, not the least of which is the growth of fundamentalist Islam. In
1996, the Congress enacted and President Clinton signed the Iran and
Libya Sanctions Act of 1996. The United States imposed sanctions
unilaterally and no European country supports them. The Clinton
Administration should sit down with its allies in the Middle East, Europe,
Japan and define what each other's interests really are. Only such high-
level consultation may produce policies toward Iran that stand a good
chance of being sustainable. Washington should do nothing to preclude
Central Asia's eventual access to pipeline routes carrying oil to the West.
So far, Washington has said the Iran Libya Sanctions Act does not apply
to a natural gas pipeline that passes through part of Iran with natural gas
going from Turkmenistan to Turkey.
Over the last seventeen years, the United States has sought to contain
Iran's aggressive behavior, including its military buildup, development of
weapons of mass destruction and support for international terrorism. This
policy had been implemented by a series of measures, including Executive
Order No. 12959, 60 Fed. Reg. 24757 (1995) which imposed a virtually
absolute embargo on trade with Iran. After issuing this Executive Order,
the Clinton Administration tried to convince our Western allies to take
similar action. Its efforts in this regard were a complete failure. Indeed,
despite vigorous U.S. protests, a French oil company, Total, reached an
agreement to develop Iranian oil fields off the coast of Sirri Island. The
French company displaced a major American oil company, Conoco. Not
to be politically outdone, a Republican controlled Congress enacted the
Libya and Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 and signed by Clinton on August 5,
1996. He used the occasion to deliver an address entitled "American
Security in a Changing World." The act requires the President to impose

two or more of six listed sanctions if he determines that a "U.S. person"

with actual knowledge has made an investment of $40 million or more that
"directly and significantly contributed to the enhancement" of Iran's ability
to develop its petroleum resources. The Libya and Iran Sanctions Act and
the Helms-Burton Act both represent Congressional attempts to interfere
with the constitutional power of the president to make and execute foreign
policy. Our major trading partners irritated by Republican posturing have
initiated complaints against the United States, utilizing the dispute
mechanism of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free
Trade Association. This dispute has so far obscured the sound policy of
reestablishing relations with Iran since America's relations with Iran ended
in 1979. Students of history may want to see how the United States
managed to lose control of its own foreign policy with the help of a
Democratic president. Were the president to conclude that establishing
relations with Iran -- this country elected a new president in May, 1997 --
he would need to have the support of all the nations of the Gulf
Coordinating Council. Present U.S. policies have not been effective:
The policy of unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran has been

ineffectual, and the attempt to coerce others into following
America's lead has been a mistake. Extraterritorial bullying has
generated needless friction between the United States and its
chief allies and threatened the international free trade order that
America has promoted for so many decades. To repair the
damage and avoid further self-inflicted wounds, the United
States should sit down with the Europeans, the Japanese, and
its Gulf allies and hash out what each other's interests are, and
how policy disagreements should be handled. Only high-level
consultation can yield multilateral policies toward Iran that stand
a good chance of achieving their goals and being sustainable
over the long term.
Iran, once known as Persia, is an Islamic Republic ruled by mullahs with

no secular training. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, for example, was born
in 1934 and left home in 1948 to study theology in Qom. He followed
Ayatollah Khomeini into politics in 1963, joining the pantheon of clerics
opposed to Muhammad Reza Shah. Americans have a special memory of
Khomeini. He inspired the revolution that left the Embassy of the United
States in Teheran occupied by fanatic Shia students and fifty-two
Americans as hostages, all embassy personnel, who were not released until
January 20, 1981, moments after Reagan was sworn in as the new
president. President Jimmy Carter was loathed by the clerics of Iran. He
had given shelter to the dying Shah, and America, as well as some
European powers, were the great Satans of the Western world. Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini may have defined the shape of the Islamic revolution
in Iran, but he had the help of the entire population; opposition to the
revolution had been crushed soon after the occupation of the American
embassy. Khomenini died in 1989, and he was replaced by Ali Khamenei,
another of the clerics of Qom who acted with Khomenini and joined in his

defiance of the Shah. Rafsanjani was a pragmatist, but state-sponsored

pragmatism was not enough. Iran desperately needed cash to finance its
revolution, and America was not going to help Iran get it.
The second oil shock occurred in 1980 -- the first had occurred in 1974 --
and the price of oil rocketed up to about $40 a barrel. American drivers
began looking for more fuel-efficient cars, and Europeans merely paid the
new price and hoped for relief. When fanatic students occupied the
Teheran embassy, the United States froze Iran's assets and the process of
freeing these assets from liens seemed a never-ending process. In 1993,
Rafsanjani mobilized the technocrats and Iranians living abroad who had
the professional education essential to operate a government. They were
particularly important as Iranians to operate the oil industry from the
wellhead to the port from which oil was exported, Abadan. The factors
that led to the destruction of Abadan were all present at the outbreak of
war between Iran and Iraq and in fact were responsible for this war.
Saddam Hussein had conspired and murdered his way to the top of Iraq's
government. Hussein saw a neighboring country where the population was
100 percent Shia, while Iraq was only 60 percent. However, Khomenini
was exporting revolution, and Hussein did not like the possibility of
religious fallout in Iraq. Hussein also saw that Iran had not one, but two
revolutions, the Shia uprising against the Shah and the raging dispute
between the clerics and the secular population..Husssein saw the
possibility of a holy war financed by Iranian oil. His territorial ambitions
plus the religious fanaticism on both sides collided, and a war that ended
in 1988 began. The United States sided with Iraq and domestic companies
got Department of Commerce permits to export dual-use hardware, i.e.,
weapons to Iraq. These weapons were later used against American troops
in the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and 1991.
Ever since Great Britain became Iran's major employer, local politicians
were obliged to show their hatred of the British. Division of payments for
oil were never fair to the Iranians. Between 1945 and 1950, for example,
Anglo Iranian Oil Company registered a £250 million profit, compared to
Iran's £90 million in oil royalties. A substantial part of the company's
dividends went to its British owner, the British government. So it wasn't
difficult to mobilize the Iranian masses in a spasm of hatred of the British
for making a profit on Iranian oil. The masses had other festering
grievances, mostly religious, that the clerics could exploit.. In 1951,
Mohammad Mossadegh was chairman of the Majlis oil committee.
For this reason, Iran nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951,
a move that included the world's largest refinery at Abadan on the Persian
Gulf. By 1954, the political situation had changed. The members of the
new consortium retained the name of the company, but gave it a foreign
cast of members to conceal the fact that the British would still own 40

percent of the consortium. The National Iranian Oil Company has been the
company that was formed in 1951 to operate the assets acquired by Iran
when it nationalized the oil company. A wily member of the Iranian
parliament, or Majlis, Mohammed Mossadegh was the catalyst of
nationalization, and he nearly precipitated violence. Truman and then
Eisenhower saw Mossadegh as someone strong enough to keep the
Communists at bay, but the British saw this as an inflated fear of
Communism. Mossadegh was a Moslem cleric and not even close to
Soviet-style Communism. Pursuing nationalization was Mossadegh's
answer to foreign ownership of Iranian oil.
Some respected oil geologists suggest that world oil as of 1996 will be
completely depleted by 2040, forty-four years into the future. This gloomy
prediction probably did not include oil from the Caucasus with
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the oil fields of the Caspian Sea Basin. Iran
cannot appear in any historical perspective without reference to this
contention. Geologists have been wrong before, and one need only
mention Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, North Sea oil and Libyan oil discovered
after influential writers had said the world was headed for an oil shortage.
The world's major oil companies were always looking for countries with
both oil and political and/or economic stability. In the aftermath of World
War I, Great Britain, the United States and the Netherlands produced the
world's largest oil companies, and their postwar concessions were a form
of colonialism. Gradually, however, Iranian nationalism and the religious
faithful of Muslim united to reduce the control of their oil by foreign oil
companies. A brief history of Iran puts today's Iran in relation to its past.
In the mid11th century, Iran was conquered by the Seljuk Turks under
Togrul Beg. In the four centuries that followed Iran was dominated
successively by the Seljuks, the Mongols under Genghis Khan and later by
Timurlane and his Mongol hordes, and finally by Turkomans. Their rule
was ended by Ismail I, who claimed descent from Ali, the fourth caliph.
He was regarded as a saint by the Iranians and proclaimed himself shah,
marking the founding of the Safavid dynasty (15021763) and the
establishment of the Shiite doctrine as the official Iranian religion. The
rule of Ismail lasted until the Ottoman Turks took over and captured
Baghdad in 1623. A hundred years later, Iran had declined in power, and it
was finally conquered by an Afghan army led by Mir Mahmud. In 1724,
Russia and Turkey, taking advantage of the confusion within Iran, worked
out an agreement dividing that part of the country occupied by Russian
and Turkish troops. In what was left over, a warrior king, Nadir Shah,
formed an army that drove the Afghans out by 1729, and two years later
he invaded India capturing Delhi in 1739. In a very few years, Nadir Shah
succeeded in driving all foreign troops out of Iran, including the Turkish
troops.

The 19th and 20th centuries were marked by the struggle between Great
Britain and Russia to expand their respective spheres of influence within
Iran. During the Cold War, the United States and Great Britain tried to
keep the Iranian Tudeh Party from acquiring political power. They
succeeded in 1953. The Tudeh Party was of Communist persuasion, and it
had made some progress in organizing workers at the Abadan refinery.
Stability in Iran was critical to both Great Britain and the United States,
and the Soviet Union sent messages to the West saying that oil was critical
to them. However, the swelling volume of oil was critical to the postwar
recovery of a devastated Europe with economic assistance via the
Marshall Plan. The major oil companies all had contracts with Saudi
Arabia and proceeded to build Tapline to get this oil to Europe by the
shortest possible route. This turned out to be through Saudi Arabia itself to
Jordan and on to Sidon in Lebanon for transfer to tankers. Ibn Saud, then
king of Saudi Arabia, advised the United States it might have to cancel
Aramco's concession because of pressure from other Arab states
originating in anti-Jewish sentiments surfacing in 1948 with the formation
of the State of Israel. Moreover, the United States had effectively
guaranteed the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia as well as its
independence. The huge revenues from sale of oil to the West was the sole
source of Ibn Saud's wealth, so he could cancel the Aramco concession
only at the risk of losing all that money. In Iran the problem was only
marginally different. Having nationalized oil, Iran demanded a higher
percentage of the profits as a condition of letting Great Britain get back its
concession rights. America's Central Intelligence Agency supported by
Britain's MI6 managed to unseat Mossadegh and the return of the Shah
from exile. Shah Reza Pahlevi lasted until 1979, when Ayatollah
Khomenini replaced the Shah and converted Iran into the Republic of Iran,
an Islamic republic.
Britain and France were threatened with expropriation of the Suez Canal
in 1956. Only two years earlier, France had suffered a humiliating setback
in Vietnam. French forces had to surrender at Dien Bien Phu with a final
settlement worked out in Geneva. By 1956, two-thirds of all the traffic
through the Suez Canal carried oil. In the same year, the United States had
declined to support Nasser's grand project for Egypt, the Aswan Dam.
Nasser was quick to get his revenge and turned to the Soviet Union for
weapons. Leaders in both London and Paris saw the danger of losing oil
from the Middle East. Oil was not really discovered in Libya and Algeria
until the mid1960s, and Syria could shut off Tapline oil before it got to
waiting tankers in Sidon. London's international finances were precarious,
even though it had given India its independence in 1947. In the immediate
postwar period Britain, as the direct result of its wartime expenses, had
gone from being the world's largest debtor to being the world's largest
debtor.Its gold and dollar reserves were sufficient to cover three months of
imports in 1956, and its revenue from Middle East oil contributed to its

foreign earnings. The loss of income from oil would literally bankrupt
Great Britain, so Prime Minister Anthony Eden and France's Guy Mollet
were quick to agree on a plan that really required President Dwight
Eisenhower's support in 1956, an election year for him. Israel saw the
problem in ways not readily grasped by Washington. Nasser was
preparing for war against Israel. And Great Britain was in precarious
financial health as stated by its Permanent Undersecretary of the Foreign
Office:
I am convinced that he [Eisenhower] is wrong....If we sit back

while Nasser consolidates his position and gradually acquires
control of the oil-bearing countries, he can, and according to our
information, resolved to wreck us. If Middle East oil is denied to
us for a year or two our gold reserves will disappear. If our gold
reserves disappear, the sterling area disintegrates. If the sterling
area disintegrates, and we have no reserves, we shall not be
able to maintain a [NATO] force in Germany, or indeed,
anywhere else. I doubt whether we shall be able to pay for the
bare minimum necessary for our defense. And a country that
cannot provide for its own defense is finished.
The Suez crisis arose at the same time the Soviet Union invaded Hungary,
and Khruschev told the United States that sending American troops to the
Middle East or in any way interfering with Nasser would invite a Soviet
reprisal. Khruschev should not be criticized for this form of irony. It was
also in 1956 that he enlivened a four-hour session of the Russian Duma
with the details of Stalin's evil. Apparently, the CIA had somehow gotten
a copy of this speech, and the media in the United States played this story
straight. Nikita Khruschev was his own man, not a successor handpicked
by Stalin. But no matter who ruled the Soviet Union from the Kremlin,
Middle East oil kept growing. In his book, The Prize, Daniel Yurgin noted
that "Out of every ten barrels added to free world reserves between 1948
and 1972, more than seven were found in the Middle East." Enrico Mattei
saw all this and decided he would negotiate with Iran. The company
formed to do this was Azienda Generali Italiana Petroli (AGIP). It is still
active in 1997 after its real start in 1953. Earnings from natural gas within
Italy financed AGIP's activities outside of this country.
Mattei's objective was to join what he called the Sette Sorrelle, the Seven
Sisters. This cartel included Jersey Standard, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco,
Gulf Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum. Actually, Comite
General du Petrole (CFP) was the eighth sister from France. Mattei was
not admitted to this club, so he simply bided time while he negotiated with
Iran's Shah in 1957, after the Suez crisis. Under the terms of the deal
finally worked out, the National Iranian Oil Company got 75 percent of
the profits to AGIP's 25 percent. This was approved by Iran, but the Seven
Sisters were appalled; the arrangement ended the treasured 5050 deal.
Unfortunately for Mattei, oil in commercial quantities was never found

beneath the land ceded to the partnership. Iran was, however, still firmly
within the American sphere of influence. American global strategy
involved the use of its troops in various Middle East nations. They were
there to train Iranian officers in military maneuvers using American arms
sold to the Shah's government. According to a pattern in all these
countries, Iran, the host country, granted American military advisers, their
support staffs, and families immunity from the national laws of Iran using
their terms of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Locally, this was
seen as just evidence of Pahlevi capitulation to the United States. In
October, 1964, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenini delivered a fiery
denunciation of the SOFA including his belief that the SOFA violated the
Koran. In the violence that followed, the Shah decided to exile this
spokesmen of the Shia. He was sent first to Turkey and finally to Paris, a
city from which he would return to Iran in 1979.
During the years from 1964 to 1979, Americans in Iran did a great deal to
earn the contempt of the Iranians. In her book, The Iranians, Sandra
Mackey details much of the insensitivity to local culture that so offended
the ascetic Shia religion and the poor before whom Americans flaunted
their wealth and foreign culture. Iran has been on a relentless arms-buying
spree for at least five years -- Khomenini died in 1989. It has tried to
acquire weapons of mass destruction, and it recently acquired its third
Kiloclass submarine from the former Soviet Union. Iran has publicly
opposed the Arab-Israeli peace treaties and has continued its financial and
logistical support of terrorism. The Clinton Administration has imposed
sanctions on Iran because of its state-supported terrorism. This is only one
reason that the 9, The Persian Empire of Muhammad Reza Shah describes
it all. This book was published in 1996 by the Penguin Group, an imprint
of Dutton. Another book published by Simon & Schuster in 1996 was
entitled God Has Ninety-Nine Names and written by Judith Miller
describes Iran during the period from 1979 to the present She makes the
point that within less than 24 months after 1979, Iran and Iraq were at war
with each other. According to Khomenini, this war was religious and had
to be won by Iran. Even so, the war itself, which was finally ended in
1988, "was said to have cost between $60 and $70 billion and left Iran
deeply in debt. The human cost was immeasurable: More than 400,000
were said to have been killed and twice that number wounded, many of
them in human-wave attacks in 1983 and 1984 that had appalled and
terrified the West. Miller had revisited Iran several times, and the book
had her views spread out over five years. After her visit in 1995, she wrote
as follows:
The Islamic revolution was at an impasse not unlike that of the

shah almost twenty years ago. Riots and other evidence of mass
discontent could no longer be dismissed as aberrations. Liberals
and hard-line intellectuals were at war with their government, if
not with the system itself. The middle class was disenchanted,

and even many of the poor despised the mullahs and their
unfulfilled promises... Not since the Shah's Peacock Throne had
the legitimacy of Iran's government been in such doubt.
Rafsanjani may not have seen himself as Iran's Gorbachev, but
the "Islamic glasnost" in Iran reminded me most of my visit to the
Soviet Union just before the collapse of communism...
The Clinton Administration has opposed any pipeline route through Iran.
In her book, Judith Miller offers a pessimistic view of the Middle East.
"The World Bank," she wrote, "forecasts that the population of the Middle
East will reach 448 million by the year 2000 and 1.17 billion by 2100. Yet
Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Lebanon boycotted the UN Conference on
Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, and the Arab Middle East
lags behind most developing nations, and far behind East Asia in every
World Bank component of productivity growth -- spending on education,
worker training, and the number of women in the work force. Arms
purchases, by contrast, remain staggeringly high. The Middle East now
buys almost 50 percent of all arms sold to the Third World."
Since 1991, Iraq has been compelled to allow inspections of all sites
requested by the United Nations Inspection Team, a group that has had
American members from the very beginning. During the Persian Gulf
War, Iraq had shown its ingenuity in manufacturing weapons forbidden by
treaty. These included chemical weapons, containing toxic bacteriological
material as well as nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch all three.
What has been taking place seven years after the fighting stopped has all
the trappings of an Arab revolt. While the United States assured its Arab
allies that the isolation of Iraq would change Baghdad's behavior, the only
tangible effect of the campaign has been the widespread suffering of the
Iraqi people from the sanctions imposed by Security Council Resolution
686. Arab critics also advance the view that the United States has not
honored its commitment to act in an evenhanded manner in promoting a
broader Arab-Israeli settlement. Israel has agreed to trade land for peace as
part of the settlement process. However, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu must first assure himself and his fragile coalition in the
Knesset that Israel's security has not been compromised. Assurances along
these lines have been moving slowly with terrorist bombs from Hamas in

the foreground and grandiose expectations in the PLO background. In

1991, Yasser Arafat was quick to announce PLO support for Saddam
Hussein. The scene is no different today. Women demonstrating in
Baghdad have invited Hussein to drop his bombs and/or missiles on Tel
Aviv.
The Republic of Iraq was once part of the Ottoman Empire. Following the
defeat of the Ottomans at the end of World War I, the United Kingdom put
Iraq under a British mandate installing Amir Faisal as king in 1921. At
that time, the British knew there was oil present but no one knew just how
much oil there really was in Iraq. Effectively, Iraq was created out of land
that had been conquered by the Ottomans with no defined boundaries. For
administrative purposes, Ottoman Iraq was divided into three central
eyalets of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. These three provinces only roughly
reflected the geographic, linguistic, and religious divisions of Ottoman
Iraq. Kurds and non-Arabs lived in the northwest. Iraq was largely
Muslim; the Shiite Arabs lived in the south, while the north was
predominantly Sunni. The monarchy ruled Iraq until 1958, when there was
a series of coups and countercoups. Finally, by virtue of aligning himself
with the military, Saddam Hussein succeeded to the position of president.
In the 1970s, power began to solidify behind the Baath Socialist Party
headed by Hussein, partly from the use of force and partly from the sale of
oil.
Were it not for oil and water, Iraq would be a small nation of the Middle
East. On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and was driven out by
armed forces marshaled by President George Bush. Even before this
violation of international law by Saddam Hussein, Iraq had been at war
with Iran from about 1980 to 1988. The bloody and drawn out battles that
lasted the next eight years killed hundreds of thousands on both sides, and
the war ended in 1988 very much in the way it was fought-stalemate. Iraq
made no secret of its intention to obtain nuclear weapons, having
purchased a plant from the French. Israeli aircraft destroyed this plant in
1981, setting Iraq's nuclear ambitions by many years. During this period, a
great many American companies sold so-called dual-use products to Iraq.
One example was a helicopter sold to Iraq and identified as one for the use
of civilians for transportation. It was seen, however, being used in the war
against the Americanized forces in 1991. As a direct result of the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, the United Nations Security Council adopted
resolutions with strict sanctions. Iraq was not allowed to sell its oil on any
market. However, Iraq is probably the second largest oil producer in the
world, second only to Saudi Arabia.
During the Gulf War, allied aircraft bombed Iraq with considerable
damage to the Iraqi military's command, control, and communications
network. In mid-January, 1991 allied troops launched the ground war. By

February 27th, A ceasefire agreement was signed by the United States and
Iraq and the latter agreed to accept certain obligations all spelled out in
various resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. Among other
obligations, the Iraqis agreed to cooperate with the Rolph Ikeus, chairman
of the agency set up to keep track of nuclear weapons. Evidence gathered
failed to show Iraqi possession of any nuclear weapons, but their
technology was quite close to a dangerous level. Some evidence of a
capability of producing nerve gas was found, and the Iraqis were also
fairly advanced in the production of chemical warfare agents.
Unfortunately, Iraq continued to pursue its warfare against the Kurds of
Iraq, many of whom were able to move over the border into Turkey. In
fact, six years after the ceasefire, Iraq was still a military power and still
refusing to comply with Security Council resolutions. Notwithstanding,
the Security Council agreed to allow the sale of oil from Iraq in the
amount of $4 billion, all of this for humanitarian uses. Saddam Hussein is
still in full control of the Iraqi military. He has never hesitated at brutally
eliminating opposition, so none has publicly surfaced.
Iraq has proven oil reserves estimated at between 100 billion and 122
billion barrels. Its reserves are distributed among 73 known fields, only 15
of which have so far developed. No export of any of this oil may be sold
until Iraq complies with various resolutions of the United Nations Security
Council. Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, flowed around
Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. Ever since 1984, Iraq and Syria have sought
to settle their quarrel with Turkey. That country has built the Ataturk Dam
and impounding the water flowing into these two rivers where they arise
within Turkey. Under the Protocol of 1987, Turkey has undertaken to
supply a monthly average flow of 500 million cubic meters at the Turkish-
Syrian border, until the "filling up" of the Ataturk Dam is completed.
Iraq

Iraq maintains that it has "acquired rights" relating to its "ancestral

irrigation" on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. According to Iraq there are
two dimensions of acquired rights. One outlines the fact that for thousands
of years these rivers have given life to the to the inhabitants of
Mesopotamia and thus constitute an acquired right for its people.
Therefore, no upstream riparian country is entitled to take away the rights
of these inhabitants. The second dimension of acquired rights stems from
the existing irrigation and water installations built in reliance on water.
Iraq has some 1.9 million hectares of agricultural land in the Euphrates
Basin, including the ancestral irrigation left from Sumerian times. Syria
has a different approach. It claims acquired rights, even though Syria was
never a country before the Ottoman Empire ended in 1919. Additionally,
Syria claims that the waters from these rivers must be shared among the
riparian states according to a quota to be determined. The rivers are
international water courses which must be described as "shared resources."
Turkey understandably differs from both Syria and Iraq. The idea of
sharing the common resources through a mathematical formula represents
a complete contradiction with the principle of "equitable utilization"
which is the core of codification exercise in this field. Additionally, Syria
has argued that Turkey has delivered Syria polluted water out of the share
permitted by the Protocol of 1987. Turkey has further argued that neither
Syria nor Iraq has the amount of irrigible land claimed by both. The
Euphrates River flows first through Syria and the Tigris River flows
entirely through Iraq, but they join at the Shattal-Arab before flowing in to
the Persian Gulf. These rivers are also joined by a manmade Charter Canal
within Iraq. This water dispute may yet be argued before the International
Court of Justice. However, neither Iraq nor Syria have much interest in
that court. Turkey controls the water.
Oil is another matter. The Organization of Oil Exporting Countries

(OPEC) was organized by oil-rich Arab states in 1960. Its primary
objective was to protect the price of oil. The majors had driven them to
this point, where the Arabs were losing control of prices. The five
founding members -- Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Venezuela --
controlled 80 percent of the world's crude oil exports. It was not until 1973
that the power of OPEC was used successfully by its founders. In 1973,
President Nixon was beginning to sense the problems that were to flow
from Watergate. The Saturday Night Massacre had seen the firing of an
attorney general and the resignation of the special counsel. In another part
of the world, Syria and Egypt invaded Israel in the Yom Kippur War of
October, 1973. The surprise was so total that Henry Kissinger believed
Israel might be overrun unless the United States got munitions to Israel in
a way that did not anger the OPEC Arabs. The Soviet Union was shipping
supplies to both Egypt and Syria, so a case could be made for the
proposition that the United States had to protect its position in the Middle
East, even if it meant arming Israel. Other OPEC members were not

pleased with anything less that a complete oil embargo against the United
States. In fact, Iraq had walked out of the meeting because its oil minister
didn't get the embargo he wanted least, not until later. When the embargo
was finally imposed, oil prices took off. There was also panic at the
American pump. Prices increased fourfold, to $11.65 a barrel never to
return to the old level. In fact, the price was to increase even further in
1979, the year of the Second Oil Shock.
Iran had become a Moslem state with its own ayatollah in charge,
hysterically addressing the students who believed every word he used..
Even though Iran had been joined by Saudi Arabia in seeing price
moderation as good policy, others were planning action. Kuwait was one
member of OPEC with its own ideas. However, one factor had been
ignored by all members. The importing states launched a campaign to
manufacture energy-efficient automobile engines and appliances. Price
controls on oil continued even after Nixon resigned because of Watergate.
Furthermore, the search for oil continued around the world. In 1969,
Phillips drilled a hole in the North Sea and brought in a huge oil field. The
Brent oil field in the North Sea had an estimated 270 billion tons, or about
355,000,000 barrels. In 1963, the Shah outlined a six-point reform
program he grandly called the White Revolution. Its goals were to create a
literacy corps, establish suffrage for women, nationalize forest and water
resources -- Mossadeq had nationalized oil in 1954 -- and introduce
employee profit sharing in industry. The White Revolution succeeded in
alienating just about all interest groups. The clergy opposed it as being
inconsistent with the Koran. Overall, it was shoddily planned and
haphazardly carried out. The peasants, for example, lost a great deal. Each
member of a peasant family was given 25 acres of land, a hopelessly
inefficient parcel. Furthermore, the new owners lacked the requisite tools
and know-how to deal with the new responsibility given them. Up until
this land reform, landlords provided whatever was needed by the peasants
working the land. Nine of Iran's most powerful mullahs sharply criticized
the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini openly criticized the Shah from Qom. The
Shah had him arrested, brought to Teheran for torture and expelled from
Iran. He lived in Paris, returning in triumph to Teheran in 1979.
In 1964, the Majlis or Parliament of Iran passed a bill giving American

military personnel and their dependents full diplomatic immunity.
Described as the Status of Forces Agreement in the United States and the
Capitulation's Agreement in Iran, it came before Parliament after an
intense campaign by the American Embassy. The reaction in Iran was
bitter. The Capitulation's Agreement meant that any crime committed by
an employee -- or any of his dependents -- of the U.S. Department of
Defense working in Iran could not be prosecuted under Iranian law. Even
if the United States chose not to prosecute, the Iranian government could
not take the case. Two weeks after this bill became law, the United States

extended a $200 million loan to Iran specifically for the purchase of

military equipment. The Iranian public felt doubly betrayed. Once again,
their national sovereignty had been sold to an outside power. President
Lyndon Johnson expressed admiration for what the Shah was trying to do.
However, in the United States by early 1973 was facing an energy crisis
during the Nixon presidency. The Yom Kippur War made a precarious
situation even worse. Saudi Arabia and the OPEC nations agreed on a
price increase and a reduction in production. While the Shah did not
participate in the oil embargo, it spearheaded the price increase to about
$12 per barrel. OPEC states agreed to this doubling of the posted price,
and Washington never forgave the Shah. Iran and the other members of
OPEC had another problem. Spending their new oil wealth. From 1973 to
1975, Iran went on a spending spree changing its economy to reflect the
new spending power. This new power distorted local institutions, the
social structure, the economy and the outlook of the people who still got
next to nothing from all this oil wealth. The Shah only said it was being
spent to improve living conditions. Like all central planning decisions, the
Shah's plans completely failed to put money in the hands of the peasants.
Most of them migrated to the cities in search of work.
However, it was not until 1975 that Great Britain finally saw the oil from
the North Sea. For that country, it cushioned the effect of the Second Oil
Shock. The Shah of Iran was modernizing its economy and alienating the
mullahs in the process. The Shah could not imagine being on the losing
side of a bitter struggle with the clerics. In 1979, an illness, cancer,
compelled the Shah to seek medical attention in the United States. A year
earlier, Ayatollah Khomeini had been expelled from Iran; the Baathist
regime of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad had to worry about its Shiite
population. During this period of escalating chaos, the oil industry in Iran
faced strikes of laborers and technicians. There was also a rising level of
discontent in Iran fueled by Khomeini in Paris; he spoke to the masses
using tapes played on the state-owned radio. By the end of 1978, 4.5
million of oil exports from Iran stopped. Finally, on January 16, 1979 the
Shah left Iran for the last time. His departure was celebrated by the Iranian
masses, some of whom had suffered at the hands of the Shah's secret
service, Savak. The Shah's departure was the beginning of the Second Oil
Shock; the First had occurred in 1973 with reduced shipments of oil and
panic. The Second Oil Shock was worse but fueled by panic and fears of a
permanent shortage. The importing oil companies bought a lot more of
today's oil, because the knew prices would rise. In fact, the oil companies
bought oil far in excess of anticipated consumption. The rush to fill
inventories resulted in the purchase of about 5 million barrels a day of
extra demand. Panic buying drove the price of oil to $34 per barrel, almost
300 percent more that it had been since 1974. The United States did not
suffer a real shortage; Saudi Arabia diverted more oil to Aramco. Japan,
however, took a major hit and had to scramble to find oil to fuel its

humming economy. In the meeting of March, 1979 OPEC told its

members they could charge whatever price they could get. It was a "free-
for-all." At the domestic end of the line, President Carter was blamed for
the oil shortages, and even worse, the gas lines at service stations around
the country. Some OPEC countries continued to reduce their output to
keep prices high. Iraq extended its oil embargo to Egypt. Anwar Sadat had
just signed the Camp David Agreements of 1978, and Iraq bitterly
opposed any peace with Israel.
On November, 4, 1979 Iranian students occupied the American embassy

in Teheran. The grievance of the occupiers was the Shah; only a few days
earlier, he had been admitted to a New York hospital under an assumed
name.
In early October, 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan These

events and a meeting in Caracas of OPEC opened the oil producers to the
charge they were losing touch with reality. The average price of oil was
then $32 a barrel with oil being sold on the spot market at even higher
prices. A worldwide recession then brought prices down, but there was
more to come. In mid1980, Iraq attacked Iran in a war that was to last until
1988 and cost the lives of over 1.5 million soldiers on both sides.Saddam
Hussein struck hard at Iran's oil facilities in Abadan and Ahwaz, seriously
damaging them The Iranians counterattacked choking off Iraqi pipeline
and exports via the Persian Gulf. In its initial phases, the Iraq-Iran war
removed about 4 million barrels of oil per day from the world market, and
the spot price of oil hit $42 a barrel and panic buying took off again.
However, by November of 1980 consumption was declining, so it made
sales of oil inventories more useful, even at a loss. And Saudi Arabia was
increasing its OPEC quota by 900,000 barrels a day. Finally, by 1981, the
oil producers rationalized price by fixing it at $34 per barrel. Worldwide
inflation was the cost of all this, and the Federal Reserve Bank had raised
interest rates to 21.5 percent. Western governments were not without
remedies for inflation. They could and did encourage oil importers to
dump inventories of oil to bring prices down to a level more consistent
with a collapse in demand. And non-OPEC oil was being sold on the
world market. Finally, even with the Gulf War still in the future, the
jockeying for price and market share continued and by 1997, the world
price of oil had stabilized at $20.50 per barrel. Daniel Yergin's great book,
The Prize, should be read by those in need of further economic history.
To understand both the Arab politics and Saddam Hussein, one need first
assume that the history of the Middle East has always been defined by
personalities. In 1980, for example, the situation was dominated by
Saddam Hussein and the Ayatolloah Khomeini. While Iraq launched the
attack against Iran in !980, Khomeini had committed Iranians to a war he
saw as religious, one Iran could not afford to lose. Khomeni was a head of

state who did not have the mandate of a popularly elected leader, so
Iranians had to treat the war as a crusade. Saddam Hussein did not have
the mandate of a popularly elected leader either. In 1989, an Iraqi Samir
AlKhalil, wrote a book, Republic Of Fear,which was published by the
University of California Press. He goes a long way in describing why Iran
was perceived as the loser of this war.
Whenever Iranians fought in defense of their homes and towns,

in effective isolation from the clerical leadership, by all accounts
they did well against vastly superior odds....The nature of the
combat was such as to place life at a premium, and so tactics
evolved that tended to guard it. When the clerics took over, the
military conception changed dramatically. The idea became to
use the occasion of war to prove how good a Muslim was;
winning versus losing took on an entirely new meaning.
There was no Islamic definition of military strategy, but Khomeini and the
other Iranian clerics simply used recruits that were driven in human wave
attacks. They were mowed down. And dying from poison or nerve gas was
quite different from invoking the mercy of Allah by hurling themselves on
the Iraqis who shot them.
Hussein, however, was able to present himself as the embodiment of the

state. In fact, he probably was the leader with no opposition within Iraq.
His Baath Party had, at Hussein's orders, executed all those who might
have threatened his role. Saddam Hussein had a ready-made enemy,
Kuwait, an Arab state, and Iran, a Persian state. Iraq had a history of
animosity; border disputes, ethnic differences, and religious differences.
However, without any real mandate, Hussein had to find an alternative
source of legitimacy, even though symbols were all he could offer. Nasser
was an Egyptian symbol of Middle East leadership, even though his role
ended with the Six Day War against Israel. Hussein saw himself as the
new "leader" of the Middle East, ruling Iran as part of his kingdom,
fighting a just war against a long time enemy. Hussein also had to find a
secure role for his military; a foreign war against a traditional enemy
would keep the military and its leadership occupied and reduce the
chances of a military coup. Hussein also saw that his military had the best
arms and weapons technology his oil income could buy. The French and
German arms merchants were only too happy to sell Iraq the latest,
including the plant capacity to build a nuclear weapon. Later Hussein
would argue he wanted only nuclear power, not weapons.
In 1981, Israel was internationally condemned when its jets destroyed the
French-manufactured Osiris nuclear reactor. Israeli jets may have the
range to destroy Iran's new reactor being assembled by French experts in
1997 at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast. The Israelis must first satisfy
themselves that this reactor is being used to produce weapons grade
uranium. And Germany sold the wherewithal to use chemical warfare. Iraq

used that horrifying weapon in the closing days of the Iran-Iraq War
against Kurds and Iraqi Shiites. Near the end of this war, Iraq had
launched more than 160 al-Hussein stretch Scuds against the Iranian
capital of Iran. Hussein's search for an identity based on missile power had
begun. By 1989, Hussein's engineers had assembled three of these Scuds
and one other rocket to produce the three-stage Tamouz 1 "space launch
vehicle." It had an estimated range of 250 miles. This missile caught
intelligence agencies by surprise; they first saw it on Iraqi television.
The Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988 on terms favorable to Iraq However, it

was a tremendous financial catastrophe for both sides, not to mention the
terrible loss of life. An entire generation on both sides were killed.
However, the war also solidified Iraq's position with the United States.
Two years later, the United States would regret this during the Persian
Gulf War. That war began on August 2, 1990 when Iraqi armed forces
crossed the border with Kuwait and occupied the entire country. In fact,
Iraq annexed Kuwait as its 19th province. President George Bush began
the slow expensive maneuver of assembling an Arab force led by the
United States. During the period before ground forces became active in
January, 1991, American military softened up the Iraq command and
control facilities with "smart weapons" guided by on board computers.
After a brief ground war, a cease fire agreement was signed on February
27, 1991. Hussein's attention was then directed against the Shiites and the
Kurds. Personnel of the United Nations also went through all or nearly all
Iraq's weapons warehouses or plants to find the missiles used by the Scuds
and other longer range weapons plus evidence of a nuclear or chemical
weapons capability. Because Iraq had launched no long range missiles
attacks on Iran between August, 1987 and February, 1988 Saddam
Hussein's claims were viewed with scepticism by Western observers. But
following Iran's attack on Baghdad with three of the Scud Bs it had
imported from North Korea on February 29, 1988, it rapidly became
apparent that Hussein had spent the intervening months quietly building
up, a sufficient stockpile of al Hussein missiles to make a major strategic
impact on the course of the Iran-Iraq War. Over the following three weeks,
Iraq fired nearly 200 al Hussein's at Teheran, Isfahan, and Qom, causing
some 8000 casualties, about 2000 of them fatalities. The psychological
effect of these attacks on ordinary Iranians were considerable -- nearly a
quarter of the population of Teheran abandoned the city. This fact was one
of the factors contributing to Iran's decision to sue for peace in July, 1988.
The end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 saw the beginning of two trends
in Asia and the Middle East. First, Saddam Hussein embarked on a voyage
that was to rearm Iraq to the point it was the "heavy hitter" of the Middle
East. Second, Hussein took all reasonable measures to conceal his
purchase of arms at a time when, because of oil sale sanctions, he could

not openly buy arms. See Security Council Resolution 661 of 1990 for text
of sanctions. The text of the Decision Taken by the Security Council
Committee established by Resolution 661 (1990) concerning the situation
between Iraq and Kuwait in the discharge of its responsibilities under
Security Council resolutions 706 (1991) and 712 (1991). Essentially, this
document spelled out the procedures Iraq must follow if it wished to
purchase humanitarian supplies. The money was to come from an escrow
account administered by appointees of the Security Council.
Before the Allied Forces were put together by agents of then President
George Bush, his Secretary of State, James Baker had toured the Arab
world to drum up support for the attempt to oust Iraq from Kuwait. In his
tour of the Middle East, Baker had promised the Arab states there would
be a postwar conference leading up to a settlement of the Israeli-Arab
conflict. On January 31, 1991 the United Nations General Assembly
adopted its Resolution 45/68. Its language reached a level of international
mendacity not previously considered. Both the United States and Israel
voted against this resolution. It notes in part: "Aware of the ongoing
uprising (intifadah) of the Palestinian people since 9 December 1987,
aimed at ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967."
The resolution referred to the status of the West Bank between 1949 and
1967. On the latter date, Jordanian troops were driven out of the West
Bank which Jordan had occupied in violation of both international law and
the United Nations Charter.
During the years between 1949 and 1967, Jordan never once took any
action to comply with Resolution 181 (II), the Partition Resolution of
1948. Indeed, on April 15, 1951,Jordan announced its annexation of the
West Bank as an extension of its Hashemite Kingdom. No polemicist,
including Yasser Arafat has ever rationalized the Palestinian claim that the
West Bank is "our land." The claim that this land was somehow converted
from its status as territory occupied by Jordan to "territory occupied by
Israel" is quite simply wrong. See Security Council Resolution 242 of
November, 1967. Arab states that joined the U.S. led coalition in 1991
have breather a collective sigh of relief. Iraq agreed that American
inspectors could resume work trying to ferret out the weapons hidden by
Iraqis after the inspectors first left Iraq. The Arabs never liked Saddam
Hussein who often forced Arabs to make disagreeable choices. When
Hussein marched into Kuwait in 1990, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco sent
troops to join the coalition. They were sent on the express word of James
Baker, Secretary of State under President George Bush, that the Arab-
Israeli dispute would receive the full and favorable attention of the United
States. Some six years later, nothing much had happened. The Arab world
sees that the United States as reneging on the agreement with respect to
Israel. Arabs expected they would be rewarded for their cooperation by

American pressure on Israel to reach lasting settlements with its

neighbors.
On April 8, 1991 the Security Council adopted its Resolution 686. The full
text of this resolution appears at 30 International Legal Materials 847
(1991). The Security Council Resolution 686 "demands that Iraq...
3(d)Provide all information and assistance in identifying Iraqi

mines, booby traps and other explosives as well as any chemical
and biological weapons and material in Kuwait, in areas of Iraq
where forces of Member States cooperating with Kuwait
pursuant to Resolution 678 (1990); and...
Security Council Resolution 687 picked up the language of Resolution

686. In part, it invited "Iraq to reaffirm unconditionally its obligations
under the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of
Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods
of Warfare, signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925, and to ratify the
Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and
Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their
Destruction, of 10 April 1972." These are all obligation that were in
existence before Iraq attacked Kuwait. This fact did not however, prevent
Iraq from using poison gas in its war against Iran. Hussein did not hesitate
to use mustard gas against Kurds in 1987.
On February 26, 1998 the New York Times published an article "How
Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light" written by By William
J. Broad and Judith Miller; a nightmarish and horrifying detail of how Iraq
has plans for its Arab and Jewish neighbours.
Robert Gates, formerly Director of Central Intelligence , wrote an Op Ed

piece in the New York Times for November 14, 1997. In part it read:
"Since the end of the war, the Iraqis, trying to preserve their programs for
chemical, biological weapons, have lied to United Nations inspectors and
engaged in a deadly game of hide-and-seek. For diplomatic reasons, the
United Nations has never fully revealed the extent of physical abuse and
mistreatment of inspectors in Iraq. Nor has it fully revealed the
extraordinary deception, subterfuge, trickery and obstructionism used by
the Iraqis."
International arms sales did not begin or end with Iraq. In fact, the United
States has the dubious distinction of being the world's largest arms seller.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) monitors arms sales. Sales
by the United States were as follows in the year indicated. $9. 36 billion
(1991), $10.71 billion (1992), $10.68 billion (1993), $9.84 billion (1994),
and $12.55 Billion (1995). In addition, American companies sold a total
amount of arms during the same period of $17.36 billion. Russia sold

$16,40 billion, France sold $8.70 billion, United Kingdom sold $24.10
billion, China sold $4.90 billion, Germany sold $7.80 billion, and Italy
sold $1.2 billion in the period between 1991 and 1995.Third World
countries around the world are lining up to qualify as purchasers using
guidelines that have made sales by the Pentagon quite simple.
During the administration of President Ronald Reagan, his staff and others
came up with the Missile Technology Control Regime. The MTCR is an
informal, non-treaty association of states that had an established policy or
interest in limiting the spread of missiles and missile technology. Its
origins went back to the 1970s when the United States became aware of
dangers posed by the missile programs of some developing nations.
Several events, including South Korea's 1978 ballistic missile test, Iraq's
attempt in 1979 to purchase retired rocket stages from Italy, India's July
1980 SLV3 test, and the former German firm OTRAC's 1981 testing of a
rocket in Libya, contributed particularly to America's apprehensions. See:
"Chronology of the Missile Technology Control Regime."
The MTCR has attempted to control weapons of mass destruction

(WMD). The principal multilateral arms control regimes limiting WMD
are the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and the 1993
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Western governments may have
helped slow the spread of WMD, but they have made only limited efforts
to enforce compliance; unfortunately, the Western governments have
sometimes chosen to accept violations. A glaring example of such
acceptance of violations was Iraq's open use of CW against both Iran in its
war with that country, but also against segments of the Iraqi population,
i.e., Kurds and Shiites. One of the difficulties in enforcing limits on WMD
is the fact that some of the components and the technologies are dual-use,
that is, they may be used in both civilian and military programs. By 1998,
one must assume that Iraq has all the missile technology it needs to
threaten Europe, even the United States with missile attacks. In the Persian
Gulf War, Iraq used the Scud missile successfully, and it would be foolish
to assume they have not improved their missile technology and range.
However, because of the secrecy factor, Iraq may have warheads
containing any particular toxin used in chemical warfare. They're all
deadly. Recent reports of the United Nations suggest that Iraq has some 16
ballistic missiles armed with biological warfare warheads in violation of
sanctions imposed on Iraq. A CIA report on Iraq's pre1991 CBW
capability noted:
...that Iraq worked to adapt a modified aircraft drop tank for

biological agent spray operations in December, 1990. The tank
could be attached to either a piloted fighter or to a remotely
piloted aircraft that would be guided by another, piloted aircraft.

The tank was designed to spray up to 2000 liters of anthrax on a

target.
Along the same lines, other countries are well-advanced in producing

chemical warfare components. In 1988, Libya built one of the largest
chemical weapons plants in the world and has persistently pursued
opportunities to acquire longer range missiles from North Korea. Iran
could threaten all of Europe with missiles, having acquired the technology
from China. Biological weapons may be produced from widely available
pathogens; they are cheap and easy to obtain. In fact, even a facility like a
brewery has the de facto capability to produce biological weapons, and
these agents are weight-for-weight, thousands of times more potent than
the most lethal chemical weapon.
In February 1998, Great Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair visited

Washington and held a joint press conference with President Clinton.
Even before leaving London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
(FCO) released a report listing what the United Nations Special
Commission on Munitions (UNSCOMM) subject to inspection in Iraq.
The list showed only what UNSCOMM had discovered between 1991,
when the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 687 of
April 3, 1991 and what had been destroyed. It is a list of the horribles and
Saddam Hussein has now made a diplomatic solution virtually impossible
by forbidding UN inspectors from inspecting sites in Iraq they are legally
required to inspect. See http://www.britain-info.org/
President Clinton has sent three carriers to the Persian Gulf plus some
3,000 Marines and Great Britain has sent one aircraft carrier plus an
unspecified number of ground forces. Saudi Arabia has refused to let its
facilities be used for an attack against Iraq but Kuwait has a longer
memory. Republicans in Congress are now looking for an end game, so
American forces won't have to stay in the Middle east too long. Initially,
Senator Trent Lott and some other Republicans seemed gung ho on the use
of force against Iraq. However, they now seem less eager, thinking Clinton
may be in the middle of l'affaire Lewinsky when he's needed most in his
constitutional role as Commander-in-Chief of the armed force.

Every five years since 1949, China has had a meeting of the National
Congress. The 15th National Congress ended on September 18, 1997 after
approving the work of the 14th Congress. There were a few differences.
One of them was the death in February, 1997 of Deng Xiaopeng. The 15th
Congress predictably approved Deng's theory and that it must guide all the
Communists actions over the next five years. China's military
establishment of three million men would be reduced by 500,000, and so-
called state-owned enterprises (SOE) would be sold off. These SOEs have
a long history. They were set up to cope with China's rising
unemployment. Would be foreign investors were told they would have to
provide jobs for Chinese workers. More often than not, these SOEs were
acquired from the foreign investors who were given fourteen years to
recover their investment plus a reasonable return on capital. These foreign
investments were incorporated pursuant to China's Joint Venture Law, a
great many incorporated between 1978 and 1980. With termination of the
fourteen-year deals, ownership vested in China's government, and China
had a major problem; it could not find enough skilled employees to
operate the hotels or plants built by foreign investors. With reversion to
local Chinese ownership, they began to lose money, so they were
subsidized by Beijing.
By 1998, China had a problem. Deputy Prime Minister Zhu Rongji has
been betting that an expanding service sector, along with trade and foreign
investment, should help employ the next generation. Many leaders in
Beijing have lost their heads over other less risky bets. On the block as
redundant, there are tens of millions of workers who will be laid off,
particularly in the rust-belt cities of Harbin, Shenyang and others in rural
areas. Chinese leaders, however, have been looking fearfully at Asia's
ballooning bank debt and local currency problems. Even locally, China
has problems. Shanghai, for example, has a 40 percent office vacancy rate.
Property values in Hong Kong have dropped precipitately, and tension has
risen. At a recent meeting of bankers and investors in Hong Kong, Zhu
Rongji , China's new economic chief, Zhu avoided answering a question
worrying everyone present. How does China plan to transfer ownership of
some major but unprofitable companies from the government to some
form of share-holding without casting a lot of workers out into the street.?
According to The New York Times for September 23, 1997, China has
some $130 billion in foreign currency reserves. Presumably, part of this
huge fund will be used to subsidize China's "iron rice bowl," the promise
of cradle to grave security for the unemployed. What's left over will
probably be used to get a bigger bang for the buck of 2.5 million soldiers
and sailors left after the reduction in the armed forces. Modernizing
China's armed forces over three years may be extraordinarily difficult. As
it appears later in this chapter, China simply does not yet have the
indigenous talent to develop a modern jet fighter or even to develop its
own in-flight refueling capability. Two of China's four Russian

submarines have broken down because of poor maintenance. And pilots

trained in 1960-era jet aircraft are reluctant to trust high-tech radar's in
their new Soviet-made jets. Furthermore, the bulk of its weapons are still
several generations behind those of other powers in the region, such as
Singapore, Malaysia, and even Taiwan. China is a long way from having
graduated enough aeronautical engineers and designers from its
universities. And they're only beginning to graduate enough talent to
design and manufacture the technology needed to supply a modern
military establishment. It is very costly to purchase this hardware from the
United States or a company in Europe without having the indigenous
talent to develop new models of, for example, a tank or a jet fighter. One
might conclude that banks would not lend money to Chinese companies to
develop the country's own military infrastructure.
Banks will liquidate huge loans made by China's banks for political
reasons, not the creditworthy to failing state enterprises. China which
claims status as developing or third world state is almost certain to buy
arms for its newly-lean army, navy, and air force. And if the people cast
into the street by plant closures throughout China, resort to street protests
as they did in Jiangmian City in Sichuen, the People's Liberation army
(PLA) will be flown to the trouble spots to quash insurrections, just as the
PLA was used by Deng against students in 1989 at Tiananmen Square.
During the last several decades, China has built a Laogai, or prison
system, throughout China equal in all respects to Russia's Gulag
Archipelago. Nonviolent dissidents in Tibet and Sinkiang will be the first
to disappear. As it did in the Tiananmen Square, China treated student
protests as counterrevolutionary or "rightist" conduct. The National
Congress has really changed nothing. A few members of the Politburo
resigned rather than suffering demotion, and a few new faces appeared.
The Congress certainly endorsed the events of 1989 and anointed those
responsible with more power. Jiang Zemin was one of them, and he was a
guest of the United States in late 1997.
In a recent book about China, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress, its
authors suggest that "China has committed itself to an economic strategy
that will succeed only through intensified integration into the world
economy." The Hong Kong transition will test this policy seriously as to
matters that extend beyond 1997. Both the United States and the United
Kingdom have asserted an interest in Hong Kong's post1997 political
welfare. In 1992,Congress enacted the Hong Kong Policy Act, while the
UK enacted the Joint Declaration of Policy with China in 1984. Both
documents establish an interest in Hong Kong's economic autonomy,
political stability, and human rights. When faced with these challenges,
China's leaders gave higher priority to political control than Hong Kong's
economic welfare. These were all developments that occurred during
Deng Xiaopeng's lifetime. Whether the direction he took will change with

Li Peng and Jiang Zemin. Li Peng may not succeed in getting his old
position in 1998, and Jiang Zemin's status was confirmed as the supreme
leader.
China's paramount leader died on February 19, 1997. The death of Deng
Xiaoping was not unexpected; he had been in declining health for as much
as three years before he actually died.. Publicly, Deng's death affected
only the leadership succession. Jiang Zemin became the primary Party
official; he had been president until Deng died. Next in line was Prime
Minister Li Peng. Deng's funeral took place in the Great Hall of the
People, and some 10,000 guests attended this affair in the huge structure
located in Tiananmen Square, the scene of a savage massacre of students
ordered by Deng in June, 1989. Jiang may not last long, although there is
nothing to indicate he has not gotten the support of the Peoples' Liberation
Army (PLA). By the year 2000, the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) will
have a population of 1.2 billion people. Nearly 270 million of these people
will not have a job. China's rise as a great power in the last decade all
occurred while Deng was paramount leader. Mao Tsetung was Deng's
predecessor and died in 1976. More than anything else, Deng was
preoccupied with power.
Deng was born in 1904. He spent five years in France working for
subsistence wages as part of a workstudy program. Back in China during
the 1930s and 1940s, he was close to the pinnacle of power of the
Communist Party. Deng was a close friend of Zhou Enlai, Prime Minister
in 1937. After World War II, Deng, a fellow traveler on the Long March
of 1934 with Mao, joined Mao in declaring the establishment of the
People's Republic in 1949. By `1954, Deng had become General Secretary
of the Communist Party with the approval of Mao. Even as General
Secretary, Deng was not immune from the fall out from Party disputes.
In 1967, Deng was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. His political
rehabilitation was supervised by the Red Guard. However, in 1954, Deng,
newly appointed, used his position to get rid those party regulars who
responded to Mao's invitation when he said "Let all flowers bloom in the
garden of socialism." Those imprudent enough to accept this invitation in
full measure paid a penalty supervised by Deng. He led a witch hunt
against them. Deng apparently ignored the Great Famine in China between
1958 and 1961, even though some 30 million people simply starved to
death while Mao continued to order the export of food. A famine was not
possible for those who accepted and followed Marxist-Leninist principles.
Peasants who starved to death were lying according to Mao. Moreover,
even today, the amount of arable land within China has been relentlessly
reduced as the population relentlessly increases to 1.2 billion people by the
year 2000. Even the remaining land has been over-cultivated while
pesticide residue has leached the soil and polluted the watershed from

which rivers are fed There will no doubt be further red tides -- one was
reported in Hong Kong Harbor in 1994 -- and they will be increasingly
toxic to humans. A red tide occurs from the combination of human,
untreated waste, pesticide runoff, and other contaminating chemicals such
as PCB (polychlorinatedbyphenyls) By July 1, 1997 Hong Kong and
Kowloon will all revert to rule from Beijing. If the new leadership there is
unable to manage the shift, Jiang Zemin and his colleagues may all
disappear. Instability is a distinct possibility, particularly in those areas of
China with a significant Muslim population such as the Uighur
autonomous area in Sinkiang where there has been recent violence.
Deng left a political legacy of economic reform so pervasive that there has
been a rising tide of prosperity in the last five years or so. During this
period of growth, China ran a favorable balance of trade with the United
States. Each year from about 1991 to the present, the United States ran a
trade deficit in an amount that grew every year. Chinese businessmen
loved it, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made a huge profit. The
deals it made were one-sided. Boeing, for example, sold its passenger jets
but Army generals insisted that there must be local content. The tail
assembly of the Boeing 737 was made in China, and American workers
lost their jobs as a result. To swing these deals, China established Chinese
National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC). It is
owned by the government. Buyers within the United States were Boeing
and McDonnell Douglas. In Europe, the only buyer was Airbus, so China
could whipsaw Boeing and/or McDonnell to get the best deal for
China.The best deal was almost literally a complete plant in Ohio with all
the computer-operated machines an aircraft manufacturing facility needed.
If McDonnell Douglas, for example was reluctant to sell the computer-
operated machines, the representatives of CATIC would simply remind
managerial personnel that Airbus was being approached in Europe.
Finally, McDonnell Douglas capitulated, and lost 4000 jobs in Ohio. This
deal is more fully described in War By Other Means: Economic Espionage
in America by John J. Fialka in early 1997. Other American companies
have been standing in line to open shop in the PRC. They include
companies from IBM to AT&T. The American-Chinese Business Council
lists some 500 companies all willing to lobby Congress to continue the
status of Most Favored Nation (MFN). China is the largest market in the
world, and chief executive officers have been drooling at the profits to be
made, even though China has a demonstrably poor record on human
rights.
The collapse of the Soviet Union has encouraged many Chinese to begin
thinking about their liberty as being the foundation of a new political
alignment in the autonomous regions of Central Asia. In Western China
Xinjiang is one such autonomous region with a Muslim minority. Ethnic
Uighurs who are Muslim and speak a distinct Turkic language make up 60

percent of the population of 16 million in what is called the Xinjiang

Uighur autonomous region. Its capital city is Urumqi. On its Western
border lies Kazakhstan where an international consortium successfully
developed oil wells producing some 600,000 barrels per day. One pipeline
runs to the Black Sea via Georgia. A another pipeline may run through
Azerbaijan and Turkey to a port on the Mediterranean Sea. South of
Kazakhstan are four countries now independent of Russia, Kyrgistan,
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.They are all Muslim. Some 18
trillion cubic feet of natural gas is said to be available in Turkmenistan.
Some Uighurs who reached Alma Ata in Kazakhstan described the

violence of February 25th in Uurumqi as a spontaneous uprising against
persecution. Three bombs exploded, killing five people and wounding
dozens of others. The Uighurs say the Beijing government uses excessive
force in quelling local violence. Even worse, the local ethnic Chinese deny
them access to mosques and religious teaching. They also say they have
become increasingly impoverished by the diversion of state investment
funds for irrigation and agricultural improvements to areas settled by Han
Chinese immigrants. With an unconscious irony, Dr. Abdul Qader Tash,
Editor-in-Chief of Arab News wrote a polemic in the February 13, 1997
issue. In part, it reads as follows: "Since China annexed Eastern Turkestan
(Xinjiang), the authorities have claimed that it was an autonomous
province because of its special ethnic, religious and linguistic
characteristics which distinguish it from the rest of the country. In fact,
however, that autonomy is mere window dressing. The Chinese treat the
Uighur area as a colony and its people, the Uighurs, as aliens who must be
exterminated and humiliated.....Millions of ethnic Han Chinese Buddhists
have been brought to different cities, towns, and villages of [the Uighur]
area and settled there....Chinese authorities have also adopted inhuman
measures to implement birth control in the province. Uighurs fleeing their
country tell stories of compulsory abortions being performed on Muslim
women, especially in rural areas..."
These charges from the Muslim world make a rough sort of sense. China's
government has unleashed a fierce rhetorical campaign against what it
sees as the grim threat of Muslim separatism. Leaders in Beijing see this
threat as far more credible than the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1951;
when the Dalai Lama was unarmed. The government has also encouraged
Han Chinese to emigrate from the dense, overpopulated areas of the
Chinese coast, e.g.., Shanghai. In Xinjiang, locals resent Hans who get the
best jobs on the construction sites and the oil fields. Nuclear tests at Lop
Nor made the Uighurs feel unsafe from radiation danger. In any case, the
Uighurs are essentially unarmed, even though the level of violence has
increased in the last few years.

With respect to its army and air force, the PRC has gotten mixed reviews.
Richard Bernstein and Ross Monro just finished a book entitled The
Coming Conflict with China. Unfortunately, it was published before
Deng's death. Thus, its readers will not be enlightened by the chaos that
will certainly exist. This variety of news will be suppressed by Xinhua,
China's national press agency. The chaos will last at least until October,
the month in 1997 that the Peoples' Congress meets to confirm action
taken by the Party.
Robert Ross, a Professor of Political Science at Boston College has

another view, one he expressed in the March/April issue of Foreign
Affairs. Unfortunately, he too published before Deng died, though he
could not have been unaware of Deng's silence due to illness for about
three years before publication. Even so, Ross offered two theories and
commented that "The difference between these two policy packages is
significant, but they share a concern for China's increasing ability to
destabilize the regional balance of power and threaten vital American
interests. In both cases, this concern is based on incorrect assumptions
about Chinese strategic capabilities. The reason there is not a 'China threat'
is not because China is a benign status quo power, but rather because it is
too weak to challenge the balance of power in Asia and will remain weak
well into the 21st century. Nevertheless, China is not a second rate power.
It has the ability to inflict considerable damage on a wide range of U.S.
interests."
The independence of Taiwan has been a source of friction between Beijing

and Washington ever since 1992. In that year, President Bush said the
United States would deliver about 18 jet fighters to equalize China's
acquisition of the Soviet Sukhoi27. Then in 1996, Beijing carried out
military maneuvers in the straits separating the mainland from Taiwan.
The United States sent a carrier to patrol the area. President Clinton was
concerned. Later analysis confirmed the missiles used by China were so
primitive they could have veered off course and hit Taiwan. China has one
other major concern that may create friction during the process of
assimilating the new leaders in Beijing. They wish to join the World Trade
Organization, and Beijing's application to do so has already been sent to
Geneva. There it will run into worldwide opposition based on China's
dismal human rights record. Membership in the WTO is by two-thirds
vote from the members, and as of December 15, 1996 there were 130
members. Accession by the People's Republic of China is not a sure thing,
since human rights groups have been lobbying to exclude the PRC.
In Geneva, China will face risks, no matter what questions it answers.

These trade negotiations involve not just the conditions of China's entry
into the World Trade Organization (WTO), but they are about the pace at
which China will reform its economy and open its society. If, for example,

the consequences of opening its economy presage further unemployment,

does it follow that joining the WTO will weaken the Communist Party's
grasp on power? If China wants to compete in world markets, it will have
to open its own. Or is China already so powerful that it may join the WTO
on its own terms? The thinking in Washington is that with a policy of
engagement with China, it may have some effect on questions involving
China's treatment of Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan and human rights in
particular. In any case China will probably have to disclose and end its
subsidies of state-owned industries. Were these industries left free to
compete against free market companies, a substantial number of them
would face bankruptcy. According to the Economist of March 8, 1997,
state industry owes the Bank of China, itself state-owned, some $540
billion. It continues: "Nine-tenths of all bank loans go to the state sector.
Household and corporate savings are drawn off in the prosperous coastal
areas and, through the state credit plan, are recycled to those parts of the
country where state industry looms large: the northeastern smokestack
plants built with Soviet help in the 1950s, and (often defense) industries
that settled in the Chinese hinterland in the 1960s, this time, to escape
Soviet attack."
China has its own domestic problems; the state-owned industries, many of
them hovering on the edge of bankruptcy. Widespread violence of
unemployed textile workers began in June in Mianyang City, a city of 5
million known as Science City. It is home to 160odd scientific research
institutes of various levels. They employ over 130,000 technical personnel
including over 7,000 professors, researchers and senior engineers. In June,
1997 more than 100,000 unemployed textile workers took to the streets of
Mianyang City and demanded government assistance. They accused local
officials of stealing their unemployment funds. In July, 1997 there was
violence during a demonstration in Sichuan, a state in the Southwest of
China. The demonstration was touched off by more than 100,000 workers
who may have lost their pensions. They were unemployed from the
closing of a bankrupt state-owned business. China is full of these
companies, but the Communist rulers in Beijing have to close unprofitable
companies. They are concerned at the closure of many inefficient state-run
factories will lead to labor unrest that may spiral out of control. However,
the rulers will have to deal with the consequences, in this case, violence
that ended only when Beijing sent in troops to disperse the unemployed
workers. This sort of violence is likely to increase as China enlarges its
market economy. Unprofitable industries cannot compete for market share
in this economic environment.
At the September, 1997 Communist Party Congress approved a plan to

shift the ownership of all but 3,000 state-owned enterprises to the private
sector. Actually, the vast majority of China's 300,000 state-run enterprises
are small and inefficient. They are also a severe threat to the nation's

economy. They are unprofitable and state-subsidized for years by banks

that need access to capital now tied up in money-losing enterprises that
cannot compete with newer, non-state companies. The problem, however,
is not simple. No one wants to buy a losing company or even shares in that
company. Employees have been compelled to buy shares, and their anger
is expected to surface, when Beijing closes the door and applies for the
Chinese equivalent of bankruptcy protection. Thus, some 297,000 will
probably close over the nest few years. Their employees will be
unemployed and angry. Plant closures have begun throughout China, and
Beijing officials anticipate the worst. Wang Zhongyu, Minister of the State
Economic and Trade Commission is committed to a market economy. But
he already knows that only the strong survive. However, China has some
100,000 jobs that will be lost as the result of closing all or most of the
weak companies. Another worry is the corruption at the managerial level.
Managers often fail to pay workers and abscond with a company's assets.
Four fifths of China's land mass is rugged and inhospitable. Thus, its
population has inevitably moved to the coastal areas to the point that only
a small percentage of its total population live in the more remote
provinces. Tibet, for example, is an autonomous province, and authorities
in Beijing are moving Han Chinese to permanent homes in this hostile
area, while at the same time, these authorities have systematically reduced
the Tibeten population and their monasteries. Open support of the Dalai
Lama represents an invitation to criminal prosecution as being
counterrevolutionary. In Sinkiang, the Uighur population outnumbers the
Han Chinese population. Separatist tendencies have surfaced recently, and
Beijing sees this autonomous area as vital to the Chines economy. Almost
two-thirds of all China's oil is thought to exist in the Tarim Basin, but not
much exploration for oil seems to exist, even though China became a net
importer of oil in 1995. Some demographers have estimated that the least
fractious two-thirds of China's population, about 800 million, live in the
eastern one-fifth of its entire land mass. To move more people into the
essentially underpopulated areas of China breeds resentment on both sides.
The Han Chinese do not want to leave their home in the overpopulated
eastern areas of China, and in the relatively unsettled areas of China, e.g..,
Tibet and Sinkiang, the Tibetan minority and the Uighur majority see a
threat enforceable by the military, a Han Chinese majority excluding
Uighurs from land they see as their own. These population transfers have a
hidden cost. China has less arable land and agricultural quality water to
support the need for food these transferees will need. Nor will they have
enough fuel. Even in the heavily settled east, there is barely enough fuel to
cook one meal per day. Deforestation has simply eliminated wood as fuel
or as a material for building a dwelling. China's environment reflects this
loss.

China's Environmental Crisis An Inquiry into the Limits of National

Development by Vaclav Smil describes the environmental cost of
unsustainable growth. Smil writes that:
"In China the environmental demands brought by the quest for a

better life are greatly accentuated both by the size and growth of
the population: severe environmental pressure is exacted by
merely feeding the people. I cannot see the fact that China must
feed slightly more than one fifth of humankind from less than
one-fifteenth of the world's farmland simply as a welcome
stimulus to engage human ingenuity in a contest with "the raw
forces of nature."
The cause of alarm has not yet reached the level of governmental decision
in China, even though the Three Gorges Dam designed to generate
electricity by damning the Yangste River was widely criticized for its
adverse effects on agriculture. Neither the International Monetary Fund or
the World Bank will commit funds to this huge project; it will require the
relocation of some 1.2 million people. A number of Chines writers have
described the degradation of China's environment.
Because of the rapid population growth, the increasing pressure

on food and fuel production has resulted in deforestation, over-
exploitation of natural resources, and conversion of lakes to
cultivable land. These activities have led to further damage of
vegetation cover, destruction of ecosystems, erosion,
aggravation of natural disasters, shortages of fuel, feed, and
fertilizer, exacerbation of production problems, and difficulties in
increasing food production.
This description appeared in Improving the Environment by Fu Lixue and

other writers in an anthology published in Beijing. Published in 1995, the
paperback, Who Will Feed China, asks the question the new leaders of
China must answer.
In the period between 1958 to 1961, China suffered one of the worst
famines in its long history. Some thirty million people died, and until
recently the fact that there had been such a horrifying famine was treated
by Mao as a closely guarded secret. This was a conservative figure; some
authorities put the dead at over forty million. Jasper Becker's book,
Hungry Ghosts, published in 1996 describes this famine, noting however,
that it was not unique. In 1876, for example, China had a major famine, in
which some thirteen million people died. Widespread famines occurred in
1924, 1941, and 1946. The Great Famine occurred during the period
between 1958 and 1961. It began a year after Mao decreed the Great Leap
Forward which itself occurred after the Anti-Right purge of the counties in
195455. However, unlike any previous famine, the Great Famine affected
all of China, not just those areas with rich harvests. The Great Leap
Forward was straight Communist Party doctrine developed by Mao, who

himself had no education. He was only a peasant and believed the self-
serving reports of the Party functionaries that grain crops had reached
historically high levels. In fact, they were far lower than ever. The Party
functionaries all the way to the top believed that all problems had a
scientific solution. However, they believed quacks like Lysenko and
Michurin, fools who fawned on Stalin and they caused a famine in the
Soviet Union, the news of which was kept secret. No one wanted to
discredit the heroes of the Soviet Union. China had its own Michurin. Shi
Yiqian was a bogus geneticist and grew grapes on a persimmon tree. Shi
must have had Mao's ear, because in 1958 China drew up an eight-point
Lysenkoist blueprint for all Chinese agriculture. The People's Daily even
started a debate on how China should cope with its food surplus
Everywhere Mao went, the people heard the glowing reports of astounding
successes in the fields. In fact, these reports were all bogus, and there was
really no way of knowing the real size of the harvest. The State Statistical
Office had been dismantled, and its local offices throughout China had
been converted to propaganda organs.The fact that no reliable statistics
were available did not prevent Mao from calling most of the peasants liars
for hiding grain. And because Mao accused the peasants of hiding grain,
his recommendation was a cue for all the Party officials to follow suit.
Thus, those peasants who didn't meet their grain quotas became the targets
of a Communist witch hunt. The Party had officials at every level of
government. Even a small village had its Party Secretary, and this petty
official had the power of life and death over every farmer in his village. If
the local Party Secretary accused a farmer of hiding grain, he was usually
convicted of a crime against the state. It made no difference that the
accused was starving for lack of grain or anything to eat. Mao refused to
accept that there was in fact a shortage and refused to open the state
granaries Over the years from 1958 to 1961, China doubled its grain
exports and cut its imports of food. Exports to the Soviet Union rose by 50
percent, and China delivered gratis to its friends in North Korea, North
Vietnam, and Albania. As a result, more Chinese died from starvation,
and, even worse, Mao rejected any thought of limiting population growth.
Indeed, local Party officials created a nightmare of terror and torture. By
early 1960, people began to die of starvation or died because of some
crime they were alleged to have committed, or from the torture inflicted
on those who had allegedly hidden grain. Some 15,000 Soviet advisers left
China, completing the division of Party theology between Stalinism and
Communism Chinese-style.
Mao probably welcomed the departure of Soviet technicians; they could

not report to Nikita Khruschev what was really happening in China.
According to Jasper Becker in his book, Hungry Ghosts, there was
evidence from a document issued by the People's Liberation Army, that
the morale of its troops was in doubt, because some of the soldiers openly

blamed Mao for the death of their relatives. This report, dated 1963, was
obtained by the State Department in Washington. In 1988, the United
States Department of Agriculture issued a World Grain Database. This
remarkably useful resource contains the yield. area, and production of
each grain in every country from 1950 forward. Amongst other thing, it
shows that if countries become densely populated before they
industrialize, they inevitably suffer a heavy loss of cropland. China was no
exception to this development. If industrialization has been rapid, the loss
of cropland quickly overrode the rise in productivity, leading to a decline
in grain production. In 1995, Chinese authorities were "sounding alarm
bells." They were President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng both
of whom inherited more responsibility and power after Deng's funeral.
Observers should expect to hear more in the National People's Congress in
October, 1997. In the meantime, the government has allowed the price of
grain to rise enough to encourage farmers to remain on the land, but not
enough to create urban unrest that could lead to political upheaval. As of
early 1997, adjoining North Korea faces starvation, another famine. It is
not known whether China would ship grain out of its granaries to feed the
people of North Korea. This is a political question that will be answered in
Beijing. In any case, the dire situation brought about by the rulers of North
Korea and a poor harvest for two years running will certainly serve as a
wakeup call in Beijing.
Tensions in the South China Sea were heightened in March of 1997.

Vietnam lodged a protest over oil well drilling in the Spratly Islands which
Vietnam had placed in its continental shelf and international economic
zone. In all, six countries in this area all claim an interest in the Spratly
Islands, which are thought to have extensive oil reservoir. China is not
militarily endowed with armed forces to defend its claim against
Singapore, Malaysia ,the Philippines, and Brunei. These conflicting claims
are a cause of instability and miscalculation, as Richard K. Betts notes in
his essay in East Asian Security.
One example [of instability] is the discord over who owns the
Spratly Islands....In one sense, the issue is trivial and hard to see
as the source of major conflict, since the islands are tiny, barren,
and isolated.....That insignificance, however, abets
miscalculation and unintended provocation. Moreover, if
important amounts of oil turn up in the area, greed will compound
national honor as potential fuel for conflict.
It is worth noting that the protest by Vietnam was lodged with the
Ambassador of China in Hanoi and after the death of Deng on February
19, 1997. China had sent a drilling crew to the Spratly Islands, and
Vietnam reacted in predictable fashion. These islands are 500 miles south
of the closest point in China. Is this enough to create an unintended
provocation or was it intentional?. During a speech to the People's
Liberation Army (PLA) general staff in late 1992, there was a deliberate

leak to the Hong Kong South China News. The Chinese government had
decided to acquire an aircraft carrier and settle the Spratly Islands by force
if Vietnam did not accept Chines terms by 1997. No operational carrier
was acquired by China, but it has other options.
Having acquired Sukhoi jets from the Soviet Union, China could offer its
tiny Navy air cover from fields on Hainan, a mere 250 miles from the
Spratly Islands. China simply does not yet have the ability to project its air
or sea power to any great distance. Singapore is far more sophisticated in
its purchase of military hardware. The same is true of Malaysia. Indonesia
offers new corvettes in its Navy, but its military staff may see the Spratly
Islands as not threatening its own supply of oil. Singapore and Malaysia
have different views of the importance of these tiny islands -- there may
not be quantities of oil significant enough to tip the military equation at
all. And, for its part, China may be having nationalist conflicts in both
Sinkiang and Tibet. Recently, Beijing was the site of bombs exploding on
at least one bus with some killed and wounded. The Security Service
issued orders suggesting the bombs were planted by Uighur nationalists.
Sinkiang is a Chinese autonomous province with some seven million
Uighurs and eight million Han Chinese, many of them having been
ordered to move from their homes in other parts of China. The Uighur
population, however, has been living in the northwest section of Sinkiang,
the Tarim Basin, said by Beijing to be rich in oil.
The new rulers of the PRC have not yet had to disperse a student protest in
Tiananmen Square, the venue of such demonstrations since the May
Fourth Incident of May 4, 1919. In this early use of Tiananmen Square,
this area had its beginnings as a national symbol of protest. On May 4,
1919 young Chinese took to the streets with banners to protest the
government's agreement to accept the ceding of Germany's territorial
concessions in China to Japan while the Treaty of Versailles was being
negotiated following World War I. The warlord ruling North China at the
time responded by beating and arresting scores of demonstrators. Instead
of ending their protest, students widened it by dispersing throughout the
city and continued delivering political speeches about the corrupt
government and its humiliating appeasement of Japan. Slightly more than
six years later, another student demonstration protesting the killing of
thirteen Chines anti-imperialists. The demonstrators called for the
abolition of unequal treaties that gave foreigners extraterritorial immunity
under Chinese law.
On March 18, 1926 students once again marched to Tiananmen Square to

protest warlord Zhanh Zuolin's capitulation to new Japanese demands.
After World War II, this venue continued as a site for devotional
demonstrations favoring Mao and the Communist Party. Mao died in
1976, and a tomb was designed for the Great Helmsman. On April 5, 1976

Zhou Enlai and thousands of Chinese defied a ban on demonstrations by

students who believed Zhou was both fair and moderate. This
demonstration had its origins in the Cultural Revolution ordered by Mao.
Deng himself was reeducated by Red Guards. Then, in 1978, students and
other Chines looking for at least some democracy began pasting up posters
criticizing past Communist Party policies. This protest was named the
Democracy Wall, but Deng, who, by this time, had been rehabilitated,
took a firm hand end even these
A student activist, Wei Jingsheng was arrested and sentenced to fifteen

years in prison on charges of having sold state secrets to a foreigner. He
was released in 1993 in an effort by the government to enhance its chances
of bringing the 2000 Olympic Games to Beijing. During the period from
about 1978 to 1989, critics of Deng argued that altering the structure of
government to exclude democratic political change was self-defeating.
China, they said, could never attain the level of political stability essential
to support long term economic growth. This political schizophrenia
continued right up to June 4, 1989 and the historic student demonstration
of that period. The entire world saw this demonstration in Tiananmenn
Square via television.
In a remarkable book recently published by Random House, the past of

China was captured by the simple camera. Its title was The Chinese
Century A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years. This
collection of previously unpublished photos was edited by Johnathan D.
Spence and Annping Chinn. In an Editor's Note the following is worth
noting "The photographs reproduced in this book are the result of
extensive research in archives, museums, and private collections around
the world, in China, Europe and America..."
China in the late nineteenth century retained astonishing

continuities with what we know of the country in the third century
B.C., when it first became a unified state ruled by an autocratic
Emperor. Successive regimes might have standardized the
written language, put in place a massive centralized
bureaucracy, and built canals and road systems to link the big
commercial centers, yet in 1890 Chinese lives remained
generally unaffected by these changes. Most people still spoke
dialects unintelligible to those from other regions, practiced folk
religions in a bewildering array of local temples, raised families
and arranged marriages according to local traditions, and dealt
with the bureaucracy at any of its levels only when they
absolutely had to. There was, indeed, no way that the traditional
state could control public expressions of dissent were not
tolerated by Deng. China was vast, approximately the size of the
continental United States, and considerably larger than Europe.
The climate and geography of the country ranged from the
freezing ice-coated winters and short growing seasons of
Heilongjiang on the borders with Russia to the north to the lush
tropical agriculture and fisheries of the southwest on the borders

with Vietnam and Burma, and the arid windblown deserts that
stretched from the edges of Tibet to the outer reaches of
Turkestan.
No history of China can be complete without the invaluable photographs

in The Chinese Century and the text that accompanies them. There are
hundreds of them plus an excellent description of not just the photo itself,
but also text with a brief summary of the history to which it relates. In one
scene, there is a dramatic photo showing the utter devastation caused by
the flood of 1991 in Anhui. In this great manmade natural disaster, the
provincial government of Anhui blasted holes in the dikes on the Huai and
Chu Rivers overflowing because of late spring rains. The ensuing flooding
left 900,000 homeless and a further three million cut off to save the area's
coal mines, power plants and down-river cities from being flooded and the
less easily controlled urban population put at risk. Shanghai was only one
example. The figures may not be entirely accurate, but some four million
Chinese are unemployed in that city alone, victims of the Anhui flood and
the loss of arable land in China's rural areas. During the Cultural
Revolution, China had brought into cultivation all untilled but fertile soil -
- and had done colossal environmental damage by plowing up steppe
grassland, stripping hillsides, and draining and cultivating lake beds and
the overflow catchment areas adjacent to great rivers. The story of Hong
Kong is still another example of speculation leading to major uncertainty
after this area reverts to China after June 30, 1997.With Deng's death on
February 19, 1997 one may wonder just what this man did.
Although Deng's reforms were of great significance, they consisted of

nothing more complicated than abandoning a system that had failed
catastrophically twenty years earlier. Curiously the same system failed in
the Soviet Union two decades before that. Statistics are often unreliable,
so they are viewed with mistrust by writers of history. During the 1960s
and 1970s, China's most critical security threat came from the Soviet
Union, which caused about two-thirds of the People's Liberation Army
(PLA) to be routed to the north and northwest in defense of Manchuria. In
1972, Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing and started the slow
rapprochement with the United States, partly as a counterweight to Soviet
influence and occasional border clashes along the Manchurian border with
the Soviet Union. Mao died in 1976.
After the maneuvering for leadership succession, which Deng Xiaoping

won, he called for defense conversion, but also for a military campaign
beyond China's borders. However, he did not foresee the generally poor
performance of the Chinese army when it invaded Vietnam in 1979. On
that occasion, the PLA penetrated deep into Vietnamese territory and
occupied several small provincial capitals. It could not convince the
public, either abroad or at home, that the PLA had won, because it had

suffered heavy casualties. So, instead of teaching the Vietnamese a lesson,

as Deng had instructed, the PLA was taught a lesson it is still working on.
The Soviet threat was minimized by Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in

1979, and Deng believed the PLA needed testing by had failed
catastrophically twenty years earlier. Curiously, the same system failed in
the Soviet Union two decades before that. Deng must share the
responsibility for ignoring the lessons of both earlier failures. While
economic reforms have propelled China in the right directions, the
peasants have gone back to the situation they were in before the
Communist Revolution. The peasants are once again small landowners but
with less arable land to divide up. Deng's successors must deal with the
virtually intractable problem of finding employment for a growing surplus
of labor in the country's rural areas. Chinese leaders also supported
defense conversion, while, at the same time, actually reducing the size of
the PLA by 25 percent. The million plus troops out of jobs were added to
the huge number of Chinese for whom Mao had promised a better quality
of life. Thus, at a time when military spending probably tripled, the
outward appearance was economic growth of the civilian economy. The
PLA actually owned many companies dedicated to civilian production,
and this fact has been shown in the type of aircraft the Chinese air force
has been using. Its aircraft are old, probably obsolete Soviet aircraft.
Having been stunned by the Persian Gulf War and America's use of "smart
weapons" and modern aircraft, China seems to have a long way to go to
convert its military into a well-armed and efficient military force. The last
time it was seen in action was 1989. Then, Deng authorized the PLA to
suppress the student protest in Tiananmen Square. The slaughter of
unarmed students is hardly the sort of training Chines troops will need to
invade and regain Taiwan, even though Beijing has stated on more than
one occasion that it will reacquire Taiwan by peaceful means.
This statement is on the same level of truth as it is currently displaying in

Hong Kong. The United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China
signed a "Joint Declaration....on the Question of Hong Kong on December
19, 1984. There are a number of paragraphs in this declaration that should
be noted. With effect from July 1, 1997 the PRC has established certain
polices; one of them was based on Article 31 of the PRC Constitution. It
permits "the state to establish special administrative regions when
necessary." Thus, Hong Kong will become the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region and effectively govern this former Crown colony.
Article v of the basic policies reads as follows:
The current social and economic Systems in Hong Kong will

remain unchanged, and so will the lifestyle. Rights and freedoms
including those of the person, of speech of the press, of
assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of
correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic

research, and of religious belief will be ensured by law in the

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
In the period between 1984 and 1989, Hong Kong factions tried to
expedite the pace of democratic change; they wanted to have a democratic
governing body before the 1997 turnover. In 1989, however, the student
protest in Tiananmen Square occurred. On June 3, 1989 and for days
thereafter, Beijing ordered the PLA to crush this demonstration. In fact,
the PLA killed hundreds, some say thousands of unarmed student
protesters. Over one million Chinese in Hong Kong demonstrated in favor
of the students. Beijing made sure that this sort of protest would not be
allowed when its handpicked legislature ruled Hong Kong. The
Communist government of the PRC has a long memory; it had not
forgotten the student protest of 1989.
On March 28, 1990 the National People's Congress (NPC) convened in

Beijing. By unanimous vote, the NPC established the Hong Kong Special
Administrative District effective on July 1, 1997. Another resolution
enabled the NPC to set up the Basic Law Committee which would advise
the Standing Committee on the interpretation and amendment of the Basic
Law. A third resolution established a preparatory committee in 1996; it
would be responsible for setting up the first government of Hong Kong. At
least half its members would be from Hong Kong, and the other half
would be appointed in Beijing. The rulers there provided no judicial
system allowing legal challenges to actions of the government of Hong
Kong. At least two years before the turnover, Beijing had made it clear
that democratic elections in Hong Kong would never occur. The Beijing
government disclosed that the Legislative Council would all be appointed
not elected by Hong Kong voters.
The courts established by the rulers in Beijing will not protect human
rights or property rights. Furthermore, American-owned businesses in
Hong Kong will have to toe the Communist Party line or face eviction
after cancellation of their corporate licenses for conduct considered
counterrevolutionary by Beijing. Competition may but will probably not
occur, except on Beijing's terms.
In 1997, Tung Cheehwa, the shipping magnate was chosen in by Beijing

as Hong Kong's first appointed Chief Executive. Tung declared that "Hong
Kong was extremely vulnerable to external forces." The new government,"
he said, "must strike a balance between civil liberties and social stability,
personal rights and social obligations, individual interests and the common
good." With Tung's proposal, all organizations and societies will now be
required to register with the police. In the past, organizations had only to
notify the government of their existence. Furthermore, the local
government will have the power to ban any organization "in the interest of
national security." It is really quite difficult to visualize any situation in

Hong Kong with all its police and PLA military units that could possibly
threaten local security. National security would involve some vital interest
that had to be protected by the state. Free speech is expected to disappear
after June 30, 1997. Article xii also states that:
The above-stated basic policies of the People's Republic of

China Joint Declaration will be stipulated, in a Basic Law of the
Hong Kong regarding Hong Kong and the elaboration of them in
Annex 1 to this Special Administrative Region of the People's
Republic of China , by the National People's Congress of the
People's Republic of China, and remain unchanged for 50 years.
The National People's Congress is Beijing's "rubber stamp" organization

for all laws The last paragraph of Article XIII in Annex 1 provides that
"The provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights as applied to Hong Kong shall remain in force."
Curiously, no one listed the language of the portions of these documents

that were to remain in effect. In view of this ambiguity, Beijing will
probably argue that these vital documents have no force or effect, having
been passed by the United Nations General Assembly about forty-five
years ago. None of these solemn documents and the promises made in
them in 1984 seem to bother the Chinese today. For all practical purposes,
the leaders in Beijing have ordered the Basic Law of 1990 shredded.
Predictably, the reaction in Hong Kong was one of anger. Christine Loh,
an independent lawyer who will lose her seat when the PRC replaces
Hong Kong's elected legislature, said in the New York Times, "The
proposals cast a pall of doubt over the future of every civic, community
and non-governmental organization in Hong Kong. No one in Hong Kong
has serious worries about social stability. As a society, of course, we do
have real problems to tackle corruption, for example. But it is perfectly
clear that social stability is not one of our problems."
At Commercial Radio's morning talk show, "Teapot in a Tempest, "

callers were fierce in their denunciation of Tung's proposals. When one
caller wondered whether it would do any good to express opposition, the
popular host of the show, replied "If they get 300,000 letters saying the
same thing, they will notice." Emily Lau, an independent legislator who
had been strongly critical of China's approach to Hong Kong described
Tung's proposals as dangerous and unnecessary. She announced a protest
for the weekend and planned to march to Tung's office. Such a peaceful
protest would not be approved by the police after June 30, 1997. The
South China Morning Post, the leading English language newspaper
expressed alarm. "It has not been explained why the police require greater
powers and how they will be applied," one of its editorial writers noted.
"But the fact that the changes are felt to be so important by the future

authorities can only be seen as a sign of a more restrictive approach which

places insufficient faith in the civic sense of the people of the territory."
The five countries shown in the maps below are all newly independent
countries of the former Soviet Union. Geographically, they form what is
loosely used to describe Central Asia. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed
and centrifugal force drove those countries on the periphery to demand
and get their political independence from Russia. The entire area has a
population of about 44 million people, with Uzbekistan the largest with 21
million, and Kazakhstan second, with 17.3 million They are also new
members of The North Atlantic Cooperation Council. The Secretary
General of NATO, Dr. Javier Solana visited these countries in March,
1997, presumably to discussed their new status as members of The North
Atlantic Cooperation Council (NAAC). With the exception of Tajikistan,
the people of these countries all speak a Turkic language, but they have
difficulty understanding each other. Tajik, the language spoken is a dialect
of Persian similar to Farsi and Dari. The people of Turkmenistan, for
example, speak Turkmen, while the people of Kyrgyzstan speak Kirghiz.
have their own variation. However, the official language is Russian. About
56 percent of the 17 million people in Kazakhstan speak Kazakh, but the
language of inter-ethnic communication is Russian.
Tajikistan & Kyrgystan

Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan & Kazakhstan
Approximately the same linguistic mix exists in Uzbekistan. Before the

collapse of the old Soviet Union, the Soviets ethnic tensions in Central
Asia had their origins in Moscow. Large groups of Turkmen, Uzbeks,
Tajiks, and Kyrgyz were forced by the Soviets to move from one Central
Asian republic to another. Uzbekistan, with its population of twenty-one
million people suggests it may have the greatest potential of the five
Central Asian republics to fill the role of political anchor in the region.
President Islam Karimov has announced that October, 1997, was the
2500th anniversary of Khiva in Uzbekistan. Karimov was its president
until a five-year term expired whereupon he authorized a referendum
extending his term. Reports of the election were mixed. However, there
has been no one publicly disagreeing with the administration's figures of a
99.6 percent vote approving the outcome. Karimov insisted he was
committed to economic reform and democratic institutions. However,
Karimov's plans for opening the country to democracy and foreign
investment clashed with the Communist's fear of losing control of power.
There is no independent press, protest meetings are forbidden, and
opposition political parties were banned before the referendum vote.
Efforts to diversify the cotton-based economy depended largely on foreign
investment, but corruption and broken promises drove some foreign
investors and deeply offended those entrepreneurs that chose to remain.
The population has been secular in its orientation, and security police kept
it that way by intimidating the mullahs and Islamic fundamentalists.
Alcohol was freely available in the major cities of Tashkent, in the Uzbek
capitol, Bukhara, and Khiva. Bukhara was different in at least one
important area. It was a city regarded as holy by Nakshbandi Moslems.
They represented the view that the Koran did not require others to adopt
any particular religion. Its mullahs derive their faith from the Koran, but
must preach tolerance and a peace. This order named after its 14th century
founder, preaches an all-embracing form of Islam that abhors sectarianism
and orthodoxy. It claims 40 million adherents in dozens of countries.

When early Moslem armies invaded a city and began to kill women and
children, Mohammad, the Nakshbandi order believes, stopped them. They
are infidels, the soldiers said. However, Mohammad replied by saying the
soldiers were once infidels themselves.
Music from nearby Tajikistan offers persuasive evidence of its culture. It

was probably composed long before the ugly civil war within its borders
in 1997. Music by Yulduz Usmanova sung in Uzbekistan offers another
aspect of Central Asia's culture. The New York Times ran a story on
Uzbek culture on December 8, 1997. Datelined Bukhara, its author offered
a tantalizing glimpse of a culture that had all but disappeared. "The Silk
Road, one of history's greatest trading routes, once traversed Central Asia
and the caravans that passed through Bukhara and other cities, including
Samarkand and Tashkent, left a rich cultural heritage. People here became
expert in a wide variety of crafts. Men wore richly embroidered caftans,
women covered themselves with jewelry, and girls collected handmade
objects of beauty for their dowries."...An exhibition of 19th century Uzbek
textiles was at San Francisco's deYoung Museum until March, 1998 when
it opened in Washington.
During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols, a nomadic and warlike
people, ruled much of China and Central Asia. Genghis Khan, for
example, captured entire cities sparing only the artists, artisans, and
craftsmen. He killed the rest of the population, but the artists were sent to
various areas and spent their lives creating silk pieces, tapestries, and even
clothes. Museum experts have been doing detective work to locate the
origins of this evidence of Central Asian culture.
13th Century Mongolian Tapestries
Anne Wardwell and James Watt were the researchers who unearthed at
least one piece now on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is
entitled "When Silk was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese textiles. In
1989, Mrs Wardwell acquired a 13th-century tapestry of gold and silk. It
had images of winged lions with long tails looped around rosettes. A year
later, another tapestry from the same period arrived at the museum. It was
emblazoned with eagles, dragons and panthers which also had tails looped
around rosettes. Mrs Wardwell knew she had solved the puzzle when they

were seen together. One was woven by artists sent east, and the other by
artists in the Iranian world. This finding supports the idea of migration by
artists. Other pieces in the exhibition include some from Uzbekistan, a few
from Tibet and some by Uighur artists from what is now Sinnliang. In his
travels, Marco Polo carried pieces from these areas back to Venice, but his
routes were known as the Silk Routes in the 13th century.
Kazakhstan is in no position to be the political anchor, even with its oil

fields. There has been too much ethnic hostility that recently surfaced with
the end of monolithic Communist control. The six million Russians in the
republic, formerly the favored class, now face the hostility of a society
dominated by Muslims.. Furthermore, Kazakhstan has serious pollution
problems, obsolete technology, and not much experience in foreign
markets. However, Kazakhstan has the oil, and in huge amounts. As a
result, major western oil companies and Lukhoil of Russia and China's
petroleum ministry were all pressing Kazakh President Nursultan
Nazarbayev to sign production agreements for oil. However, Russia lost
this round. In October, 1997, Nazarbayev told Russian Prime Muinister,
Victor Chernomyrdin that Kazakhstan would sign production sharing
agreements with France's Total SA, Royal Dutch/Shell, a British
Petroleum-Statoil alliance, Italy's AGIP SpA, and Mobil Corporation of
the United States to develop some of its very valuable offshore oil fields.
Russia has taken the position that the Caspian Sea is an inland lake, not a
sea. Consequently, one of its littoral states cannot exploit resources that
belong to all its littoral states. International law does not support this
position. This so far unresolved dispute has already sent tremors through
an $8 billion international oil consortium to the south, but on the Caspian
Sea.
Since 1991 and the independence of some former Soviet republics, Russia
has remained something of a big brother to most of these republics, such
as Kazakhstan. As a result, Russia retains a strong presence in Central
Asian states like Kazakhstan. It is obligated to Russia for access to Soviet-
built pipelines to export their oil and gas. Russia lost some of this big
brother status when, in 1997, it deployed Cossack troops along its border
with Kazakhstan. It was an ugly reminder of Cossack colonization of the
Kazakh steppes, attempting to move the borders of the old Tsarist empire
to the detriment of the once-nomadic Kazakhs.
Tajikistan features civil war between two different Islamic groups and old-
style Communism. Democracy seems unlikely in mountainous Tajikistan,
and the civil war, every bit as savage as the war in Bosnia, seems without
end. As recently as August 1997, there was no one capable of brokering a
peace agreement. Originally, the fighting forced tens of thousands of
Islam-led Tajiks to flee to Afghanistan. The winners carved Tajikistan into
fiefs run by local war lords who allowed Emomali Rakhmonov to operate

as the nominal leader of these war lords. He has no power of his own.
Russian jets have intervened occasionally in this vicious civil war with no
end in sight. Furthermore, every time there is an earthquake in the region,
ordinary activities stop. In 1911, an earthquake in the Pamir Mountains
occurred, and several cubic kilometers of the Mizkol Range slid down,
burying the village of Osoi and damming the Murgob River Valley. Sarez
Lake, created by this dam, is some sixty kilometers long. The
disintegration of this dam would release a wall of water that would destroy
everything on its way to Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Periodic plans to lower the water level or channel it in a benign direction
have run out of money. A major earthquake would probably breach the
dam and lead to destruction on a vast scale.
Both the Russian Tsars and the Soviet Union after 1921 confirmed
Uzbekistan's position in Central Asia. The Russians elevated Tashkent to
their military and administrative center soon after conquering it in 1865.
After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Stalin simply incorporated
Uzbekistan into a Soviet republic. It was still the seat of Russia's military
presence in Central Asia when the USSR collapsed in 1991. However,
before 1991 Soviet rule had developed Uzbekistan's economy siting major
plants for the production of aircraft, buses, and tractors, as well as
refineries for oil from neighboring Turkmenistan. However, the real
economic importance of these five republics is a solid base of natural
resources of which oil and natural gas seem the most promising.
Kazakhstan, for example, will soon be producing 200,000 barrels of oil a
day developed by Chevron and other international oil companies in the
Tenghiz field alone. In Turkmenistan, there are still enormous reserves of
natural gas; some say in excess of 45 trillion cubic meters. Other natural
resources of great importance to industry, such as gold, tungsten, and
manganese are abundant in Uzbekistan. Agriculture is favored by weather
suitable for cotton, and Uzbekistan has become one of the world's largest
producers of this export commodity.
Saparmurad Niyazov is the Communist president of Turkmenistan and

recently announced the construction of a natural gas pipeline into Iran. He
won the presidency in 1992 unopposed . Niyazov has the unnerving habit
of firing his trade ministers. Once an exporter of natural gas to Russia,
Turkmenistan has been boxed in by that country. Russia closed down
Turkmenistan's only pipeline to Eastern Europe, forcing Niyazov to sell
gas to neighboring countries controlled by Russia. These countries,
however, could not pay their bills in any convertible currency.
Turkmenistan was left with over $1 billion in unpaid bills. The new
pipeline to Iran won't help Turkmenistan for almost a year; money paid by
Iran for gas must first be applied to the cost of the pipeline. Niyazov has
never explained the details of the Iran pipeline; he relies instead on his
own image machine to bolster his standing.

Chinese officials have claimed for years that the Tarim Basin in Sinkiang
had vast oil reserves. They have now given up looking and worked out a
deal with Kazakhstan. On August 1, 1997 Kazakhstan announced it had
granted the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) the exclusive
right to negotiate a contract to develop the Uzen oilfield. China is also
talking about investing over $1 billion to build a 1,300mile pipeline to
carry Kazakh oil to China. More controversially, it wants to send some of
the oil across the Caspian Sea by tanker to Iran for onward delivery to
Europe. China will have local problems with ethnic Uighurs in Sinkiang
through which the pipeline would be built. Uighurs are a distinct ethnic
group without a country. In this respect, they resemble the Kurds, and they
are just as troublesome. Furthermore, Chinese attempts to put down
rebellion may draw angry reactions from Uighur emigres. If Kazakhstan's
government ignores Uighur feelings it might find itself the focus of Turkic
wrath. Nursultan Nazarbaev, Kazakhstan's president, seems determined to
move its capital city from Almaty to Akmola, Hardly anyone has shown
much enthusiasm for this move to a climate in winter that's well below
zero.
Almost in anticipation of China's agreement with Kazakhstan to develop

the Uzen oilfield, the Clinton Administration announced it would drop its
opposition to oil and natural gas pipelines. They ran through about 740
miles of Iran to Turkey, probably its port city of Ceyhan on the
Mediterranean Sea. The date of this announcement was July 25, 1997 just
days before the inauguration of Iran's new president, Mohammed
Khatami, described by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as a
"moderate." The Clinton Administration also said that shipping natural gas
or oil through a part of Iran would not violate provisions of the Iran-Libya
Sanctions Act signed by Clinton in 1996. This seems a rather narrow
interpretation of a law enacted to prevent Iran from benefiting Iran
financially. The natural gas would come from Turkmenistan, and the oil
would flow from wells in the Caspian Sea Basin.
Uzbekistan's rivers originate in the mountains of Tajikistan and

Kyrgyzstan, but the water is largely lost to irrigation and evaporation. The
diversion of the waters of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for irrigation has
caused the Aral Sea to shrink by almost half. The Aral Sea has become
increasingly saline, and its waters have been polluted by chemical
fertilizers and insecticides carried into it by feeder rivers.
Water and soil pollution in Uzbekistan were legacies of the Soviet

occupation from 1924 to the present time.. Eventually, this spreading
pollution caused serious environmental damage affecting the health of the
Uzbek populace. In June, 1990, Uzbekistan declared that its own laws
displaced those enacted by the Soviet Union and applied uniformly
throughout it within all other Soviet republics. After 1991, opposition

parties were allowed to organize but were later suppressed, and Islam
Karimov was elected president in 1994 as chairman of the People's
Democratic Party once controlled by Communists. In 1989, Karimov was
First Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party Central Committee. In
1995, the Secretary of Defense in Washington, William Perry visited
Tashkent. He praised Uzbekistan as "an island of stability" in Central
Asia. Its officials responded in kind by being the only Central Asian to
back the American embargo against the sale of Russian nuclear reactors to
Iran. Up to this point, the United States had treated Central Asia as an
afterthought in terms of European security.
In 1997, the view from Washington has changed; five Central Asian
countries are members of the second tier of states belonging to NATO. via
the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech
Republic became associate members of NATO. Article 10 of the treaty
establishing NATO permitted the addition of only European countries to
NATO; Asian countries required a different status. They could be added as
second tier states without amending the NATO treaty and asking the
Senate to ratify the treaty as amended.
The Caspian Sea blocks pipelines from Turkmenistan to the west except
via Iran. However, Russia takes the position that the Caspian Sea is not a
sea at all, but a lake. As such, it must be jointly exploited by the individual
countries along its shores. This position prevents Turkmenistan from
excluding Iran or Russia from negotiations contemplating the sale of
natural gas to Europe or Pakistan and India or at least through Russia to
Europe. With consent from Moscow, Turkmenistan may tunnel under the
Caspian Sea to ship gas to Turkey and eventually to the Mediterranean
Sea, but only at a cost considered prohibitively high by Western oil
companies that would be building the pipeline.
In February, 1997 Russia's Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, offered

a compromise. He proposed dividing the Caspian Sea into zones.
Azerbaijan, however, has refused to accept this proposal and maintained
its position that the Caspian is a sea, not a lake. The United States
supported this position. Presumably, Clinton brought this up when he met
with Russia's Boris Yeltsin in March, 1997. Until the status of the Caspian
Sea has been settled, oil and gas delivery by Turkmenistan to Europe is on
hold. Kazakhstan has the same problem. It is one of the four countries
with borders on the Caspian Sea. Iran and Russia are the other two. In
June, 1997 a major American oil company announced it wanted to build a
$2.3 billion pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan.
The key to this deal was Afghanistan. It had to be at peace with those
countries around it and peace had to exist within Afghanistan. For a few
hours in June, these conditions existed. However, the Taliban extremists
were again fighting each other. The opposition to the Taliban is made up

of Uzbeks and another faction led by a leader of the Hazara people. Russia
is not far from being the principal opposition to the pipeline from
Turkmenistan. Moscow blocked natural gas exports from Turkmenistan to
Europe, and not religious warfare within Afghanistan has blocked another
route that would earn hard currency for Turkmenistan. Old warriors of the
Soviet Union might have told the warring factions in Afghanistan how
hopeless peace might be; the Soviet Union had forces in that country from
1980 to 1989 and retreated in defeat.
Tajikistan has had a civil war in the last three years. It has also
experienced three changes of government during the same period (1994).
The current president Emonmali Rakhmonov was elected to the
presidency in November, 1994, yet he has been in power since 1992.
Underlying the civil war are deeply rooted regional and clan-based
animosities that pit one group primarily from a particular region against a
secular and Islam-led opposition in another region. There seems to be no
end in sight. Government and opposition representatives have held
periodic rounds of United Nations-mediated peace talks. In September,
1994, government and opposition leaders agreed to a ceasefire. Russian-
led peacekeeping forces are deployed throughout the country, and Russian
border guards are stationed along the Tajik-Afghanistan border. In its
westernmost region, Sinkiang an autonomous region of the People's
Republic of China is keeping a wary eye on this civil war. It might spill
over and stir up unwanted nationalism amongst those Uighurs living in
China. It was noted earlier herein that Dr. Solana of NATO visited all of
the five states listed in the title of this chapter, except for Tajikistan.
NATO regarded that country as so involved in a civil war with Russian
troops patrolling Tajikistan and its borders with Afghanistan that it could
not be considered for membership in the North Atlantic Cooperation
Council.
The forty states participating in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council

(NACC) and other member countries of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) able and willing to contribute, were
invited to join the NATO member states of the Partnership for Peace.
Some twenty-six accepted and in most cases Individual Partnership
Programs have been agreed and are being implemented. The extension of
NATO programs into Asia occurred only because the former Soviet
Union, now the Confederation of States (CIS) shed some newly
independent states, and some states declared their independence from
Russia but remained members of the confederation. Five of the forty new
members were spun off from Russia in one way or another during or after
1991. They are: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan.

Other former Russian states now members of NACC include Armenia,

Belaurus, Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan. This indirect expansion of
NATO was severely criticized in Moscow as a move designed to further
weaken Russia. President Yeltsin reluctantly agreed to this indirect
expansion; he may have had no choice because of the weakness of Russian
forces. Most of them had not been paid for months, and some of the
soldiers wanted to be relieved of any obligation, i.e., conscription, to serve
in the military. Active duty Russian troops were already serving in
Tajikistan and Georgia as peacekeepers. Moscow did not have the funds to
pay the others, except during intermittent periods when Moscow was
driven to pay the armed forces.
The United Nations has followed an indirect route to peace in Georgia. It

has an Observer Mission in Georgia with the tongue-twisting acronym of
UNOMIG. This mission was originally established to verify the ceasefire
agreement of July 27, 1993 between the Government of Georgia and the
Abkhaz authorities After fighting broke out in September, 1993, the
Mission was given an Interim Mandate by the Security Council. Finally,
there was a new ceasefire in May, 1994. The peacekeeping Mission had
new responsibilities. It was responsible for monitoring the separation of
forces -- CIS and Abkhaz forces, verify that troops from either side to
remain in the security zone, and to control the position of heavy military
equipment. As of December 31, 1996 the Mission had personnel from
twenty-two nations including the United States acting essentially as
observers. They were also charged with the responsibility of maintaining
the "territorial integrity of Georgia." The United Nations has elected to
treat the fighting in Georgia as a civil war limited in scope. Georgia is a
member of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. The NACC, however,
has temporarily deferred to the United Nations mandate which is moving
in the same direction as NACC, toward stability or peace.
Nuclear weapons made in the former Soviet Union are the source of
widespread concern Many of these weapons of mass destruction were
originally in Kazakhstan, and they remained there after this republic
acquired its independence. By the end of 1993, Kazakhstan had been
officially accepted as a member by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. Article III of the Agency's Statute
authorized the IAEA "to establish and administer safeguards designed to
ensure that special fissionable and other material, services, equipment,
facilities and information... are not used in such a way as to further any
military purpose." The objective of most Western countries has been to
halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They have moved forward on
this issue with Start I and Start II in 1993, and the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty ratified in 1967. Start II was signed by Russia and the
United States calling on both to slash their nuclear arsenals of long-range

weapons from 7,500 to 3,500 each. Both agreed to eliminate their huge
land-based missiles that carry up to ten warheads each.
The Senate ratified this treaty in 1996. The Duma, Russia's parliament has
yet to take it up. The headlong rush of President Clinton to expand NATO
has left President Boris Yeltsin with a club over Clinton's head. If Clinton
tells Republican hard-liners in the Senate that the NATO expansion gives
Russia no vetoes and that NATO expansion will push right up against
Russia's present borders, Yeltsin will tell the Duma the motives behind the
NATO expansion are unclear. Once the Duma sees NATO's expansion as
unclear, Start II will never be ratified there. In a related move, Russia and
Ukraine signed a friendship treaty on May 30, 1997 treaty affirmed the
1954 transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine. At the time it collapsed in 1991,
the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was based in Sebastopol, and the treaty
affirmed Russian ownership of the fleet. This means only that Russian
forces necessary to operate the fleet may transit Ukraine for that purpose.
While Ukraine did not oppose the NATO expansion, it had no interest in
joining NATO.
The importance of Russia can scarcely be underestimated. China and

Russia signed a strategic partnership agreement in April, 1997. Russia's
Boris Yeltsin and China's Jiang Zemin jointly celebrated the execution of
this agreement, together with the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, and
Tajikistan, who also signed an agreement that did nothing more than
reduce the number of troops close to their common borders. A month later,
Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma, President of Ukraine, signed a friendship
treaty. China and Russia are big bruising powers who share the
neighborhood with the small fry, but only let them live on the street if they
have commodities needed by both, such as oil. The military shake out
since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union hasn't helped either China
or Russia. Russia hasn't paid its armed force for months except in
devalued rubles, and China has armed itself with obsolete weapons of
Soviet origin. So, as two scholars have noted, China is an empty fortress
surrounded by the Great Wall.. However, both China and Russia have
nuclear weapons so they cannot be moved on to the back shelf for

examination at some later time for policies capable of mass destruction.

Both need to be looked at on a continuing basis, in Russia's case here back
to 1890 or thereabouts to trace its Communist origins from the Tsar of all
the Russians to Lenin and Stalin. For an excellent link to Tsarist Russia.
See the Alexander Palace Time Machine.
In early February, 1913 St.. Petersburg celebrated three hundred years of

Romanov rule over Russia. Only four years later, the monarchy had ended
and a bloody revolution converted the government to Soviets ruled by V.I
Lenin and Alexander Kerensky until 1924. In that year, Lenin died only to
be replaced by Joseph Stalin. The speed at which so momentous a change
had occurred was due to a number of factors. Tsar Nicholas II succeeded
to his position in 1896 when Tsar Alexander died. Nicholas admitted he
had no knowledge of what it took to rule Russia and, in fact, had no
interest in being ruler. He was utterly incompetent, and believed in
autocracy. His wife, Alexandra, was Queen Victoria's granddaughter and
disliked by the Russians. She lived in a manner that did not allow for
contact with lesser mortals except for Rasputin, a mad monk who, from
time to time, helped with the bouts of illness suffered by the little
Tsarevich, a hemophiliac. Orlando Figes, who wrote a massive work on
Russia entitled A People's Tragedy, offered a few thoughts on the
tercentenary jubilee.
In the mind of the ordinary peasant the Tsar was not just a kingly
ruler but a god on earth. He thought of him as a father-figure who
knew all the peasants personally by name, understood their
problems in all their minute details, and, if were not for the evil
boyars, the noble officials who surrounded him, would satisfy
their demands in a Golden Manifesto giving them the land....But
in general the myth of the Good Tsar worked to the benefit of the
crown, and as the revolutionary crisis deepened Nicholas's
propagandists relied increasingly on it.....In fact, the jubilee took
place in the midst of profound social and political crisis -- some
would say even a revolutionary one. Its celebrations were set
against a backdrop of several decades of growing violence,
human suffering and repression, which had set the Tsar's people
against the regime.
In 1861, Tsar Alexander II had emancipated the serfs, just as President

Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves a few years later. This
Emancipation was perhaps the beginning of the peasant revolution. With
freedom from serfdom, the landed gentry had no labor to work on their
estates. Thus, the landed gentry or squires began accumulating debt and
continuing to live in style and at great expense. Over time, the squires sold
off portions of their land to the peasants. Between 1861 and 1900 more
than 40 percent of the gentry's land was sold to the peasants whose
growing land hunger led to a sevenfold increase in land values. There was
a similar rise in rental values. By 1900, two-thirds of the gentry's arable
land had been rented out to the peasants. A depression between 1880 and

1890 forced the peasants to increase the land they ploughed. . This made it
more profitable for the squires to rent out or sell the land rather than
cultivate it. With a very few exceptions, the gentry had absolutely no idea
of how to operate a farm, grow food. The home of the gentry, once filled
with expensive furniture and European art gradually fell into decay. A few
of the landed gentry were unwilling to see their enterprises go under.
Prince Georgii Lvov was one of them. He and his family were neighbors
of Count Lyof Tolstoi and capable of work. With his sons, Lvov turned a
failing agricultural enterprise around and made a profit from this point on.
Lvov and others like him became the liberals of the rural areas of Russia.
Prince Lvov belonged to the elected local assembly -- Figes calls them
zemsvtos -- and the local rural volost was a smaller unit comprising one or
two villages. The peasants resented the local assemblies, because they
were never elected to such an office, and the Tsar, together with his
ministers saw these assemblies as hot beds of liberalism.
While the monarchy relied on the military, it did not treat it at all well. In
fact, the mostly conscript army was overwhelmingly peasant, and officers
merely perpetuated the feudal system within the ranks. All this led to poor
morale. And the demoralization of the army was also connected to its
increasing role in the suppression of civilian protests. The defeat of the
Russian army during the Crimean War was followed by a humiliating and
costly campaign against Turkey in 1877. They left the Russian military
fare down on the list of bureaucratic priorities. So even the officer class
sometimes had to spend its own money of equipment not considered by
the Duma. For various reasons, many peasant migrated to the urban areas
and lost touch with the primarily oral culture of the village and the
accessibility to the church of those who remained in the rural areas. In the
urban setting there were not enough churches to serve so many rootless
peasants.
The younger peasants aspired to own property themselves; they saw no

future in the rule of the elders. The growing literacy of these younger
peasants was a source of individualism. Literacy in Russia rose from 21
percent of the Empire's population in 1897 to 40 percent on the eve of
World War I in 1914. By building more schools outside the urban areas,
the government was hastening its own end. The role of the peasant was to
live and work in utter poverty. Without enough capital to modernize their
farms, the peasants had to reduce the size of the fallow land. This only
made matters worse; the soil was exhausted by being overworked while
livestock herds (the main source of fertilizer) were reduced. By 1900, a
third of the peasant households did not even own a horse. These peasants
had to cultivate the land by attaching themselves to a plough. There was a
growing resentment to the Tsar's tax collectors; the peasants invented
ways of avoiding the payment of even insignificant taxes. Many peasants
migrated to the cities, where they found the Tsar reluctant to better the lot

of the worker through factory legislation.Even when it did enact laws,

employers ignored their application with impunity.
Radical intelligentsia of this period included many writers, including Karl

Marx. In 1872, his Das Capital was submitted to the Tsarist censors. In
German, the language of this book was so dense, the censors approved its
publication. The first censor noted that "very few people in Russia would
read it, and even fewer would understand it." The second censor, noting
the book attacked the British factory system, read that the capitalist
exploitation Marx described had never been experienced in Russia. The
book was an instant success, and its print run of 3000 was sold within the
year.
In January, 1904 the Japanese attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in
Manchuria. The Tsar and his advisers saw victory as around the corner.
However, the Russian army turned out to be poorly armed with obsolete
equipment, and the sheer incompetence of the military commanders stuck
literally to the military doctrines of the previous century. The government
autocracy had shown that it was incapable of defending the national
interest, and Russia had to sign a humiliating treaty with Japan in 1905.
This was the year in which Russia had its Tiananmen Square massacre but
in St.. Petersburg. Some 150,000 workers marched toward the Winter
Palace to petition the Tsar to do something about poor working conditions.
These unarmed marchers were mowed down by the guns of the Tsar and
the sabres of the Tsar's Cossacks. Bloody Sunday followed by strikes
throughout the country and student protests closing all the schools of
Russia marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution. A national strike
in October, 1905 should have alerted the Tsar. Instead, he spent the month
hunting. Count Sergei Witte requested an audience with the Tsar, but it
was not granted until October 9. Witte had brought with him the outline of
a constitutional monarchy, an elected Duma and Cabinet government. Tsar
Nicholas signed the agreement presented by Witte, but nothing really was
accomplished; the Tsar waited only to the end of what he saw as a crisis
and then junked the agreement. The Tsar was unrelentingly hostile to any
idea of constitutional reform and remained so until 1917 when events
forced him to abdicate. Soon after the violence of 1905, the Jews were
retroactively blamed, a charge without evidence but supported by the Tsar
and his police throughout Russia. During the post-Bloody Sunday period,
V. I. Lenin wrote from Zurich encouraging the rebellious to unite.
Alexander Kerensky was one of those who listened and acted in 1917 as
did Leon Trotsky.
The threat of war in Europe had increased after the events of 1905. The
Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires were both breaking apart under
pressure from nationalism. By 1914, the Tsar himself was of the view that
the time had come for a firm stand against Austria. If it became essential

to protect Russia's vital interests, a war was certain, and Russia was too
weak to withstand a long war of attrition which the Anglo-German rivalry
was likely to produce. Thus, a violent social revolution was bound to be
the result in Russia. The government did not have the trust of the largely
peasant army. The Tsar ordered Russian mobilization on August 1, 1914,
and the die was cast. In the first few weeks of bloody fighting, the
Russians advanced some 140 miles, but a combination of tactical surprise
and poor communications forced the Russians to retreat at two key battles,
where Russia lost some 250,000 trained professional soldiers. Thereafter,
the new conscript army, badly trained and poorly led produced one
military disaster after another. Once again the Russian army was ill fed
and poorly clothed during the cold winter of 1914. It was not long before
the army was ridden with disease. Unexpectedly, the high rate of
casualties decimated the troops and placed unsustainable burdens on
medical attention and evacuation. The government had dragged conscripts
into a war they could not win, and morale sank to new lows to be replaced
by anger and revolutionary conduct. The Tsar announced he would take
command of the troops at the front, but he had no experience in military
command and by leaving St.. Petersburg -- renamed Petrograd -- he
allowed his ministers to conspire behind him.
In the winter of 1916, desertion of the soldiers began and turned into a
torrent. However, when they returned from a rapidly changing front, a
combination of cold and strikes led to a bread shortage. In Petrograd, these
and other conditions led to a mutiny of the soldiers. The Tsarist authorities
lost all military power in the nation's capital. Soldiers and civilians fought
side by side and raided depots storing arms. Chaos had to be ended and
order restored. It was and on March 3, 1917 the Tsar abdicated. A vacuum
at the top was the result, and Prince Sergei Lvov tried to fill it with
appointments to a Provisional Government. This body moved like a snail,
and it was not at all what Lenin had in mind. He arrived in Petrograd via
the Finland Station, presenting his April Theses on the next day. "The
Russian bourgeoisie was too feeble to carry out a democratic revolution;
and that this would have to be carried out by the proletariat instead.....the
whole of Europe was on the brink of a socialist revolution, the Russian
Revolution did not have to confine itself to bourgeois democratic
objectives. But the practical implications of the Theses -- that the
Bolsheviks should cease to support the February Revolution and should
move directly towards the establishment of the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat -- went far beyond anything that all but the extreme left-
wingers in the party had ever considered before." The Provisional
Government, however, approved sending a delegation to Brest-Litovsk to
discuss an armistice with the Germans. After stalling for time, the Russian
delegation agreed to sign this treaty which left the Ukraine to the
Germans. At last, Lenin was free impose his revolution from Moscow.

The capital had been moved there from Petrograd to signify Russia's Asian
orientation. Lenin and Trotsky both approved of this move in early 1918
The White Russians -- these were the conservatives fighting a rearguard

civil war with the Red Bolsheviks -- tried to save what they could, and
General Anton Dennikin led the so-called Volunteers until his death. As
Figes put it:
The State Unity Council and the National Centre were the only
two groups with any real influence, sharing the posts in the
Dennikin government. The former was monarchist and denied
the legitimacy of the February Revolution. The latter was Kadet
and pledged to restore the Constituent Assembly.....The White
leaders...failed to adapt to the new revolutionary world in which
the civil war had to be fought. They made no effort to develop
policies that might appeal to the peasants or the national
minorities, although the support of both was essential. They were
too firmly rooted in the old Russia.
The defeat of Germany in 1918 was probably the only development that
could have allowed the civil war to continue with the Allied forces
supporting the Whites.The Whites also undermined whatever legitimacy
they possessed. Peasants deserted in droves, and when caught, they were
publicly flogged. This repression only drove more of them into the arms of
the Reds. However, in the summer of 1918, the Reds were facing defeat
on all fronts. Lenin introduced mass conscription which produced an army
of peasants. This had useful consequence; it reduced or ended the
domination of the working class in the military, a consequence not
unwelcome to Lenin. However, the Reds needed all the men it could get.
By 1920, the Red army had grown to five million men, but not all of them
were dedicated Bolsheviks. In fact, the army had grown so rapidly,
Russian production could not keep up the military's needs. As a result,
desertions increased; most of them were peasants who had to grow food
for their own families as well as for the army which normally
requisitioned food. According to Figes:
Half a million Red Army soldiers joined the Bolshevik Party

during the civil war. These were the missionaries of the
revolution. They carried Bolshevism, its ideas and its methods,
back to their own towns and villages, where they flooded into the
Soviet institutions during the early 1920s. The whole of the
Soviet apparatus was thus militarized... The success of the Red
Army increasingly led to the application of military methods
throughout the Soviet system.
This may not have been what the peasants wanted, but they really had no
choice. The urban crisis of this period in 1920 was only partly caused by
the breakdown of Russian infrastructure. The railway system had virtually
collapsed, a wartime casualty that slowed the delivery of critical food to

the cities. The rest of it began with reluctance of the peasants to sell food
for paper money; it was worthless. As a result, millions of people fled
from the cities and tried to settle in the countryside Lenin himself
recognized it might have been better for the Bolsheviks had they
established a market economy rather that the Stalinism of the planned
economy.
In 1918, the situation of the royal family took a turn for the worse. Trotsky
had planned a show trial for the Tsar with Trotsky himself as prosecutor.
Instead, the Tsar and his entire family were moved to Ekaterinberg where
he and all members of the family were executed on July 17, 1918. Since
this date, evidence has surfaced that Lenin ordered the execution
himself.The bodies were later found where the local Cheka had buried
them. A 1992 DNA test done in Great Britain showed conclusively that
the bodies were of the Romanov family.
Historians are not uniformly in agreement that this execution was the first
step in the direction of the Red Terror; Trotsky has said "we must put an
end once and for all to the Papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of
human life." This is entirely consistent with Felix Dzerzhinsky's conduct
as head of the Cheka, later renamed the KGB. He spent half his adult life
in Tsarist prisons and labor camps and learned the system from the inside.
It was not surprising if he supported infliction on his victims of the same
cruelty he had suffered all those years.
Maxim Gorky was by far the most outspoken critic of the Red Terror.
Indeed, he wrote both plays and books still available in paperback
translations. After his death in 1936, Gorky was practically canonized as
the father of Soviet literature and ranked with Anton Chekhov, Leonid
Andreyev, and Lyof Tolstoy. Gorky's political sympathies are annoyingly
obvious, but he couldn't resist a little preaching on his radical opinions.
Still, there is something horribly fascinating about watching Gorky's
characters in The Summer People brood and argue away the summer as, in
the distance, the revolution that will end their way of life may be seen on
the horizon.
Under Lenin's name, not Stalin's, the Cheka was made immune from
criticism and became a vast police state. The Cheka made terror an
integral part of the Bolshevik system in the civil war and later. The Cheka,
and later the KGB, was the last stop on the road to a Siberian labor camp
or death on the part of those who were charged with counterrevolutionary
activities. Lenin failed to understand the nature of the party's bureaucratic
problem; it was corruption. With a centrally planned economy, the
corruption existed at the center as well as at the periphery. Lenin
undertook party purges to weed out the undesirables who gravitated to the
Bolsheviks as a way of advancement in the party. Lenin often did not

understand the chaos and reduced morale of what he had done. He had, for
example,organized a People's Commissariat to inspect the apparatus. It
combined the two functions of state inspection and workers' control. Lenin
believed this apparatus would make the state democratically accountable.
It had the opposite effect, creating a huge new bureaucracy accountable
only to Stalin.
In retrospect, the Bolsheviks really extemporized as time passed.

Communism may have begun as the party of the Bolsheviks, but neither
Lenin nor Marx played much of a role shaping party policies based on
what they had written years before the revolution. Improvisation produced
terror to enforce the plan of the day. At the center of this workers'
paradise, was control of the food supply.
Smallholding farms produced little for the market, and in the

present climate [1920]when there were no consumer goods to
buy and any food surplus was claimed by the state, withdrew
further into subsistence production and the autarchic nexus of
the village. The Bolsheviks believed that the future of Soviet
agriculture lay in gigantic collective and Soviet
farms.....producing directly for the state. The troublesome
peasant -- with his petty proprietary instincts, his superstitions,
and his attachment to tradition -- would be abolished by these
socialist farms since all those who worked in them would be
recast as kolkhoz workers.....Here again, the Bolsheviks were
carried away by their utopianism, believing they could create
socialism by decree.
This rule by decree could not possibly work efficiently or at all. In 1921,
the peasants broke out in open revolt against the collective farm system. A
heavy-handed requisition brigade was the spark that fired this revolution.
The farmer rebels took advantage of the Reds' weakness in their district by
marching on the provincial capital. Typically, the Reds unleashed a
campaign of terror which spread rapidly to the point where Lenin himself
acknowledged the revolt was the greatest threat his regime had ever had to
face. The rebel brigades operated like guerillas and succeeded in
panicking the Bolsheviks into taking even more repressive steps. Lenin
temporarily succeeded in slowing the peasants and the worker both of
whom had been joined by the Kronstadt sailors who had been so
successful in 1917. On March 16, 1921 Lenin submitted a resolution to the
Tenth Party Congress outlawing the formation of factions independent of
the Central Committee. As a result, the Central Committee was to rule the
party on the same dictatorial lines as the party ruled the entire country.
Another historic resolution replaced food requisition with the tax in kind.
The farmers could now sell their surplus after paying a tax set eventually
at 10 percent. of the harvest. At least five thousand rebels were executed
on Lenin's orders after he had laid the foundation for dictatorial rule, first
by Joseph Stalin. Lenin died in 1924. Lenin's almost final act was to create

the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Stalin was the first
to inherit it from the man he could not tolerate, V.I. Lenin.
The French Revolution began in 1789 and produced a constitutional

government that continues today, albeit in a form some what different
from its early outlines. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the form it
had taken by 1923, produced a tyranny worse in all ways than the Tsarist
rule it replaced. After Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin slowly became the
absolute ruler of all the Russians. Stalin, born as Vasili Dzhugashvili took
another name. Once again the peasants got the short end of the stick.
Stalin wrote a memo describing the kulak. This kulak had an annual
income of 200 rubles per month, engaged in trade, leased out farm
equipment, machines and buildings. In short, the kulak was a capitalist
exploiting those who worked. By January 1929 had prepared a draft
decree to expedite the tempo of collectivization. Stalin would not tolerate
any delays and constantly queried the farmers down to the village level.
Any delay was considered counterrevolutionary and penalized by a term in
Siberia's prison camps or gulags. During this period of enforced terror to
drive the kulaks out, some estimates place the number of those executed at
10 million. Stalin admitted as much in a conversation with Winston
Churchill. See Stalin Triumph and Tragedy by Dmitri Volkogonov
published in 1992.
Nikolai Bukharin was a close personal friend of Stalin and quite popular
with the party functionaries. Stalin relied heavily on Bukharin in economic
matters, but he made a major mistake. In a heated argument on whether to
slow the pace of collectivization, Bukharin agreed and Stalin though the
pace was too slow. During the argument, Bukharin described Stalin as "a
petty Oriental despot." At that point Stalin was reported to have said "I
don't need that man anymore." Finally, seeing that opinion against him
was gaining adherents, Bukharin recanted, acknowledging he had been
wrong. Ten years later, Bukharin paid a terrible price for his recantation.
He was expelled from the party as having sided with Trotsky's terrorists
and tried in 1937, found guilty on the basis of fake evidence, and killed.
So much for the onetime friends of Stalin. In one memo from Lavrenti
Beria, head of the NKVD, later the KGB, that in two year's time, "the
military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR ....that 30,514
[Russians] had to be shot." This only covered the period from October 1,
1936 to September 30, 1938.
One of his biographers felt Stalin was merely trying to get rid of those
around him who might side with Hitler's Nazis. It was in 1939 that Stalin's
Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav-Molotov signed an agreement with Joachim
von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister providing that Russia would not
be attacked. Hitler wanted his rear defended as the Nazis struck France
and England. In a secret protocol, Hitler agreed that the Soviet Union

might freely annex the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Red
troops did so in 1940. Almost fifty-five years later, the last Russian troops
left Latvia and Estonia where they had lived long enough to be citizens of
the Baltic states. All three, including Lithuania were independent states by
1991. The world knew the Soviet Union was led by monsters, but it took
years to end the Soviet reign of terror.
On February 4, 1931 Joseph Stalin addressed the All-Union Congress of

Managers in what became one of the few memorable speeches of his
career. In fact, the speech was a clue to what would happen by way of
brutality when the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany in 1941.
One feature of the old Russia was the continued beatings she
suffered for falling behind, for backwardness. She was beaten by
the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She
was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the
Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and
French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All
beat her -- for her backwardness....We are fifty or a hundred
years behind the advanced countries. . We must make good this
distance in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us.
The speech was prophetic. Stalin crushed internal dissent, executing those
Russians expressing disagreement. He established the gulags throughout
Russia. Stalin threw Russian soldiers against the Nazi army invading
Russia and drove it back to Berlin. It appeared in Richard Overy's new
book, Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow (pp3839). Overy also described
the terror of the 1930s. Most of its victims were peasants. The
collectivization of agriculture led to deaths in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Entire villages in both provinces died of starvation. Some 7 million were
killed in this manner, either by starvation or by 25year terms in a remote
Russian gulag. Despite these savage acts of Stalin and the "show trials" of
the mid1930s, where the professional military was sentenced to death, the
Soviet Union almost caught up with the backwardness described by Stalin.
During the war itself, Stalin ordered all industry to move east of the Urals
where the military industrial complex was able to manufacture aircraft,
tanks and weaponry used to drive Nazi division back to Berlin. When the
war ended in 1945, at least 20 million soldiers on both sides had been
killed. The persecution of Jews in Russia is another chapter of a book that
needs to be reread: The illustrated history of Jews in Russia is a link to this
history of Central Asia. See The History of Jews in Russia: Beyond the
Pale.
It took exactly seventy years for this totalitarian government to collapse

(1921 to 1991). While the Soviet Union lasted, it had deployed its military
power to expand its political power. World War II was probably the
beginning of its decline, even though it developed a nuclear capability,
occupied East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary and

collaborated up to a point with another Communist power, the People's

Republic of China. In midMay, 1997 Russia once again announced it
would not forswear a first use policy with respect to nuclear weapons. A
number of books have explored the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991. They include David Pryce-Jones author of the Strange
Death of the Soviet Empire and Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the
Soviet Empire by Michael Dobbs. Afghanistan:Soviet Vietnam by
Vladislav Tamarav was another. It was published by Mercury House in
1992. Mercury House also published Without Force or Lies: Voices from
the Revolution of Central Europe in 1989-90, an anthology with essays by
Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Norman Manea, and Adam Michnik to
name a few. This anthology was edited by William M. Brinton and Allan
Rinzler. Lenin by Dmitri Volkogonov was published in 1994. The World
Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR offers the best analysis. It begins
with a sobering paragraph.
When historians finally conduct an autopsy on Soviet

Communism, they may reach the verdict of death by
ecocide....No other great industrial civilization so systematically
and so long poisoned its air, land, water and people. None so
loudly proclaiming its efforts to public health and protect nature
so degraded both. And no advanced society faced such a bleak
political and economic reckoning with so few resources to invest
toward recovery.
These and many other books described the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the reasons for it. All writers are not in complete agreement on the
reasons, but most of them look to the invasion of Afghanistan by the
Soviet Union in 1980 and the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989 under
humiliating circumstances as a major reason. The nuclear meltdown at
Chernobyl in 1986 was not so much a cause of the collapse, but rather a
predictable event showing Soviet incompetence. Then, events in Central
Europe during 1989 and 1990 showed the beginning of the end. Poland,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany all collapsed after forty
years of Communist rule. The Berlin Wall built in 1961 to prevent
Germans from escaping Communism was breached in 1989, signaling the
end of Communism in Germany.
Since World War II, some really distinguished authors have written books
about Russia. One of these, The Gulag Archipelago, was published by
St..Martin's Press and written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This author was
a dissident writing within Russia and paid the price with a nine-year
sentence to a prison camp in Kazakhstan. In January, 1998 St.. Martin's
Press expects to publish a biography of this controversial writer, once
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The biography was written by D.
M. Thomas who offered new evidence that Solzhenitsyn's first wife
collaborated with the KGB against her former husband. He also describes
a little-known assassination attempt on Solzhenitsyn's life by the Soviet

secret police. In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from Russia and settled
in Vermont. According to a story in the New York Times, his first wife
may have had an editorial relationship with the KGB. There was even a
suggestion that his first wife tried to censor The Gulag Archipelago. A
friend denied the story. His second wife said it was "impossible to believe
that such a question comes from such a paper." Other books by
Solzhenitsyn include One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer
Ward, and The First Circle. For some time after he returned to Russia,
Solzhenitsyn lectured audiences on the immorality of modern Russia,
notwithstanding that he finally divorced his first wife to marry a younger
woman who had a child by him before the divorce. On at least one
occasion, she asked forgiveness from the first wife. Other postwar Russian
authors include Andrei Sakharov who was invited by Mikhail Gorbachev
to return to Moscow from the prison camp in which he was serving a long
sentence for one of those undefined crimes like violating state security. My
Country and the World was published in 1975 by Random House.
Moscow and Beyond 1986 to 1988 was published by Arthur Knopf in
1988; Sakharov died in 1989. Dmitri Volkogonov wrote two books
translated from the Russian, Lenin: The First Account Using All the Secret
Soviet Archives was published by The Free Press. The same author wrote
Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. It was published by Prima Publishing in
1992. Geoffrey Hosking wrote a more recent account of Russian history,
Russia: People and Empire. This book was released in 1997. The author
advised readers that the first Romanov, Mikhail, was elected Tsar in 1613
by a council of some five hundred electors. This group included boyars
who were members of the old Russian nobility before Peter the Great
made military service to the state mandatory.
In his chapter on Russian socialism, Hosking defined its nature in

revolutionary terms:
If one regards Populism and Marxism as two separate traditions,

Bolshevism must be seen as a synthesis of the two, Marxist in its
original impulse, but borrowing from the Populists the ideas of
the peasants as a revolutionary class, of leadership by a small
group of intellectuals and of overstriding the bourgeois phase of
social revolution to reach the socialist revolution directly.
Actually, it would more sensible to regard Bolshevism as the
form of revolutionary socialism best adapted to Russian
conditions, where it was impossible in the long term to form a
mass working party class without strong leadership where the
peasants were extremely discontented with the existing state of
affairs, and where the bourgeois were very weak. Marx himself
had indicated the possibility of just such a revolution in Russia.
By 1917, the unstable amalgam of Russian nationalism and

internationalism had probably foreseen the undoing of this revolution.
Stalin and other General Secretaries of the Communist Party had engaged
in the excesses of power that, with other factors, caused the collapse of the

Soviet Union in 1991. One of those factors was elimination of the

language spoken in Ukraine. The rulers in Moscow were determined to
impose a separate identity on this state. As early as 1863, the Minister of
the Interior in Moscow issued a circular prohibiting the publication of
books in Ukrainian. Three years later, he prohibited the import of books in
this language or its use in the theater. This variety of linguistic warfare
occurred throughout Russia right up to 1945 and perhaps later. Even today
in 1997, ethnic minorities speaking a language other than Russian occupy
territory throughout Russia, or the Confederation of Independent States
(CIS). Around the periphery of the CIS, individual republics seek their
own identity and total independence from Moscow. The dilemma of the
multinational, multiethnic and multilinguistic empires in an age of
nationalism was fundamental and perhaps insoluble.
An outstanding writer and historian David Pryce-Jones wrote The Strange

Death of the Soviet Union published by an imprint of Henry Holt & Co. in
1995. Pryce-Jones approach to the death of the Soviet Union was unique.
"Once the satellites had melted like ice in the sun, an ultimate and even
existential question faced the Soviet leadership: What was the point of
absolute centralized power if not to defend the party-state? With the outer
ring of client countries now escaped irretrievably from central control, the
inner ring queued untidily for the exit." He was referring, of course, to the
ring around the Soviet Union in Central Europe. The ring included Poland,
Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania. One by
one, they melted and ejected their Communist rulers, replacing them with
new leaders dedicated to freedom. Many of them did not understand the
complexities of a market economy or the loss of authority, so the newly-
freed nations had to experiment with new approaches to what would work.
Gorbachev, however, believed to the end that the ideology of Communism
to be independent from the mechanism of force without which that
ideology was only one among other theories about human nature and
society.
Today in 1997, Russia sees its inner ring to the South threatened by
ethnicity and linguistics. In one relatively small area of Russia, there is a
mixture of Caucasian, Indo-European, and Altaic peoples. Caucasians
include Abkhaz, Circassian Adygey, Cherkess and Kabardin. Georgians
fall into a slightly different ethnic group. In Dagestan, one finds Agul,
Avar, Lak, Lezgin, Rutul, and Tsakhur peoples. The Caucasians also
include Chechen and Ingush peoples. The Indo-European peoples include
Armenian, Greek, Iranian-Kurds, and Slavic-Russian. The Altaic peoples
include the Azeri, Balkar, Karachay, Kumyk, and Turkmen peoples. Even
the Mongols are represented in this ethnic potpourri. The political status of
all of these mini-states is critical.

Dagestan, for example, was annexed by the Tsar in 1802, and it's now
considered an administrative state within Russia. It is located between
Georgia and the Caspian Sea. This part of Russia is literally a linguistic
stew. The Republic of Dagestan, for example, appears in only a very few
maps. However, for the purpose of an oil pipeline, its political status is
critical. If this republic is politically independent of rule from Moscow,
the oil companies are probably free to negotiate with its administrative
hierarchy. Russia has discovered the importance of a market economy. It
allows capital investment in Russian enterprises. The most recent example
of this is two huge oilfields in Sakhalin. Three consortia are now preparing
to pump oil from fields off Sakhalin. Sakhalin Energy Investment plans to
spend at least $10 billion to develop this field. Those close to the company
say there are one billion barrels of oil and 400 billion cubic metres of
natural gas. In the first consortium, Sakhalin Energy has two Japanese
partners, Mitsui and Mitsubishi. American partners include Marathon. The
British partner is Anglo-Dutch Shell. In the other field, Russia wants to
join Sakhalin Energy with its partners, Exxon and Sodeco of Japan. Russia
has approved production sharing agreements, but their status is not
entirely clear. The Duma needs to end any ambiguity, but its members
have not yet seen the value of a market economy. The money has to flow
locally instead of flowing via Moscow.
Chechnya was the subject of a war with Russian troops and aircraft lasting
about two years for the purpose of halting its drive for political
independence, a status finally established in May, 1997. .President Yeltsin
signed a treaty with Chechnya then, and now its people will begin
rebuilding its shattered infrastructure. Oil maps of Chechnya show at least
nine oil fields, a few refineries, and pipelines serving both. According to
one Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger (19811987) writing in The
New York Times, "Iran and Russia," he wrote, "[are cooperating] with
regional states to prevent the United States from [developing power] in the
Caspian Sea." In fact, Russia wants the United States to approve its use of
more conventional forces in the Caspian Sea area. Iran sees the
Azerbaijanis as a threat because they may provoke separatist sentiment
among its ethnic Azeri population. Iraq may also see an opportunity to
exploit its Kurd population and stir up trouble for Turkey; it also has a
Kurd population.
In Paris, President Clinton signed the agreement expanding NATO on

May 27, 1997. In July, all the powers now members of NATO gathered in
Madrid to discuss the new nations invited to join. They are Hungary,
Poland, and the Czech Republic. At the first meeting of all those who
approved the expansion of NATO, there were signs of friction. Some
members wanted to expand the number of countries that would be invited
to join NATO. Russia, while it may not have expressed its concern, would
reject admission of the Baltic stares to NATO. These states are Lithuania,

Latvia and Estonia. Their concern should be treated as irrelevant. In 1939,

Stalin, with Molotov as Foreign Minister, and Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Hitler's Minister of Foreign Affairs signed a treaty. For years, however,
Russia denied there was a secret protocol that allowed the Soviet Union to
occupy the three Baltic States. Stalin announced the annexation of these
three states in 1940, a year after this treaty. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991, Russia dealt summarily with the demands of the Balts for
freedom from Soviet occupation. Finally, Russia acknowledged it had to
leave Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The terms of departure and its timing
were all negotiated in Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn and or Moscow. All three
of the Baltic states are eager to join NATO, and they view Russia with
understandable suspicion. Postwar relations between China and Japan
were soured by the violent past.
Japan expanded into Chinese territory began in Taiwan, and this island
nation was claimed in 1895 by Japan as the spoils of war with China. The
Japanese were determined to create in China a model for a new Asia. In
1914 and again in 1931, two uprisings of the island's aboriginal
inhabitants were suppressed by the Japanese using a combination of
modern fire power and terror. The Japanese brought previously
unthinkable ideas of representative government to Taiwan. They greatly
improved Taiwanese agriculture and education; they also developed
domestic industries and made other changes in Taiwanese culture gearing
it to the needs of the Japanese home islands. In 1905, the Japanese
defeated the Russian army and claimed sovereignty over parts of
Manchuria. The Japanese began investing in the region between Port
Arthur and Mukden and as far south as Korea. Many Russian refugees
from the Soviet Union moved to the area around Harbin. All this was a
provocation to the Soviet Union. In 1932, the Japanese installed the ex-
Emperor Puyi as "Chief Executive" in the renamed Manchuria,
Manchukuo. The Japanese were far from being benign occupants of either
Manchukuo or Shanghai. The Nanking Massacre of 1937 may stand
always as one of the most terrible events in the history of warfare.
Japanese troops with armored cars, artillery, supported by planes and
warships on the Yangtze smashed through the walls of the city and
massacred any Chinese troops they could find. Unable to find officers with
whom they might negotiate an armistice, the Japanese engaged in a virtual
frenzy of slaughter. The killed and mutilated both adult and child civilians,
leaving a trail of horror behind them. As the Japanese moved on to other
cities, such as Wuhan, Stalin gave the Chinese some help, some 800
planes and pilots. Stalin believed at the time that it was in the Soviet
interest to resist Japanese aggression.
Near the end of the 20th century, Russia and China both demanded some
sort of relief from the atrocities of the 1930s. And Russia still claims the
Kurile Islands as their territory after Soviet occupation during World War

II. Moscow may be ready to discuss this dispute. In late 1997, Moscow
and Tokyo issued a joint approval of a $10 billion project to develop a
natural gas field in Irkutsk in Russia and build a pipeline to Japan via
Mongolia, China and South Korea. Japanese censors seem still at work to
make certain its past savagery against Chinese during the 1930s and its
wartime atrocities. On three occasions, the Supreme Court of Japan has
denied efforts to rewrite textbooks reflecting, for example, the Nanking
Massacre. Anti-Japanese nationalism is alive and well in China.
When Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States ended, he
returned to Beijing determined to perpetuate Communism and incidentally
his own power. Even though he is 71 years old, Jiang may last for at least
15 years as president. The photograph of Jiang, president of the world's
largest Communist country about to ring the bell for the opening of the
New York Stock Exchange, the free world's largest center of capitalist
trading was surely an ironic symbol. It is this type of economic activity
that Jiang sees for China, but free of the ideas that made it work. From
Jiang's point of view, the genius of the economic reforms introduced under
Deng Xiaoping has to be that they have produced prosperity while
preserving the power of the Communist Party. Furthermore, Chinese Party
officials seem determined not to follow the route taken by Mikhail
Gorbachev. These same officials look across the border with Russia see a
country where leaders can be removed from power by voters, where
newspapers and television news openly question Kremlin policy, where
the Communist Party itself is in eclipse and where the criminal economy
outstrips legal enterprise. For his part, Jiang has no interest in any system
that could reject him at the polls, a system that rests on human rights. It
was crushed in Tiananmenn Square in 1989. Two years later, Gorbachev
was ousted by democratic forces that have helped Boris Yeltsin remain in
office with free elections. Over time, economic freedom and modern
communications may bring new political life to China. But as Americans
could see as Jiang traveled across the United States, it will not come
easily, quickly, or from the top of this regime.
Democracy is not always easy to identify. In the West, because it has

always meant liberal democracy -- a political system marked not only by
free and fair elections with universal suffrage, but also by the rule of law,
a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech,
assembly, religion and property. Foreign Affairs has identified this bundle
of freedoms as constitutional liberalism. It is theoretically different from
and historically distinct from democracy. Today, these two strands of
liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, have been
coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing, says
Fareed Zakaria, Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs; constitutional
liberalism is not. A proper appreciation of constitutional liberalism has a
variety for American foreign policy. First, it suggests a certain humility.

While it is easy to impose elections on a country, it is more difficult to

push constitutional liberalism on a society. The process of genuine
liberalization and democratization is gradual and long-term; it is a process
in which an election is only one step. Hence, the absence of free and fair
elections should be viewed as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny.
Economic civil and religious liberties are at the core of human autonomy
and dignity. If a government with limited democracy steadily expands
these freedoms, it should not be branded as a dictatorship. Today, Mr..
Zakaria writes, that in the face of a virus of illiberalism, the most useful
role for the United States is to consolidate democracy where it has taken
root and to encourage the gradual development of constitutional liberalism
across the globe.
Democracy without constitutional liberalism simply not

inadequate, but dangerous, bringing with the erosion of liberty,
the abuse of [power], ethnic decisions, and even war.
The rulers of China took over Hong Kong at midnight on June 30, 1997.
The 99-year lease of Hong Kong had ended. The audience in Hong Kong's
Convention Center heard Charles, the Prince of Wales and China's
President Jiang Zemin followed by lowering the British flag and raising
the new Hong Kong flag plus China's own flag. Macao, a Portuguese
settlement for several hundred years and about an hour by jet foil from
Hong Kong will be turned over to China in 1999, but without the solemn
show the British put on as its modest number of troops left to be replaced
by the People's Liberation Army. This solemn occasion was the first time
in all history that Great Britain had handed over an entire city with some 8
million people to a country ruled by Communists.
In ABC's coverage of this event, scenes from Tiananmen Square were

shown with the huge picture of Mao Tsetung appearing on the television
screens of an estimated two billion people around the world. Communists
and capitalists have billed the Hong Kong Special Administrative District
(SAR) as "one country, two systems." This description is an exaggeration;
"it's one country, no system." Hong Kong's new chief executive, Tung
Cheehwa, has surrounded himself with a kitchen cabinet. In the current
environment of corruption, his appointed cronies seem more interested in

cutting deals with the power elite in Beijing than demanding democracy
with free elections. In the post-handover euphoria, China observers have
neglected what China has done to suppress dissent as it did on June 4,
1989 in Tiananmen Square. One should not forget that some of the same
officials ordering a military crackdown in 1989 are still very mush in
control. Only Deng has gone to whatever reward atheism provides. Jiang
Zemin and Li Peng are still quite visible. Willem van Kemenade has some
interesting comments in his new book, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan,
Inc..
If things go Jiang Zemin's way... China will continue to

enjoy high economic growth and will become more modern
and prosperous, but politically it will most probably remain
as conservative, secretive, and repressive as ever... The will
of the central authorities has thus far prevailed, its most
effective instrument being the power to appoint and dismiss
governors, party secretaries, and regional army
commanders, but if central control over the over the
Government, party, military and public security apparatus
suffer a similar regionalization, China will become
increasingly feudalized even as it becomes more
modern.....If the extractive power of the state [tax
collection] continues to go downhill, it will only be a
question of years, at most ten, before political rupture
follows economic collapse and the country finally
disintegrates.
In his review of this book, Orville Schell offers a few comments in The
New York Times of June 29, 1997.
"Willem van Kemenade, a Dutch journalist who covers Asia for

the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, praises the dynamism of
Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, but expresses astonishment
at the limitation of his political vision, saying 'Deng's ignorance
and crass ideological blindness to Western democracy is
amazing indeed. 'What has been the effect of this disjuncture? In
a historical blink of the eye, the Chinese people have evolved
from being 'Mao-worshipping blue ants to nihilistic ultra-
individualistic, money-worshipping hedonists.'"
To understand the tensions of a Communist society as China surely is, one

must always keep in mind the hierarchy of rulers. Under the imperial
bureaucracy, the general rule was that an official could never be posted to
his native region. However, under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
minority leaders, especially in the regions in adjacent to China proper,
were for the first time allowed to become officials within their native
areas. Thus, today, we find a strong and powerful stratum of minority
officials with a vested interest in continued CCP rule. In fact, many of the

local and regional minority leaders should be characterized as 'hardliners'

or even 'maoists.' These labels may not have much ideological substance,
but they do illustrate the existence of an ethnically-based elite that is both
strong and loyal. The rulers in Beijing know this and encourage the Han
Chinese to migrate to newly occupied territory very much like Caesar's
Roman legions in Europe 2000 years ago. In contemporary China, the
Turkic-speaking and Muslim minority in Sinkiang are ruled by Han
Chinese as the Buddhist Tibetans are also ruled by the Han Chinese.
Minxin Pei has written an article in the January-February issue of Foreign

Affairs. Minxin is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton
University. Here's part of his article.
The Chinese political system Deng Xiaoping inherited in 1978

resembled a Hobbesian world. No norms governed elite politics.
Its key governmental institutions, especially the legal system and
the bureaucracy, had been seriously damaged by the economic
and political turmoil of the Great Leap Forward of 1958 and the
196676 Cultural Revolution. There were institutions of political
participation; under Mao, mass political campaigns and mob
violence had been the main forms of participation. Deng was
faced with rebuilding China's wrecked political system and
reforming its backward economy at the same time... The
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), especially its elite, was badly
bruised by Mao's dictatorial rule... Another significant reform
implemented under 'Deng's rule was the mandatory retirement of
party and government officials. Although China's term limits has
attracted little attention abroad, they have probably had the most
far-reaching effect of any reform on the composition and outlook
of the ruling elite. Beginning in 1982, the retirement age of
ministers, provincial party secretaries, and governors was set at
65 and their deputies at 60.
Far from moving the Communist Party toward democracy, term limits
only prevent local leaders from perpetuating their power. China's
provinces are thought to be controlled from Beijing, but splittist trends are
already at work in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangdong, the Yangste River
Valley, and Fujian, all regional economic powers of their own. If these
trends continue, Beijing may have to launch a military effort to recover
Taiwan. President Jiang did not waste any time in telling a Chinese
audience in Beijing the day after the Hong Kong handover that Taiwan
was next on the acquisition list after recovery of Macao. With available
evidence, China simply does not have armed forces sufficient to recover
Taiwan by force. China's army, however, and some small units of the navy
appeared on television on June 30, 1997 will have to recover this wayward
province without sufficient modern arms. What arms China does have are
all but obsolete.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has an estimated 3.1 million men
under arms. This number will be reduced by 500,000 over the next three

years, according to a 1997 vote of representatives in the 15th Peoples'

Congress. The main Chinese tank is based on the Soviet design of the T55
built first in the 1950s. The Chinese air force has about 5,000 aircraft, but
some 90 percent of these jets are obsolete. The Chinese navy is under-
armed and poorly produced by engineers who were victims of the Cultural
Revolution. At sea, the largest production surface warship, the Luda Class
destroyer, was derived directly from a Soviet destroyer design completed
in the late 1940s. China simply does not have the skills essential to design,
produce and operate military jets; the 50 or so Sukhoi27 jets are the cream
of the Chinese crop, but they were all purchased from Russia. In 1992,
China contracted with Russia for the delivery of four KiloClass diesel-
powered submarines. So far as is known, China has not either designed or
acquired in-flight refueling systems. Nor does the Chinese navy have any
aircraft carriers. Furthermore, and this is critical, China has missed the
digital revolution in weapons technology. With reverse engineering, an
analog system is comparatively simple to duplicate so long as the essential
technologies are available. However, digital fire control systems may not
be copied without the source code used by the computer to direct fire. To
duplicate the essential technology, China would need programmers, and
few if any were trained during the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural
Revolution.
In 1991, China saw the awesome display of American power in the

Persian Gulf War. The Chinese General Staff has gloomily concluded that
it would take at least ten years for China to catch up with the United States
in weapons technology. China's greatest effort in command and control
has been evident in the field of automated air defense systems. C 3 I
stands for command, control, communications and intelligence as the
factors that need to be present in such a system. A footnote in Jane's Radar
and Electronic Warfare Systems 19941995 states that "Very little seems to
be happening on any [new] air defense networking China, and the air
defense network in place suffers from major weaknesses such as an
outmoded command, control, and communications system."
The central question in war or peace in any situation is the estimate each
side makes of its chances of success. In Military Capacity and the Threat
of War, the editor offers a sobering comment.
In the case of China, the central government may have little if

any appreciation of the state's actual military capacity. That
would hardly be a surprise: military leaders would prefer rosy to
frightening reports. Certainly, this was true in the Soviet case:
hubris born of ignorance fueled the adventures in Afghanistan
and then Chechnya. To the extent that China has a similar
system to that developed by Russia, it would seem likely that
fantasy will be the order of the day. Fantasy means, for example,
that the absence of modern command and control will not be
taken into account by decision-makers in Beijing. Under these

circumstances... it is more likely that crisis will degenerate into

war -- a war in which China would suffer devastating humiliation.
A scenario involving an attempt to regain Taiwan after settling in and

digesting Hong Kong is a distinct possibility. Were a setback of China's
grand design to occur, the political leadership in Beijing would have little
hesitancy to use its nuclear weapons capacity. Soviet scientists were
knowledgeable enough to help Beijing develop nuclear weapons with
technology stolen from the United States in the late 1940s and early
1950s. In the last few years, sentiment in Taiwan towards either
reunification with mainland China or asserting its independence from
China have been debated endlessly. Occasionally, China has gone too far
and provoked anti-reunification or pro-independence sentiment. In 1995,
for example, Taiwan President Lee Tenghui asked the United States for a
visa allowing him to visit Cornell where he was to be given an honorary
doctorate. The Chinese vigorously objected, but the State Department
granted the visa after some pressure from the Clinton Administration.
Lee's trip went off without much fuss until he returned. The China General
Staff ordered two war games that heated up the political climate on
Taiwan. Then Lee announced he would run for reelection to a second term
as president. He won with 54 percent of the vote. Without China's saber
rattling, Lee would still have won, but with fewer votes. However, during
the 1995 missile tests, the Clinton Administration had sent two carrier task
forces to cool off the overheated rulers in Beijing.
Aside from Taiwan, China has other minority problems. Tibet, for
example, was occupied by China beginning in 1951. Tibet was an
independent state at the time of the Chinese invasion. China's annexation
of Tibet violated Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter which
expressly prohibits the acquisition of territory by force or the threat of
force. Tibetans are also entitled to self-determination under Article 1 (2) of
the Charter. During their occupation of Tibet, Chinese engaged in
genocide, a crime under the Convention for the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Since the invasion that began in
1949, an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans have perished as a result of the
Chinese occupation, victims of war, prison camps, torture, and famine.
More than 6,000 Buddhist monasteries, temples, and historical monuments
have been systematically plundered and destroyed by Han Chinese.
Recently, the Dalai Lama has toured the United States and has spoken out
on China's denial of autonomy for Tibet and self-determination. Chinese
have kidnapped the Panchen Lama, the Dalai Lama's successor and have
held this child under house arrest for the last two years. The Dalai Lama
himself is so popular, Beijing has made it a crime even to display his
picture in Tibet.
Jiang maintained a fast pace spreading Communist ideological nonsense

and defending China's occupation of Tibet. It was analogous, he said, to

the Emancipation of the slaves by Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln,

however, did not indiscriminately kill the slaves thus emancipated. In
Tibet, China has killed Buddhist monks -- an estimated 1 million of them
since 1951. Not only this, but Chinese occupiers razed some 6000 Tibetan
monasteries during the same period (19511997). While he was touring
Philadelphia, Jiang expressed anger at some 200 noisy demonstrators. He
asked they be removed so Jiang would not see them. The Mayor of
Philadelphia said, "We tried to explain to the Chinese as patiently as
possible that we couldn't force the demonstrators off public streets." Jiang
even denied China had denied religious freedom, but China still persecutes
Christians. The other side then had its chance to reply to this touring
dictator.
On the occasion of President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States in

October, 1997, Hollywood wrote the script. President Clinton was not
amused. Much earlier, he had de-linked the issue of human rights from
China's status as an investment opportunity for American and European
companies. China had consistently violated rights of minorities such as the
Tibetan Buddhists To counter Chinese propaganda, Hollywood released
Seven Years in Tibet, Front-line, a public television program, Red Corner,
another film and Kundun, still another film produced by Disney. These
releases enraged the Chinese. Human rights groups along Jiang's
publicized route in the United States demonstrated peacefully in defense
of Tibet's right to autonomy and China's denial of that right. Ever since
1951, China has systematically destroyed Tibet's ancient culture by killing
its monks and destroying its monasteries.
The International Covenant on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,

ratified by China, prohibited discrimination based on race, national or
ethnic origin and prohibited a State from denying minorities the right to
enjoy their own culture, religion and language. China nonetheless
continues to discriminate Tibetans in employment, education, housing,
language and reproductive rights. Tibetans accused of
"counterrevolutionary" conduct are sentenced to serve time in jail. Often
they are tortured while incarcerated. Torture and inhuman treatment are
outlawed by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel or Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a convention ratified by China.
The Summit meeting between President Clinton and President Jiang

Zemin was an abysmal failure on human rights. The only beneficiaries
were the Boeing Corporation -- a $3 billion sale of commercial jets to
China -- and Westinghouse and other nuclear power plant companies in
the United Staters. With respect to events in Tiananmen Square in 1989,
Jiang almost casually said "the Chinese made the correct decision to
restore stability." Clinton replied by saying "I believe that what happened
and the aftermath and continuing reluctance to tolerate political dissent has

kept China from politically developing the level of support in the rest of
the world that would have developed." Clinton's words, according to The
New York Times, were "a stark admission of failure, unusual in summit
annals." In the meantime, torture and other degrading treatment continues
in Chinese jails. In fact, the World Bank has funded forced labor camps in
Sinkiang. This occurred in 1995. An inquiry after this funding surfaced
found that "the government agency that implements the Tarim Basin
project was also responsible for administering some prisons and adjacent
farms for the [Chinese] Central Ministry of Justice." Despite this finding,
the World Bank concluded there was "no evidence to establish outside
charges." See Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of
Nations by Catherine Caufield (1996).
A second area, Sinkiang, is another trouble spot for China. Situated in

Northwest China, it is the largest province in the country. It is called the
Sinkiang (Xinjiang) Uighur Autonomous Region, occupying one sixth of
all China. The Tarim Basin in this area is thought to contain vast deposits
of oil; some authorities claim that at least one third of all China's oil is
present in difficult-to-drill reservoirs. China. acted quickly in signing a
development agreement for the Uten oil field in Kazakhstan rather that
spend scarce capital in exploration for desperately needed oil to fuel its
expansion.By 1997, China simply could not look to Russia for oil. The
relationship between China and Russia was terminated in the 1960, when
Soviet advisors withdrew from China after a nasty ideological dispute.
The base of Chinese technology was still the legacy left by Soviet
advisors. They were far behind the West in deep drilling, secondary
recovery and exploration Russia used oil well drilling and pipeline
construction that is now obsolete. The Chinese military establishment
needs far more than China produces from its early oil fields, Daqing and
Shengli. Currently, China produces about 2.9 million barrels of oil per
day. See Oil in Asia published in 1997 by the Oxford University Press.
Still China must have oil just as Hitler's Panzers had to have gasoline to
fuel its war-making capacity. Some authorities suggest that the People's
Republic Army (PLA) has cut back a great deal because the military
cannot rely on enough oil.
The Han Chinese encouraged to settle in this autonomous region have

priority in housing and employment ahead of Uighurs. This group
represents about 40 percent of the province's population. The Uighur
population refers to Sinkiang as Turkestan, claiming that the Chinese have
occupied their land. Needless to say, Beijing has had a different attitude
toward minorities. The dominant notion was and has been not to integrate
ethnic minorities and neighboring peoples, but rather to control them. To
this end, Beijing has made it worthwhile for the Han Chinese to migrate
to, for example, Sinkiang and Tibet. Thus, control of the outlying regions

and peoples was intended just as much a defense measure as a strategy for
imperial conquest.
China does have a problem with its minorities. Many of the smaller
minorities -- the Mongols, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Tajiks -- have a
neighboring country they regard as their homeland. The Uighurs are an
exception. They are a nation without a country. Beijing saw a way around
its minority populations. In April, 1996 the presidents of five neighboring
countries of Central Asia -- China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Tajikistan -- signed an agreement in which some previously uncertain
boundaries were made permanent on agreed lines.. Three of the newly-
independent states took it on themselves to oppose secession of any kind
and its political twin, separatism. The five presidents had met in Shanghai,
so the agreement was called the Shanghai Communique.
Contemporaneously, the Chinese media launched a fierce new anti-
separatist campaign. China's policy in Sinkiang is at a crossroad. The
Communist leaders seem convinced that only a policy of harsh and
permanent repression can guarantee Chinese rule there. If it relaxes its
hard-line stand there, secessionist agitation and religious dissent will
almost certainly spin out of control. Continued harsh repression could
polarize both sides and endanger stability. The Shanghai Communique
would be nothing more than a historical artifact. With respect to Russia,
there has been an illegal immigration from China. And, as one Russian
official said: "If the Chinese influx continues, we will have a situation like
that under Genghis Khan. If we don't take effective action quickly, in
twenty years' time it will no longer be clear what is China and what is
Russia."
The Russian government calls this "the peaceful loss of territory to

China." Two Russian newspapers report that there are between 2 and 5
million Chinese living illegally in Russia.A few prominent sinologists in
Russia predict a Chinese annexation of millions of hectares of land.
Russians in the threatened area near Vladivostok see annexation as a cause
of war. Some Russian sinologists note that China claims part of Siberia as
an inalienable right.
The stakes for China are high. In 1995, the PRC became a net importer of
oil. It desperately needs oil to fuel its rapidly expanding economy and its
military. Oil reserves for all of Sinkiang are estimated at 2.4 billion
barrels. Most of this oil is in the Tarim Basin and within striking distance
for Uighur raids from within Kazakhstan. The People's Liberation Army
(PLA) has been designed for military police actions like a Uighur raid
from Kazakhstan. The PLA has about three million men under arms and
some 5,000 tanks sold to China by Russia. These tanks are obsolete for
this and another reason. The tank itself is obsolete as a weapon since
antitank devices are too effective and getting too costly. The authors of

The Future of War: Power, Technology & American World Dominance in

the 21st Century, George and Meredith Friedman, make a persuasive case
for this proposition.
The tank first appeared on the battlefield during World War I. It was a
clumsy machine because of its weight and its armor plus guns of
increasing power. By World War II, the tank had grown heavier and used
thicker armor plus heavier calibre weapons. Military minds were working
in parallel on antitank weapons during this period. By 1993, the spiral of
technology had produced a tank that weighed 100 tons and relatively
inexpensive weapons that could destroy the it. Labeled as the "brilliant
antitank munition" (BAT), it will identify any tank whose engine is
running. The Army has decided to upgrade the BAT with millimeter wave
radar, which will identify targets whose engines are turned off. The
antitank technology has so far outrun the technology behind the tank itself.
This is particularly significant when the use of cruise missiles situated
more than 1,000 miles from the target. The Tomahawk, for example,
proved itself in the Persian Gulf War; everyone watching CNN saw a
Tomahawk missile search for and find an opening in a Baghdad building
with deadly precision. Its guidance system had been programmed from
photographs of the terrain path the Tomahawk followed. That was six
years ago, and the Pentagon has not been sleeping. The M1 tank currently
costs about $3 million, but any one of three antitank weapons could
destroy the M1 using a search and destroy missile that costs between
$7,000 and $200,000. Other weapons platforms all suffer from more or
less the same built-in defect. The battleship, for example, is obsolete
because it doesn't have more than 12 to 16 miles range for its shells. With
a battleship that close to land or another task force, it becomes highly
vulnerable. World War II battleships cost an estimated $1.2 billion.
The Navy carrier task force has increasingly been criticized as being too
vulnerable to anti-ship missiles. The Aegis defense system now mounted
on twenty-seven Aegis-class cruisers was designed to protect carriers from
precision-guided missiles. However, the Sunburn, produced by Russia
cruises at 1,700 miles per hour out to a maximum range of 55 miles. It
travels at an altitude of sixty feet and then attacks the ship at twenty feet,
having reached its target in under two minutes from launch. The U.S.
Navy considered the Sunburn so effective, it tried to buy one in 1995. The
Chinese reported an anti-ship missile even more lethal than the Sunburn
and with a range of eighty miles. One may be justifiably skeptical; the
Chinese do not have the indigenous manpower capable of designing and
producing the missile described. This excursion into contemporary
weapons affects the geo-strategic position of Taiwan. By 1997, Taiwan
should have -- and perhaps has -- targeted its missiles on China's
command, control, communications and intelligence sites as well as
Zhongnanhai, the Chinese Kremlin and the housing in which the Chinese

nomenclature live in Beijing. Doing this would be treated as a defensive

step in the event mainland China resorted to force to reunify Taiwan with
the mainland.
In 1990, Chinese military officials visited Moscow with a view to

reestablishing cooperation between the armed forces of both countries.
Their timing was poor. The former Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 leaving
Russia admitting that its arms industries suffered a severe blow when the
USSR collapsed. Neither domestic requirements nor a shaky economy
support the massive military industrial base inherited from the Soviet
Union. The manufacture and export of weapons, equipment, and
technology can ease the plight of Russia's arms industries , but there is a
political constraint. China must have a demonstrated ability to pay, and,
even more important, is the growing friction over Russia's Asian borders.
The Shanghai Communique of 1996 did not even touch on the "passive
surrender of territory" to China now underway in Eastern Siberia. Some 2
to 5 million Chinese have illegally settled in this part of Russia.
Although military priorities can and do change, China's pattern of

acquisitions seems logically consistent with its national military strategy
and its long-recognized military technology weaknesses. The military
acquisition pattern seems to focus on two specific missions: increasing air
power capabilities and enhancing China's ability to project and sustain
combat forces capable of defending its maritime claims. One of these
claims is Taiwan. Another is the Spratly Islands which are under water
most of the time and could not support a runway for military jets even
when visible. At this point, China has no long-range bomber in its
inventory, so targets inland will be assigned to missiles. Using official
published figures from China's annual budgets, a very risky business,
suggests China has no plans for an AWACS system. The military can and
does conceal actual expenditures. Accordingly, the generals may have
more weapons than presently in evidence. China may use the Su27 as an
air superiority military jet, but it has no plans for a plane capable of close
support of ground forces, nor does China have any plans for an antitank
aircraft like the American A10, a highly effective jet. However effective
the A10 might be, it had to be close to its target to launch a missile.
Boeing recently tested a standoff missile, the AGM130. After a

demonstration, a Boeing official stated that : "The ability of the AGM130
to fly to its target under INS/CPS control eases the workload on the
crew....the US Air Force now has significantly improved operational
flexibility to attack high-visibility enemy targets from safe distances." And
Tokyo has announced it will join the United States in developing a
lightweight ship-launched missile named LEAP. Its system would detect
an enemy missile using geo-stationary satellite information, compute its
flight path and initiate interception with a combination of high-altitude and

low-altitude missiles. These weapons systems were picked out randomly

from Defense News on the Internet.
It seems quite clear that the demands placed on the command, control ,
communications and intelligence capabilities that are required to integrate
air, land, and naval forces are enormous today. With the continuing
advances in information technology, these military burdens are growing
exponentially. The upshot is that the United States has such a jump on
China in its ability to conduct modern warfare that America's
preponderance in East Asia will increase, not diminish, in the years ahead.
A great deal of useful information on this subject may be found in The
Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security by
Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross. China's cumbersome armed forces have
traditionally oriented toward the defense of home territory and policing
dissident minorities. Its air force has been called "the most highly
perfected obsolete aircraft in the world."
Benjamin Schwartz, Executive Editor of World Policy Journal, reviewed

The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress for The New York Times of July 6,
1997.
"'Hardliners'," he wrote, "see a China mounting a challenge to

America's position in East Asia. Nathan and Ross, on the other
hand, see a defensively-minded state, vulnerable to internal
unrest, obsessed with maintaining its territorial integrity and
burdened by a military that is technology and organizationally far
behind not only the United States, but Taiwan, Japan, and South
Korea as well. ...More important, Nathan and Ross emphasize
factors other than hardware that constrain China's military
influence, pointing to the to the current 'revolution in technology.
The demands placed on the command, control, communication,
and intelligence capabilities that are required to integrate air,
land, and naval forces are enormous today and, with the
continual advances in information technology, are growing
exponentially. The upshot is that the United States has such a
jump on China in its ability to conduct modern warfare that
America's military preponderance in East Asia will increase, not
diminish, in the coming years.
Amongst other advances in information technology battlefield surveillance

will almost certainly lead all others. So-called smart weapons need to be
programmed to reach a precise target defined in advance by surveillance's
from satellites or low orbit cameras. The Tomahawk, for example, must be
programmed to reach its target. The use of this weapon in the Persian Gulf
War showed just how accurate the Tomahawk was, and in 1990, it was
still in a primitive stage of development. The KH11 is in reality an
orbiting camera and so is the system incorporated into the Lacrosse. Both
are highly classified, but they do exist and both were used in the Persian
Gulf War. Authoritative sources suggest that the KH11 can produce

images with a 3 inch resolution. A military commander can see them as

real time images using digital data transmission. This particular
combination of surveillance cameras has been highly classified. However,
Chinese leadership cannot take comfort in the knowledge that advanced
technology battlefield sensors, target acquisition systems, and command
and control systems are available on the open market to add to the
complexity of the military environment surrounding China. China has
tried at least three times to buy modern avionics, first from the United
States (terminated in 1989 after the events of Tiananmen Square), the from
Israel and Russia. The Israeli program was cut back because China was
unable to manufacture the technology provided. Apparently, China has no
indigenous talent capable of integrating Russian avionics with a future
Chinese national military air command and control system. Were its
civilian leaders to use force against Taiwan, they would be seriously
embarrassed. The military leaders might not even have described the
shortcomings of the PLA.to the political leaders.
William Ophuls has just written a book entitled Requiem for Modern
Politics. It was published in 1997 by Westview Press, a division of
Harper-Collins. This book is a sequel of Ecology of and the Politics of
Scarcity. In the Introduction to the latest review by Ophuls,he quotes
Robert Kaplan who wrote The Ends of the Earth:A Journey at the Dawn of
the 21st Century:
It is time to understand the 'environment for what it is: the

national security issue of the early twenty-first century The
political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading
disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air
pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded
regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh -- developments that
will prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts --
will be the core foreign [policy challenge from which most others
will ultimately emanate, arousing the public and uniting assorted
interests left over from the Cold War.
There is at least enough natural gas in Central Asia to heat the homes of
the world for another century. And with new discovery of oil in the same
area of the world, its use may be enough to power the automobile industry
in places where the auto does not already dominate a country's culture and
inevitably postpones the day of reckoning. As Ophuls notes, "...the more

we succeed in doing so, the higher psychological social and political price
we shall have to pay. China pas already passed the point of no return and
its institutions operated by Communist theology are essentially designed
to disintegrate.
Energy from the Middle East should be considered ahead of the oil and
gas in Central Asia. In Iraq, for example, semiofficial sources suggest that
Iraq has oil reserves of 120.0 million barrels and 117 .9 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas. Neighboring Iran has 93.0 billion barrels of oil reserves in
the ground and 741.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Kuwait has 96.5
billion barrels of oil reserves and 52.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Saudi Arabia has 261.3 billion barrels of oil reserves and 188.9 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas. The United Arab Emirates have 97.8 billion
barrels of oil in the ground and 204.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Bahrain is a small player in the Middle East. It has 0.2 billion barrels of oil
and 5.2 trillion feet of natural gas. Beneath the shallow waters of the
Persian Gulf lies a vast pool of natural gas, some 282.4 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas owned by Qatar (pronounced gutter) and 3.7 billion barrels
of oil. This North Field extends northeast into Iran, but it is the world's
largest natural gas field next to Iran and Russia. Oil experts believe that
the North Field in Qatar holds so much gas that it can be trapped in huge
quantities for at least 200 years.
The rate of imports offers some insight into the centuries ahead. In 1995,
for example, the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy and France
combined imported about 9.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas liquefied for
shipment by tankers as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The cost of such gas
is lower than gas from competitive sources, because the flow of gas is so
powerful. Thus, Qatar doesn't have to drill too many wells. Nor is Qatari
gas associated with the production of oil; such a mixture is less desirable
because it can make gas production more costly and complicated. A cost
add-on, however, is the process of converting natural gas into LNG for
shipment by sea. In the Far East, only Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
have the facilities to unload LNG at a port of entry. So does the United
States. Most of Europe may be served by gas pipelines from the Middle
East and the gas facilities in Central Asia. Azerbaijan alone claims oil
reserves of 200 billion barrels and gas in the ground is estimated at 80
trillion cubic meters of natural gas.
Its claims are wildly exaggerated. An Economic and Trade Overview off
the Internet observed that Azerbaijan's oil reserves were about 3 billion
barrels, but some experts put its ultimate potential at 40 billion barrels.
Azerbaijan is one of the oldest producing regions of the world, but like
most of the Former Soviet Union (FSU), its oil and gas industry suffers
from outdated technology and poor planning which have resulted in

underproduction, waste and severe environmental degradation both on and

offshore.
The City of Baku has organized and promoted a Caspian Sea

Infrastructure Conference in October, 1997. Other areas of the world
produce oil and gas in commercially significant amounts. The United
States has its Prudhoe Bay oil shipped by pipeline to Valdez, Alaska.
Mexico and Venezuela are also big oil producers, and the latter has
produced almost intolerable levels of air and water pollution in Caracas
and Lake Maracaibo. Indonesia and Brunei have huge oil fields, and
Malaysia has natural gas it sells to Japan. For most of July and August
1997, a pall of haze has shrouded Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur
and other parts of peninsular Malaysia.
The haze is a recurring problem for Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei.

Hong Kong and Shanghai, two of China's largest cities are similarly
covered by smog. It is caused by smoke drifting from forests being burned
and cleared in nearby Indonesia for agriculture. Clear-cutting of forests
has become a recipe for environmental decay afflicting Asia as increasing
population combines with rapid economic growth, urbanization and
industrialization generating an explosive demand for energy. A recent
study by the Asian Development Bank found that the costs of
environmental damage in Asia were already (1997) "staggeringly high and
that if the region failed to implement better environmental policies, it
would pay even more dearly for environmental negligence. Without
conscious shifts in environmental policy, most of Asia will become dirtier,
noisier, more congested, more eroded , less forested and less biologically
diverse. The substainability of Asia's prosperity could be threatened."
Vaclav Smil, a Canadian environmental specialist, has estimated that the

annual cost of damage to China's natural resources is "probably equivalent
to at least 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product -- $552
billion in 1996 -- and may well be as high as 15 percent. In only six of
China's 27 largest cities is drinking water quality within state standards.
Contamination of crops by polluted water endangers health and reduces
opportunities for export of products. And the loss of arable land to urban
encroachment and soil erosion means that, by the year 2000, Bangladesh
and Egypt will be the only two populous nations with less arable land per
capita than China." The government in Beijing may well have had this
pending disaster in mind when China's National Environmental Protection
Agency announced an environmental forum to be held in Beijing between
November 18 and 21, 1997. See http://www.ihei.com/
Smil added another cautionary note. "China like other countries in the
early stages of rapid economic development, has been slow to allocate
capital for environmental management and now has extensive areas of

badly damaged ecosystems. These factors, together with China's huge

population and ambitious development aspirations, make it the world's
most worrisome case of environmental degradation. If China were to
consume resources at the level of South Korea or Taiwan and import crude
oil and grain at the rates comparable to those of other rapidly growing East
Asian economies, it would need more energy and more cereal than are
currently available on the world market." Recently, the news that the
tobacco companies might look with favor on settlement of cases brought
by the states encouraged the domestic tobacco companies.
Most observers believe these companies would simply switch their future
operations to Asia and Europe. However, China is beginning to tighten up
its regulation of smoking, principally by raising the tax on tobacco. This
tax should currently produces revenue, about $6 billion per year, but a lot
of this is simply not collected, and regulation is essentially not enforced.
However, Chinese epidemiologic studies have examined the effects of
smoking and air pollution on the incidence of many diseases. Of these, the
largest impact on public health arises from chronic obstruction of
pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, coronary heart disease (CHD),
and childhood pneumonia. COPD has been found responsible for about
1.5 million deaths in China each year.
The number of deaths in China from COPD are five to six times higher in
China than in the United States. Exposure to dust and fumes plus air
pollution suggest that the high rates of COPD in China come from indoor
air pollution caused by residential fuel combustion. Mortality rates for
COPD in rural areas are about 66 percent higher than in the cities. Lung
cancer claims about 250,000 lives per year in China The Chinese
Environmental Yearbook for 1995 showed that average annual outdoor
concentrations of total suspended particulates and sulphur dioxide SO 2
greatly exceeded Chinese and World Health Organizations standards.
Pneumonia is the leading cause of death for children in China, killing
approximately 300,000 annually. High pneumonia mortality is associated
with parents' chronic respiratory infections, crowded living conditions
passive smoking, high levels of indoor air pollution from fuel combustion,
and parents' delay in seeking medical attention for sick children. These
last two factors are thought to be responsible for the fact that the mortality
rate from childhood pneumonia in rural areas in China is four times that in
the cities. These figures tell only part of the story. Chronic disability from
pollution-related lung disease places an enormous load on China's health
care system and is responsible for tens of millions of lost work days each
year. The economic impact of these pollution-related lung disease is
enormous. The medical effect may be even worse. Constant exposure to
toxic air quality throughout China tends to reduce the body's attempts to
resist other illness, such as tuberculosis, black lung disease and malaria.

The completion of the Three Gorges Dam in 2009 may be a trigger

environmental disaster than even its opponents claim. Approximately one
million Chinese will have been moved to other locations to make way for
the huge inland sea created by damming the Yangtze River. Those ordered
to move may well face adverse medical effects, and we know that
deterioration of the 'environment tends to reduce resistance to illness in
general. India, for example, has had four major malaria epidemics since
1994; last year alone 2.85 million Indians got the disease and some
thousands died. Malaria is spreading in Asia borne by migrant workers
and other travelers. Red tides may also become a problem for Chinese
cities on the coast, such as Dalian, Hong Kong, Macao and Shanghai.
They are caused by an inflow of nitrogen, phosphorus and untreated
waste. Shellfish are particularly affected, often producing neuro-toxins
fatal to humans. Red tides have appeared in the Philippines , Hiroshima
Bay,and other areas close to China. In fact, Hong Kong had a red tide only
two years ago, 1995. China was witness to what is certainly the world's
greatest manmade environmental disaster. The smoke and haze from forest
fires in Indonesia will have a long term effect of increasing the death rate
in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei. The
Suharto government has declined to accept full responsibility for an act
that was made illegal in 1995. No one seems willing to act to prevent a
recurrence of this catastrophe. However, air pollution in cities like
Shanghai and Hong Kong has deteriorated in the last ten years or so.
These are urban environments.
In large areas of China, desertification has proceeded at an accelerating

pace. This is the process by which an area becomes a desert. with the rapid
depletion of plant life and the loss of topsoil at desert boundaries and in
semiarid regions, usually caused by a combination of drought and the
over-exploitation of grasses and other vegetation by people. This process
is evident in rural China in for example Sinkiang. So what China seems to
have is a population of at least 1.3 billion people, most of them living in
urbanized China and exposed to deteriorating air quality, undrinkable
water, not enough food, toxic compounds just about everywhere, and
noise that assails the ears with decibels of continuous sound at an
unbearable level, and a soil that has been leached by decades of poor
agricultural practices. Furthermore, the amount of arable land per capita
has reached a level lower than most third world countries.
The combination of food shortages throughout China and environmental

disaster areas has had serious effect on infant morbidity; the proportion of
sickness or of a specific disease in a geographical locality. In neighboring
Uzbekistan, infant mortality rose by almost fifty percent between 1970
and 1986. With the single exception of Russia, no other great industrial
civilization has so systematically poisoned its land air, water, and people

as has China. Historians might well describe China in the 1990s as one
vast Belsen, a death camp operated by the Nazis during World War II.
In its book, Death by Default A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State

Orphanages, Human Rights Watch offers a chilling description of the
Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute. In March, 1995 a doctor there
Zhanh Shuyun escaped from China carrying with her a substantial archive
of secretly obtained orphanage documents. "The documents covering
mainly the period 198892 paint a picture of day-today life at that time for
the institutional orphans and abandoned children of Shanghai -- one of
China's most prosperous cities -- that seems marked by such extremes of
official callousness and brutality as to challenge normal belief. In this
chapter [it begins on page 117] the evidence contained in those documents
is presented in comprehensive detail, with particular attention given core
question of extremely high mortality at the orphanage and to the
pseudomedical diagnostic and treatment practices that appear, in many
cases, to have been its primary cause." China's specious claim to guarantee
"the right to subsistence" conceals a secret world of starvation, disease,
and unnatural death. The victims are the orphans and abandoned children
in custodial institutions run by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs. The
brutality found in Shanghai is widespread throughout all of China.
The People's Republic of China ratified the United Nations Convention

the Rights of the Child in December, 1991. It submitted its first
implementation report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in
1994. The Chinese government has thus submitted itself voluntarily to
international monitoring on the treatment of its minor citizens and may be
heard uttering its preposterous mantra that "monitoring" of the welfare of
Chinese children is an interference in its internal affairs.
Those oil companies with interests in oil from the Caspian Sea Basin have
a critical interest in the Black Sea. So far pipelines from Kazakhstan and
Azerbaijan have proposed routes ending in existing Black Sea ports, such
as Novorossisk, Supsa, and Batumi or even a new facility built especially
for loading oil discovered during the 1990s. Already, the Black Sea has
more ship traffic than it can safely handle from these ports. These ships,
most, if not all of them are tankers of differing dead weight tonnage.
These tankers must then navigate the treacherous Straits of Bosporus. A

navigation map prepared and published by the Defense Mapping Agency

of the United States in 1996 illustrates just how treacherous navigation
through the Straits of Bosporus is and has been for years. Passage through
these straits to the Sea of Marmara and then to the Mediterranean Sea
through the Dardenelles is awkward but essential to deliver oil to Europe.
Passage through the Bosporus may even be impossible for tankers over
100,000 deadweight tons Navigation safety is a paramount obligation, but
the Black Sea is the world's largest single reservoir of hydrogen sulphide,
one of the deadliest substances in the natural world. A full breath of it is
enough to kill a human being. This deadly brew has accumulated over tens
of thousands of years.
Five rivers empty into the Black Sea: the Kuban, the Don, the Dnieper, the
Dniester, and the Danube. The Danube's drainage basin extends across the
whole of eastern and central Europe. The inrush of organic matter from
five rivers was too much for the bacteria in sea water which would
decompose this matter. They feed by oxidizing their nutrients, using the
dissolved oxygen normally present in sea

Turkey with satellite photo of Pan Bosporus Str. See

http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/TED/BOSPORUS.HTM
water. But when the organic inflow is so great that the supply of dissolved
oxygen is used up, then the bacteria turn to another biochemical process:
they strip the oxygen from the sulfate ions which are a component of sea
water, creating hydrogen sulphide in the process, or H 2 S. In the last fifty
or more years, the five rivers have carried runoff from agriculture along
their banks. Even more recently, toxic pesticides and fertilizers have been
added to the poisonous brew that had already settled to the bottom of the
Black Sea. Some authorities mention a possibility so terrible that most
scientists prefer not to discus it. This nightmare is known by the harmless
word 'turnover,' a phenomenon which has been observed in lakes whose
depths are anoxic and charged with hydrogen sulphide. 'Turnover' means a
sudden rolling over of water layers, as if the whole balance of pressures
and densities which had kept the heavier mass below the lighter, fresh
water were reversed and overthrown. Were this to take place in the Black
Sea,, it would be the worst natural cataclysm to strike the earth since the

last Ice Age. Neal Ascherson, author of Black Sea, is somewhat

reassuring. There are traces of hope in measuring the oxycline, the upward
limit of the poisoned undermass. Russian measurements suggest their
measurements have shown variations up and down of as much as thirty
metres. Ascherson has also noticed that scientists with the most experience
were amongst those least ready to issue melodramatic forecasts of doom.
Ascherson also points out that humans of the Black Sea Basin -- about 160
million people -- are slowly killing the fish population of the Black Sea,
although the process began 2000 years ago. The natural action of natural
forces brought about a huge act of pollution: the decay of billions of tons
of upcountry mud and leaves and living ooze and dead microorganisms
poured into the sea floor since the last Ice Age by the five great rivers of
the Black Sea. In the last century or so, fisherman could earn a decent
living with small wooden boats and primitive nets to catch the creatures of
the sea and sell them ashore. What is being polluted by human agency is
not the main body of water (apart from the tipping of drums of toxic waste
by Italian ships) but the surface layer whose abundance has shaped the
entire prehistory and history of the Black Sea. Monstrous plankton blooms
have begun to appear on the shallow northwestern shelf of the Black Sea,
where the bottom is above the anoxic level and where many of the
important fish spawn. 'Red tides' have formed regularly since the 1970s
from the phosphates found in fertilizers. They combine to produce a
neuro-toxin deadly to humans. The worst of these was in the Bay of
Odessa in 1989. The red tide reached the horrifying concentration of one
kilogram for every cubic metre of sea water. As if this litany of
environmental disasters were not enough, Ascherson offers another, this
time a small, jelly-like creature with no known predators. It was discovery
in the Black Sea. Scientists identified it as the Mneniopsis, a native of the
shallow estuaries of the United States. Clearly, it got to the Black Sea in
the water ballast of freighters. Between 1987 and 1988 one of the most
devastating biological explosions ever recorded by science involved this
small, transparent creature. It multiplied by the millions and fed on
zooplanckton, the food of young fish, and on fish larvae. Its total biomass
in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov reached 700 million tons of
translucent jelly , and its impact was wildly catastrophic. The Mnemiopsis,
however, seem to have eaten the sea to the point of losing all Black Sea
fish and moved on the Sea of Marmara This disaster, more than anything
else, finally convinced the governments of the Black Sea states that they
must take action.
Here's what Ascherson notes about the fish population of the Black Sea.
A second obstacle to the rescue of the Black Sea's ecology is

the attitude of Turkey. Among all the causes of the Black Sea
crisis, the most direct and obvious is over-fishing. Species after
species is being wiped out, or reduced to a few insignificant

survivors, by genocidal and shortsighted greed which pays no

attention to warnings about fish stocks until catch numbers and
average weight have fallen below the point of no return. Most of
the over-fishing is done by Turks. This is a demonstrable fact,
but a fact which Turkish fisherman, politicians and even
scientists find almost impossible to admit. Ignorance and the
cruel spoils system of Turkish regional politics, contribute to this
reluctance. But the most the most powerful motive is patriotic
resentment. Once again, the outside world is perceived to be
picking on Turkey and meddling in Turkish internal affairs.
There can be no thought that the major oil companies may use the ports of
the Black Sea to load oil and/or liquefied natural gas for shipment through
this dying sea and on to the Mediterranean Sea via the Straits of the
Bosporus. No rescue effort could take place while supertankers were
moving through this old route to the sea. The amount of oil involved will
more the quadruple the existing traffic. As Ascherson states: "Appalling
difficulties confront any program for saving the marine life of the Black
Sea. One of them -- the most pathetic -- is the bankruptcy of science in the
countries of the former Soviet Union. All around the coasts of Ukraine and
southern Russia, from Odessa and Sevastopol to Kerch on the Crimean
Peninsula, there once stood a chain of magnificent institutes of marine
biology and oceanography. Their standards of research, not only in the
Black Sea region but in the oceans, were as high as any in the world, and
their equipment -- above all their fleet of specially fitted ships -- was the
envy of their Western colleagues.....At exactly the moment when
awareness of the desperate situation in the Black Sea began to dawn on the
world, this magnificent and indispensable resource was paralyzed by
financial collapse. In Russia, money for almost all public scientific bodies
dried up to a mere trickle at the end of 1991."
At the western extremity of the Black Sea, one finds the Danube River
Delta. In the mid1980s this huge area of over 1700 square miles was the
subject of an environmentally destructive attempt to transform the delta
into farmland. This idea was one of Nicolae Ceausecsu's projects, and it
would have seriously degraded what is the world's largest river wetlands.
Ceausescu was shot by one of the officers in his own army on December
25, 1989.
His violent death was part of the fallout of the revolution in Central
Europe. Ceausescu ordered 6000 men to pump the Danube Delta dry and
plant wheat and rice. The project was a failure. Water plants died, and
animals were driven from some 240,000 acres; even worse, uncounted
pelicans and cormorants were shot. These birds were part of a Rumanian
project to encourage more fish. The birds were eating the fish, so
Ceausescu ordered them shot. In the 1990s, environmental scientists and
economists from several countries decided Ceausescu's projects had to go.
Since this decision to reverse politics, some 9,000 acres of the Danube

Delta have been re-flooded. The agency overseeing this project is the
Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. Financing it is the World Bank's Global
Environmental Facility. The area reclaimed by flooding had become too
dry, and irrigation with river water was difficult because water evaporated
quickly, leaving too many minerals behind.
The Danube Delta was one of Europe's largest wetlands west of the Volga.
Straddling the border of Rumania and Ukraine, is a vast patchwork of
islands and swamps river created by the Danube's final split into three
main branches. Each branch had its own channels and backwaters where
water and nutrients bred a multitude of living things. On the flyways of
many migrating birds, the delta served as a breeding, resting, or feeding
ground for some 365 species, with large flocks wintering in the delta. In
the spring, shad and sturgeon made spawn runs up the river, and there
were fat carp, bream, and pike to be found amongst the rushes and water
lilies. Marius Condac is now the bird and game warden of the delta and
could use more wardens to deal with poachers. A fishing ban for sturgeon
has not yet passed, but Condac is hopeful. Unexpected support for the
delta restoration project came from the Eastern Orthodox Church. Its
spiritual leader, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, made defense of the
region's damaged environment Church policy; it exhorts the faithful to
respect God's creation. Up the river, countries through which the Danube
flows have agreed to clean up the river, but progress has been slow. Two
years before, 1995, land re-flooded then showed signs of life. In 1997, this
land had rushes and coot nests together with plenty of carp. All this
occurred after officials in Turkey had allowed its fishermen a license to
kill fish. Ankara had never heard of a relatively new movement supporting
the protection of wildlife and wetlands preservation as being more
important and valuable than agriculture that barely survived the poisonous
waste from the headwaters of the Danube in Germany . The river flowed
through Austria, Hungary, and Rumania before emptying into the Black
Sea.
In the 1970s, the Turkish government decided to make fishing more

profitable. The government announced a generous program of loans and
grants financed in part by the World Bank. With this money the fisherman
living in villages along the Turkish coast of the Black Sea were able to
buy or build large boats equipped with new fishing and fish-locating
technology. However, the cost of an effective boat began to soar out of
reach of most Black Sea fisherman, while the interest charges on loans
ruined family after family. Disaster struck in the 1980s. Society in the
little ports and villages divided in a desperate struggle between the
precariously rich and the chronically poor. Even the big fishing boats
began to lose money often returning from a trip with no or very few fish.
Owners of the smaller boats gave them up and cast nets during the winter

for meager catches. After some thirty years of hand-to-mouth existence's,

the fishermen got more or less to where they were, but there were no fish.
Just to the south of the Black Sea coast in Turkey, there are nine provinces
dominated by some 12 million Kurds. For some thirteen years, Turkey has
been racked by a most brutal civil war with these Kurds. Hardly anyone
mentions this ugly war even though Turkey acceded to the Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on July 31,
1950. In October, 1997, the Turkish government lifted emergency rule in
three provinces, Batman, Bitlis, and Bingol. In fact, however, the civil
governors still have the same power as before to authorize military
operations and expel citizens they suspect of Kurdish national sympathies.
Four other provinces remain in limbo. Mus, Mardin, Adiyaman, and
Elazig had emergency rule lifted in 1996, and the government in Ankara
remains unwilling to settle the brutal fighting by letting the Kurds at least
preserve their own culture by encouraging schools to teach the Kurdish
language. As of October, 1997 even suggesting anything that might "harm
the indivisible unity of the Turkish state" is a crime in Turkey. The two
provinces having a common border with Iraq, Sirnak and Hakkari, are still
under emergency rule. Notwithstanding, Turkish army units have been
pursuing Kurds into Iraq heedless of boundaries. The area in Iraq included
land in the No Fly Zone, a policy adopted after the Persian Gulf War.
In treating the Kurds as non-persons while, at the same time, wiping out
their language and culture, Turkey has violated the European Convention
on Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide. On the other hand, Turkey has expressed an
interest on joining the European Union (EU). With inflation at well over
50 percent, Mesut Yilmaz, Turkey's Prime Minister since June, 1997 has
no intention of complying with the plan endorsed by the International
Monetary Fund. Turkey would not even qualify for admission to the EU;
as a minimum, it needs a balanced budget. Evidently, Turkey considers
itself free to violate treaties by which they are bound. Turkey has never
accepted the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Recently,
however, the International War Crimes Tribunal has been formed to deal
the trial of persons charged with the crime of genocide. It arose out of the
war in Serbia and Herzegovina and the ethnic cleansing in which hundreds
of thousands were either killed or became refugees. This court is located at
the Hague in the Netherlands, and it has already tried and convicted
several people from Serbia. They were found guilty of violation of the
convention on genocide. Turkey is a member of NATO, but it periodically
enrages Greeks by overflying their part of Cyprus. Cyprus, of course, is
the issue. For violations of the European Convention on Human Rights,
see http://www.kypros.org/Cyprus_Problem/hr/hr_8.htm

In Anatolia, a gigantic Turkish project, the Ataturk Dam, has been

receiving water beginning in 1990 to flow in behind the dam, creating a
huge lake. The dam, or rather a series of dams, has slowed the flow of
water downstream in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Iraq and Syria have
both objected to this reduction in their flow of water. Iran has threatened
war if its water for agricultural purposes is unreasonably reduced. So has
Iraq. Because of the controversy over water rights, the World Bank
refused to fund the project, known as the Southeastern-Anatolia Project
(GAP). GAP was designed to bring electricity and water for the irrigation
of some 30,000 square miles of arid and semiarid land. GAP was also
designed to allow Turkey to grow much of the food for the Middle East by
irrigating some 4.2 million acres of land. This irrigation would enable
Turkish farmers to raise cotton, sugarbeets, tobacco, soy beans and other
cash crops instead of the grain they now raise. Turkey has expressed
concern over cross-border raids by Iraqi Kurds. Water to irrigate much of
Turkeys' Anatolian area is expected to flow from the Ataturk Dam through
basalt-lined tunnels designed to avoid erosion. These tunnels incidentally
serve as protection from sabotage by the Kurdish militants.
What has happened in the Black Sea, one story from Turkey and another,
more positive story from Rumania make a critical point first made by
Robert D. Kaplan in his 1996 book, The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at
the Dawn of the 21st Century.
It is time, he wrote, to understand the environment for what it is:

the national security issue of the early 21st century. The political
and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease,
deforestation, rising sea levels in the critical, overcrowded
regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh -- developments that
will prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts --
will be the core foreign challenge policy challenge from which
most others will ultimately emanate, arousing the public and
uniting assorted interests left over from the Cold War.
And this is not all. Saddam Hussein, a hangover from the War in the
Persians Gulf (1990-91), has searched the world for nuclear weapons
and/or biological weapons and may well have them in 1997. India and
Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, and the inventory of missing
weapons-grade uranium and plutonium is a sober warning.
The cultural mix of Central Asia has never been fully understood at all in
the United States. Islam Karimov, for example, was born an orphan and
spent his entire life within the Communist hierarchy of Uzbekistan.
Karimov would like to emulate Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, but he
doesn't know how. He fears what has happened in the Caucasus, where
two so-called democrats were lauded for the for their human right, Levon
TerPetrossian in Armenia and Ebulfez Elcibey in Azerbaijan They
promptly entered into a war that killed 20,000 people and created a million

refugees. In the Caucasus, it required a Soviet era dictator, Geidar Aliyev

who overthrew the democrat in Azerbaijan to move toward peace with
Armenia. The discovery of oil and great wealth helped Aliyev settle the
dispute, or at least put it on hold, pending a decision on the routes for oil
and gas pipelines.
In some ways, the United States probably contributed to undermining the

discipline of international financial institutions. In 1996,Washington
strongly backed South Korea's entry into the Organization of Economic
Cooperation and Development. Membership in the OECD is largely
symbolic, but it has certain perks. Members may assume that bank loans to
members carry no risk of default. This assumption rests on rules
developed by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
This bank was founded in 1930 as an institution for cooperation among the
central banks of the various member countries. Foreign banks around the
world, mindful that South Korea's membership was a sure thing, more
than doubled their lending to South Korea from $52 billion to $108
billion.
As it happened South Korean banks were the biggest victims of the 1997
Asian meltdown, closely followed by Japan and the so-called Asian Tigers
like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. This latter city-state
was home to the world's third largest oil refinery, so it was never in any
real danger of financial collapse. In fact, Japan was one of the guarantors
of the subscription of capital in the Bank for International Settlements --
1,500,000,000 gold francs -- only 25 percent of which has been paid
in.However, the public's money was at risk in South Korea and Japan, and
it had no input into regulations designed to protect public money. Thus,
management of huge loans was never made subject to regulations
designed to protect the public. In fact, the financial meltdown was
something like the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s in the United
States, The savings and loan industry was simply deregulated by President
Reagan and not replaced by well-trained financial managers and auditors.
Chaos was the inevitable result.
During October, 1997 the world's financial markets went into a tailspin.
The Dow Jones Index lost some 552 points in a few days. More or less the
same were other market indexes in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong

Kong, and Seoul; the indices were all down. The other so-called Tiger
states of Southeast Asia had already either devalued their currency against
the dollar or speculators had simply sold Thai currency (the baht),
Malaysia (the ringgit), Indonesia (the rupiah), Singapore (the dollar),
Seoul (the won), and Manila (the peso). Investors in Australia, Brazil, and
Russia all lost money when the local currency declined sharply against the
dollar. Hong Kong was the big surprise. At the end of June, 1997 Hong
Kong was handed over by Great Britain, and its dollar was considered
sound. However, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced it would
support the local dollar; it had a rate of 7.5 to the American dollar. The
three Hong Kong banks that issued these dollars viewed the slight rise in
interest rates as one of the weapons used to support the Hong Kong dollar.
However, higher rates for Hong Kong are bad, because they deter
borrowing, slow the sale of property -- value in Hong Kong rests
principally on real property -- and drive money out of stocks and into
bonds. Furthermore, the Monetary Authority has about $80 billion in U.S.
dollars and said it would use its reserves to defend the local dollar. The
People's Bank of China has about $134 billion in U.S. dollars. Using these
reserves to defend the Hong Kong dollar would be an exercise in utter
futility. In the financial centers of the world, wire transfers of between $1
and $2 trillion a day are routine. To really defend its dollar, Hong Kong
will probably have support an interest rate increase. Higher rates pull
capital into Hong Kong and spur buying its dollars. While the monetary
crisis continues, confidence in the Hong Kong dollar can be expected to
decline. If this happens, neither Hong Kong nor Beijing has the resources
to buy big ticket imports such as nuclear power plants.
There is however, a problem. Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Inc. just

announced it would lay off some 10,000 jobs in Western Europe and the
United States. Company executives said the planned to shift thousands of
jobs from countries like Sweden and and Germany to fastergrowing
markets in Southeast Asia and China. This project may be amongst the
first to be cancelled as a result of the global financial crisis. Furhermore,
Germany's unemployment figures, now at 11.2 percent, will look worse
with the people laid off by Brown Boveri.
The Southeast Asia crisis is probably limited to that area and includes
China, Taiwan and South Korea. Sharp declines in Asian countries against
the dollar make Asian products cheaper, and imported products far more
expensive than they were in July, 1997. It was on this date that the Thai
crisis erupted. The Thai crisis occurred against an environment of ongoing
political corruption. Banks in Bangkok made poor loans with next to no
security, and cronyism existed on a wide scale. Furthermore, there was
little or no demand for the officebuildings so lavishly built during the last
five years. Malaysia is in essentially the same position as Thailand. Its
Prime Minister Mohammed Mahathir has had an edifice complex and

Kuala Lumpur built the highest office building in Asia. Like Thailand,
competitive bidding has not been used to finance the construction of
public buildings. Indonesia has beenanother example of cronyism in
management and finance. Rich landowners were corruptly allowed to
engage in There has been a long time ban on these plants, but China is
considered a gold mine for this technology. American reactor
manufacturers have jointly developed a cheaper and safer reactor, and they
are now lobbying Washington to lift the ban on sales to China. They
succeeded when an agreement was announced on the occasion of
Presidenyt Jiangh's visit to the United States. The lobby is led by
Westinghouse Electric Corporation and ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd.
with an American subsidiary. They have been partners with
Westinghouse, the Bechtel Corporation and Stone & Webster Engislash
and burn agriculture. The fires set to burn off trees was illegal as of 1996.
The fires lingering on may last for a long time, and the smog generated
has polluted the air of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Sumatra.
So far as corporate profits are concerned, American companies that earn

significent revenue from Southeast Asian may see their profits in the
United States shrink. Southeast Asian products that are exported became
less expensive, even competitive with American prices. This means that
the trade deficit for the United States can be expected to increase,
probably at the expense of American manufacturers of like products. An
exception exists with respect to the Hong Kong dollar. Because of its link
to the American dollar, the Hong Kong dollar now buys less in this
fiancial capital of China. Its leaders have not been entirely successful in
supporting the Hong Kong dollarr by buying Hong Kong dollars and
dipping into its foreign currency reserves of U.S. dollars. On October 21,
1997 it held firm at 7.15 to the U.S. dollar. On October 28, 1997 it
dropped precipately to 7.7325 to the U.S. dollar. On the same day, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 552.26 points, the largest singleday
dccline in its history. Since then, the Dow Jones has bounced up and down
with no apparent trend in either direction.
The weakness in Asian countries really began in Thailand. Most countries

in Southeast Asia had chosen to tie their currencies to the dollar, with an
exchange rate that was fixed or was allowed to fluctuate within a narrow
range. Over time, Thailand -- the first of the countries to suffer -- found
itself with a currency that was overvalued. Imports flooded in as Thais
bought foreign luxury goods, while exports stagnated. Some international
investors began to bet that the administration in Bangkok would devalue
the baht. It did on July 2, 1997. These speculators then borrowed baht to
buy dollars or other solid currencies. The speculators could make a tidy
profit if they could later repurchase the baht for less. than they had paid.
Bangkok took action by raising interest rates -- making it more expensive
to borrow baht -- and prohibited some foreigners from acquiring baht . In

the meantime, however, Thais began to worry. They had borrowed dollars
to finance their businesses, because interest rates in dollars were lower. If
the baht were to decline in value , they would be in trouble, because the
dollaars needed to repay these loans would cost a lot more baht. By buying
dollars to protect themselves, the value of the baht declined precipitately.
The value of real property also declined in value, and this caused anxiety
amongst bankers. Their security was based on a fixed rate for the baht. In
Thailand, less real property was secured than in Hong Kong. This is why
the Hong Kong dollar went into free fall in Octiber, 1997. Value in Hong
Kong depended far more on real property that it did in Thailand. Still,
many Thais lost a great deal of money, and so did the very rich in Hong
Kong. According to news reports, the Kwok Brothers and Li KaShing lost
a combined total of HK$1.5 billion in one day. It was on October 23, 1997
that Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index declined by 10,426 points, or 10.4
percent. On the same date, the Hang Seng had fallen by 22.5 percent since
the beginning of 1997.
On October 27, the Hong Kong market had spread its troubles to Europe
and Latin America as its Hang Seng Index hit another low. On Tuesday,
October 28, the communications media reported that the Dow Jones
Industrial Averages had lost 554.26 points, and the turmoil was global.
Despite statements from Hong Kong officials vowing to support the HK
dollar, thre was some evidence that the flight of capital from Hong Kong
had already begun, the result of a growing fear that the territory's currency
might be delinked from the dollar peg. By October 28, all major countries
reported a decline on its stock index; ciyies in each of these countries
included Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur Singapore, Manila, Bangkok,
Jakarta, Sydnet, Seoul, and Tokyo. In Europe, exchanges in London, Paris,
Frankfurt, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, to name a few showed declines with a
few exceptions. On October 30, Moody's Investor Service of the United
States downgraded its outlike for the entire banking industry in Hong
Kong. In Indonesai, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has negotiated
a plan leading to austerity in spending. It was supported by Singapore and
Japan but only if Jakarta agrees to accept austerity. Japan also offered
$billion to Indonesia on the same basis of conditionality. The IMF was
also negotiating with Thailand.

Selection of pipeline routes from Central Asia to the West seems like a
long-term process. Cost is only one consideration; political stability is
essential. Feasibility is another yardstick. Studies have shown that it would
cost more that $16 billion to construct a line under the Caspian Sea, across
Azerbaijan, Armenia and Nakhichevan to Turkey. Because of the Libya-
Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, major American oil companies must of
necessity avoid Iran. Turkmenistan already supplies gas to the republics of
Central Asia via the Soviet-developed and Russian-controlled system. A
line through Afghanistan is not out of the question; it depends on the
political nerve of the participants. The Unocal Corporation has already
discovered pitfalls there. American women are certain to object because of
the way the Taleban fundamentalists treat women in Afghanistan, a
reminder that medieval customs still exist and get enforced by the
Taleban. However, Afghanistan has another use. If this country threatens
to negotiate with Afghanistan, negotiations may well convince Russia that
Turkmenistan will pursue alternative routes if Moscow goes on damaging
its vital economic interests by providing unsatisfactory and unreliable
transit facilities for existing gas exports. As of mid1997, the most realistic
prospect is for an improvement in transit conditions through Russia as
Western companies secure improved conditions for oil transit through
Russia. All parties involved in this aspect of the Great Game agree that
there will have to be a new export pipeline.
The relationship between politics and pipeline development remains quite

close. Russia, for example, cannot have forgotten the humiliating defeat in
its war with Afghanistan. Furthermore, any rap Grozny is the capital city
of Chechnya now an independent nation. [graphic]
prochement between Azerbaijan and Russia might involve Russian

support for a negotiated settlement to the dispute in Karabakh. The recent
settlement of Russia's dispute with Chechnya offers some tantalizing
possibilities. Russia might even soften its position on the Caspian Sea's
legal regime. Much will depend on whether Moscow's various factions or
power centers will accept what is perhaps, the basic premise of Western
activities has been that the economics of oil and gas in Central Asia make
winners out of all of them. This premise runs counter to the nationalist
belief in Moscow that the attainment of economic independence by
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan is a zero-sum game in which,
if the Central Asian republics gain, then Russia surely must lose.
On October 23, 1997 Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, Under Secretary for

Economic and Business Affairs, appeared before the Subcommittee on
International Economic Policy, Export and Trade Promotion. It was a
subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ambassador
Eizenstat offered comments on the Clinton Administration's policy with
respect to pipeline routes out of the Caspian Sea Basin. The Clinton

Administration, he said, has "five main foreign policy interests in the

Caspian region. They are: The independence and sovereignty of the New
Independent States (NIS), and their democratic and market development;
Promotion of regional conflict resolution; the increase and diversification
of world energy supplies; continued support for U.S. companies; and
continued pressure on the Iranian regime to change its unacceptable
practices..."
"Resolution of regional conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and

Chechnya is critical for successful and comprehensive energy
development in the [Caspian] region. The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh,
for example, has contributed to instability in Azerbaijan and hinders
serious consideration of a pipeline from Azerbaijan through Armenia to
the west.....In the longer term, the scale of Caspian Basin energy resources
not only justifies -- but will demand -- multiple transportation options for
moving production out into world markets. ....The United States supports a
[pipeline route from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan, Turkey as one of
multiple routes." Routing a pipeline through part of Turkey avoids any
further environmental degradation of the Black Sea. However, such a
route may have to be run through territory in which the Turkish army has
an ugly civil war with the Kurds. Both sides recognize there is no military
solution to this intractable problem.
At the end of the 19th century, Azerbaijan was the number one world
source for oil. Until the middle of the 20th century, it remained the single
largest supplier of oil to Europe. Capturing Baku, Azerbaijan's capitol city,
was Adolph Hitler's principal strategic objective when the Nazi armies
invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. History records that the Nazis almost
captured their objective, but they ran out of fuel before they could reach
Baku. Stalingrad was a mere 300 miles away; and the Nazis were stopped
at the gates of this city. After World War II (193945), oil companies in the
Soviet Union began looking for more oil in the Urals and then Siberia.
Russian geologists overlooked Central Asia. Here was a huge area four
times the size of France, beginning at the Caspian Sea and extending to
China. It 55 million inhabitants are poor, and none of the five countries
likes the other. Only Uzbekistan seems politically stable. Geographically,
it is the center of Central Asia. Tashkent, its capital is considered the
region's chief commercial city, and despite its Communist background,
Uzbekistan has been trying to move towards a market economy.
Notwithstanding, it was from Central Asia that the Soviet Union launched
its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, returning defeated ten years later.
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan share the Aral Sea. Because of the Soviet
Union's criminal indifference to the environment, the Aral Sea is now
something like 25 percent of its former area, poisoned by pesticides and
poor agricultural practices. It is literally drying up from overuse of water

from two rivers that once had enough to irrigate cotton acreage. Most of
the water diverted evaporated because the canals were neither covered nor
lined. The water slowly became contaminated by pesticides and other
chemicals sprayed on cotton and rice fields. Having settled on the seabed,
these chemicals are now windblown for hundreds of miles. None of the
neighboring states of Central Asia see any possibility of saving what's left
of this once rich sea. Some inhabitants even suggest the location of oil
refineries nearby, selling the refined products for hard currencies.
The discovery of new oil in Azerbaijan has set off a furious search for
pipelines to carry oil and gas to Europe and the West. The Caspian Sea
Basin may hold oil and gas reserves second only to those of the Middle
East. Conservatively, the Caspian Sea Basin -- it includes Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, and Uzbekistan -- has
oil reserves of more than 75 billion barrels and some 25 trillion cubic
meters of natural gas. The Clinton Administration has announced it would
oppose any pipeline that went through Iran. Furthermore, it does not want
any pipeline going through a former Soviet oblast (county or province).
The image of a few pages ago is a highly stylized view of a critical area of
oil geography. It features Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya. The
pipelines shown passing through Grozny were badly damaged during the
Russian attempt three years ago to subdue Chechen rebels who fought for
their independence from the former Soviet Union. In 1996, President Boris
Yeltsin sent General Alexandr Lebed to negotiate a cease fire and an
agreement that would concede Chechen freedom. It was duly signed by
the president of Chechnya after elections in that country.
On October 25, 1997 oil began to flow through Chechnya using the war-
damaged pipeline. It ran from Baku to Novorossisk hundreds of miles to
this Russian port on the Black Sea. A 95mile segment of the new pipeline
transits Chechnya and Grozny, its capital. This oil is described as early oil,
and some 176,000 barrels will flow through this pipeline by late 1997.
Sixty-five years ago, a pipeline ran from Baku to Batumi, a Georgian port
on the Black Sea, but it was shut down in 1935. Some of the early oil was
bought by Lukoil, a giant oil company in Russia. On the same day the
flow from Baku began, the formation of Central Asia Gas Pipeline Ltd.
was announced in Turkmenistan. Currently, this company may deliver gas
to an as yet un-designated port via pipeline in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Unocal has the largest share of this consortium; the other companies have
not been identified.
The location of pipelines from the Caspian Sea Basin to the West was
critical. Depending where the pipelines are placed, power over this OPEC-
free energy supply may fall to Chechen rebels, irredentist Armernians,
Russian or Turkish gangsters, Iranian mullahs Kurdish guerillas or

mercurial chieftains of ethnic groups that nurse ancient grievances of

which the outside world knows nothing. Rosemarie Forthye, an American
diplomat specializing in international energy issues put it succinctly in
1996: "All options are complicated, and none is trouble-free, because they
all either pass through politically unstable areas, involve high costs
because of distance or terrain, or are politically risky because they offend
the sensibilities of one or more of the regional powers." This language
appeared in The Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia:
Problems, Prospects, and Policy, International Institute for Strategic
Studies, London, 1996.
Eizenstat also reiterated America's support for multiple pipelines. "In

keeping with our support for the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, we have urged
the Turks to create a commercially attractive arrangement. On the gas side
we are working with Turkey to identify energy alternatives to meet their
energy shortages, including gas from the Caspian through the Caucasus.
We continue to press Turkey to open its border with Armenia as part of its
ongoing, positive role in resolving the Nagorno-Karabaskh conflict." In
May, 1997, Turkey signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
Turkmenistan and Iran. It allows Iran to buy gas from Turkmenistan,
while Iran will permit this gas to transit its territory. Eizenstat stated flatly
that this Memorandum did not authorize a pipeline across Iran in violation
of the Iran-Libyan Sanctions Act of 1996. "We will monitor future
developments under the Memorandum of Understanding and... should we
find evidence of investment activity which could enhance Iran's ability to
develop its own petroleum resources, we will take appropriate action
under this act of Congress."
In his comments to the International Economic Policy, Export and Trade

Promotion Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. Eizenstat showed a real awareness of the environmental
hazards of shipping oil through the Black Sea via the Straits of Bosporus,
the Dardenelles and the Sea of Marmara into the Aegean Sea for
destinations in Western Europe. The extreme hazards of operating in the
Black Sea argue against its use at all as a route carrying oil. Construction
of a dual system of pipelines, two for oil and another two for gas built in
parallel via Azerbaijan, possibly Georgia and then through Turkey to
Ceyhan seem the most feasible at the end of 1997.
Attached to this book is a legal opinion written by S. Andrew

Scharfenberg. It appeared in the Spring 1996 Issue of the Emory
University International Law Review. Its title was Regulating Traffic Flow
in the Turkish Straits: A Test for Modern International Law. Its author
concluded on page 29:
The Montreux Convention has successfully governed navigation

in the Turkish Straits for 60 years. Despite its successes, the

Montreux regime is not ideal. Much has changed since the

signing of the treaty [in 1936]: the size and number of ships on
the water, the type of cargo on board, and the needs of
interested parties. To compensate for these differences, Turkey
has instituted the Regulations with the goal of protecting shipping
, the environment, and human life. The Regulations are not
perfect and they have aroused a great deal of opposition from
other states. Even so, they are Turkey's best hope for mitigating
dangers in the Straits [of Bosporus]. The only superior
alternative, at least in the eyes of the international community ,
would be to convene a conference for the development of a new
international strait regime for governance of the Bosporus and
Dardenelles. But given that none of the parties to the Montreux
Convention has called for a new conference or even an
amendment to the existing treaty, Turkey is justified in taking
unilateral action. The Regulations are consistent with
international law and the Montreux Convention. Free passage
through the Straits does not mean unregulated passage. The
right of free passage is valuable only to the extent that passage
is effectuated. Turkey's rules provide practical guidelines
necessary for the safe management of heavy traffic in the narrow
Bosporus waterway. The Montreux agreement implicitly gives
Turkey the power to adopt such a regulatory scheme; reason
demands it. Footnotes appear at
http://www.law.emory.edu./EILR/volumes/spring96/scharfen_fn.h
tml
Additionally, Mr.. Scharfenberg noted that the Montreux Convention

might be abrogated by Turkey . Articles 2629 provide for termination of
the treaty. If Turkey chose this route, the author suggests that another
existing treaty replace the Montreux Convention. If preceded by a
denunciation of the Montreux Convention, the Convention on the
Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution might serve as a
replacement of the Montreux regime. Alternatively, the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) might work, but Turkey has
not yet ratified this treaty. In any case, Turkey would support denunciation
of the Montreux Convention by asserting the doctrine of rebus sic
stantibus. It holds that a significant change in material circumstances
warrants a state's decision to ignore the mandates of a treaty.
One may safely argue that all the fuss over interpretation of a 60year old
treaty occurred because oil was discovered in the Caspian Sea Basin.
Turkey may say that the increase in the number of super tankers passing
through the Bosporus after loading at Russia's port city of Novoissisk will
irreparably damage the marine environment. Russia may continue raising
objections that it should be allowed to continue its pollution of the Black
Sea as a way of vindicating the free passage through the Bosporus as
guaranteed by the Montreux Convention of 1936.

During almost five years in office, President Clinton seems to have found
several themes that resonate with voters. Even Republican members of
Congress find it difficult if not impossible to fault the president on
democracy. To Clinton, democracy means free elections and universal
suffrage. Dwelling on the next and distinctly different but closely
associated concept has so far eluded Clinton in his public discourse. In his
article in Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria, its Managing Editor, has taken
the next step "liberal or illiberal democracy." By this he means free and
fair elections and universal suffrage with the bundle of rights we all take
for granted because of our Constitution's Bill of Rights. As Mr. Zakaria
puts it, "...this latter bundle of freedoms what might be termed
constitutional liberalism is theoretically different and historically distinct
from democracy..."
Zakaria continued: "Constitutional liberalism, on the one hand, is not

about the procedures for selecting government, but rather government's
goals. It refers to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to
protect an individual's autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever
the source state, church, or society....In almost all its variants,
constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain natural (or
inalienable) rights and that governments must accept a basic law, limiting
its own powers, that secures them. It was on June 15, 1215 that England's
barons forced the king to abide by the settled and customary law of the
land. This was the Magna Carta. In 1789, the framers of the Constitution
presented it to the Congress in Philadelphia for ratification. Two years
later, Congress was requested to ratify the Bill of Rights, the first ten
amendments to the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. It
could be said that the Constitution without amendments was merely the
structure designed to establish the separation of powers, create a Congress,
elect a president, and establish a judicial system. Then Congress provided
the bundle of rights of individuals. The First Amendment established
freedom of speech, the press, religion and assembly. Congress attempted
to protect individuals from unreasonable search and seizure but failed.
Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justices Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, and
occasionally Justice O'Connor were heavily influenced by those who
protected the police when they over enthusiastically obtained evidence

without benefit of a warrant. Thus, constitutional liberalism does not

always follow a straight line; the ideal model is best symbolized not by the
mass plebiscite, but the impartial judge.
In Central Asia, elections, even when reasonably free, as in Kyrgistan and

Kazakhstan, have resulted in strong executives, weak legislatures and a
weak judiciary, and few economic and civil liberties. In Kyrgistan. Askar
Akayev, elected with 60 percent of the vote, proposed enhancing his
powers in a referendum that passed easily in 1996. His new powers
included appointing all top officials except the prime minister, although he
can dissolve parliament if it turns down three of his nominees for this post.
In Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected with a heavy
percentage of the popular vote. One of his first moves was to authorize the
expenditure of $400 million to build a new capital, Akmola, abandoning
Almaty. In this city, temperatures routinely drop to 40 degrees below zero.
Those present at the unveiling of the new government buildings were
appalled at the waste and described them as Potemkin villages complete
on three sides only. Complaints about cost were merited in Akmola, a city
about to have a Red Cross soup kitchen. Belurusan president Alexandr
Lukashenko was popularly elected but announced he would tolerate no
criticism. He also maintains an effective security force to guarantee he
doesn't have to listen to criticism.
As the dust settles in Iraq and the UN Inspectors expect to renew the
search for weapons of mass destruction, Washington should reassess its
position. The 1990-91 coalition politics that allowed President George
Bush to put a coalition together was a demonstrable failure in 1997. It
included Syria, Egypt, and Kuwait plus active forces from the Persian
Gulf states. Normally, the Arab states would not combine against another
Arab state, in this case, Iraq. Then Secretary of State James Baker
promised the Arabs he would pressure Israel to settle differences in the
Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, the first meeting of the coalition began in
Madrid in October, 1991. Two years later, the world sat up in surprise,
when Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, produced the so-called
Oslo Accord. By this agreement with the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO), it accepted a settlement that in effect committed
Israel to withdraw from agreed areas of the West Bank and turn them over
to the PLO. Gaza, Jericho, and Hebron were the first areas traded for
peace, and there the Oslo Accord stumbled on Benjamin Netanyahu's iron
will to guarantee peace for all of the West Bank and the failure of Yasser
Arafat's attempt to deliver security to what was left of Israel. President Bill
Clinton has tried to blame Israel for the stagnating Oslo Accord. Clinton
publicly denounced Netanyahu, not by name, but by position. He told the
world he wanted a credible withdrawal by Israel, but asked for nothing
from the PLO. No independent state should have such a public whipping
from the President of the United States. Israel doesn't deserve such

arrogance in a matter where Washington publicly committed itself to a

role as honest broker and nothing more. Israel had even foreseen what
Clinton might do after Clinton's reelection in 1996. Israel's Foreign
Minister, David Levy, has been cultivating relations with Turkey's
military. As of 1993, Israel and Turkey had made considerable progress
when the discovery of oil in the Caspian Sea Basin offered Israel a way
out of getting its oil from the Persian Gulf. Furthermore, the Arab world
has problems of its own making.
Saudi Arabia is ruled by a monarchy not at all willing to share its oil
wealth. Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein and the United Arab Emirates are all in the
same boat with democracy, not even close. Iraq is the enfant terrible of the
Middle East, and Iran shows no signs of willingness to tolerate the United
States. Does Clinton think he can rule the international roost by appealing
to the Arab world at the expense of the only democracy in the Middle
East, Israel? In fact, the Clinton Administration endorsed the concept of
reciprocity over two years ago . Reciprocity means that both Israel and the
Palestinian Authority accept mutual obligations. Now, some Assistant
Secretary of State has denounced Israel for insisting on it. The Arab world
broke up the wartime coalition, because Netanyahu refused to surrender to
Arab demands on the one hand and, on the other hand, he refused to
abandon insistence on a peace resting on reciprocity. Nowhere in the Arab
world is there any evidence of constitutional liberalism, the body of law
that protects individuals from abuse by the state. The United States needs
a new foreign policy, one that recognizes its friends and clobbers its
enemies. Our policy regarding Iran needs revision in view of the possible
bombing of Iraq.
In Turkey and Iraq, ongoing activities might lead inevitably to peace with
the division of Iraq. Effectively, Iraq has been divided since 1991. There
are three zones, the North and South No Fly Zones and the unnamed zone
between them. Iraq's boundaries were wholly artificial, and the state was
established by Great Britain in 1923. It conducted a referendum on the
question whether Britain's handpicked candidate, Emir Faisal, be approved
as king. He was approved, and Iraq was born, carved out of the Ottoman
Empire. Turkey was a loser in World War I and paid a price. It lost access
to the oil of what is now Iraq. Great Britain transferred Mosul to this new
state, even though it was a Kurdish vilayet or province.In fact, the Royal
Air Force bombed a village in Iraq. Its inhabitants were mostly Kurdish
who refused to pay taxes to King Faisal newly installed in Baghdad by the
British. The British also needed Iraqi oil for their navy. To that end, the
British collaborated with Iraq in restoring stability by supporting Iraq's
persecution of the Kurds.
Events in Iran (Persia) followed a similar path. Dr.Muhammed Mossadeq

authorized nationalization of the Iranian National Oil Company in 1951.

The British froze Iran's financial assets and Iran took the nationalization to
the International Court of Justice, where Great Britain lost. The documents
establishing the oil company were a "contract" and Iran had only to pay
compensation. Great BritainÌs lien on most Iranian assets prevented
payment. Britain's role in oil diplomacy in the Middle East was an
exercise in military power. Even today, British oil imperialism has not
been forgotten. Nor have the Kurds forgotten the ShahÌs betrayal of the
Kurds after he signed a treaty with Algiers. Furthermore, Iranian assets
frozen in 1951 and 1979 -- the hostage crisis at the American Embassy in
Teheran -- are still frozen, but by the Clinton Administration. It has
adopted the dual containment policy that believes in isolating both Iran
and Iraq. Washington persists in claiming Iran sponsors terrorism. Until
the election of 1996, when Iran elected a moderate, President Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani failed to deal with the very real possibility that IranÌs
clergy funneled money to terrorists. The clergy who have access to vast
sums within Iran command their own network. One of the bitter disputes
within the Islamic Republic of Iran was whether the Koran believed in the
ownership of private property or Islam recognized the state as owner of all
property. The clergy were quick to see the advantages of private
ownership and installed themselves as owners of vast fortunes protected
by the state. When or if the Clinton Administration abandons its insane
policy of isolating Iran, that country will not join the United States in
undermining Iraq or even joining American troops in attacking Iraq in its
present dispute with the United Nations over inspection consistent with
Security Council Resolution 687.
Persia had been at war almost constantly with the Ottoman Empire. Iran
was once Persia with an aristocratic social structure fatally undermined by
the democratization brought about by Islam. In Turkey, Ataturk, the father
of modern Turkey made certain that the government and the ruled were
secular.With the passage of time from 1925 to 1997, Muslims steadily
infiltrated the Turkish government. The army was determined to prevent
an Islamic majority. In 1997, the army forced the resignation of Necmettin
Erkaban. The president of Turkey named Mesut Filmaz to succeed him. In
the meanwhile, government officials in Ankara pursued the Kurds and
their supporters with unrivalled savagery.
Filmaz has tried to arrest this drift toward Islam with the help of the
Turkish army. This army is locked in an ugly war with Kurdish guerillas at
a cost to Turkey of $5 billion a year. Hardly anyone sees this war as a
solution; it must be brought about by diplomacy. On February 10, 1998
Turkey announced it had established an eight-mile zone inside Iraq to
prevent Kurdish refugees from fleeing to Turkey. Some 2.5 million Kurd
refugees fled into Turkey in 1991, when Saddam Hussein initiated
genocidal action.The Kurds have been betrayed by just about everyone,
including the Shah of Iran, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Nixon. Even

earlier -- they were encouraged by Articles 62-64 of the Treaty of Sèvres

of 1920 -- the Allies promised the Kurds a home, but in renegotiating this
treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 omitted any reference to Kurdish
autonomy.
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, annexing it as IraqÌs 19th province. This led
to the Persian Gulf War which ended when President George Bush
prematurely authorized a cease fire and armistice. In the period from 1980
to 1988, Iraq and Iran were locked in an ugly war in which both countries
lost an estimated 750,000 combatants each. Iraq launched its attack against
Iran on September 22, 1980. Until 1990, the United States has been
ambivalent about Iraq, authorizing American companies to export so-
called dual-use equipment. Helicopters, for example, were described by
Baghdad as being for civilian purposes. Then, Saddam used them as
gunships to kill Kurds. Presidents Reagan and Bush supported this
dangerous policy. President William Clinton's Administration adopted a
dual containment policy in which both Iraq and Iran were effectively
banned from trade with the United States to the dismay of European
leaders. Congress enacted the Iran Sanctions Act in 1996, and Iraq was
made subject to a United Nations-sponsored inspection of sites in Iraq
thought to be engaged in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). The Security Council adopted Resolution 687 on April 3, 1991.
For the last few months, Iraq has sought to end the United Nations
inspections of Iraqi sites, and Clinton has just about exhausted diplomatic
solutions. In fact, he has sent three carriers and some 4,000 Marines to the
Persian Gulf area. Great Britain has sent one carrier and an unspecified
number of ground forces. Unless Congress delays use of a military threat
without an end game, American armed forces will bomb Iraq.
Russia, still resentful of the NATO expansion eastward under Clinton, had
something to say about any military strike. Defense Minister Igor
Sergeyev bluntly warned his counterpart, Defense Secretary William
Cohen, that a military strike against Baghdad would "affect Russia's vital
interests and those of other states in the region." Privately, Iran seems
delighted watching from the sidelines as its two worst enemies, the United
States and Iraq are poised for military operations. Iranian President
Mohammed Khatami, the current president of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference and a moderate seems to be using the crisis to bolster
his standing with his Arab neighbors as a regional statesman calling for
peace. Iranians may watch with satisfaction if American bombs severely
damage Iraq's remaining military capability, a goal the Iranians failed to
accomplish in its war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988. Since then, Iran has
bought arms on the international market to replace those lost during the
war. Were Iran to abandon the neutrality of the Gulf War -- it specifically
supported all Security Council resolutions, including Res. 687 -- it might
end the current impasse and lead to a diplomatic solution.

Khatami could do just that by serving as an honest broker between

Turkey, its Kurdish refugees on the one hand and its real enemy Iraq, on
the other hand. In the post-Persian Gulf War, period, the United Nations
authorized certain No-Fly zones approximately sixty miles in depth for the
zone in the north. It is patrolled by American jets operating from Incirlik
in Turkey. These aircraft were essential when Kurdish refugees fled north
to avoid being killed by Saddam HusseinÌs army. Curiously, Kurdistan,
the goal of all Kurds, includes the eastern portion of the Northern No-Fly
zone. The area includes oil fields not yet fully developed and claimed by
the Kurds. Supported by Clinton, Turkey could withdraw from most of
Kurdistan and offer to help rebuild the shattered villages Turkish troops
destroyed during the last eight years. Money from the sale of this oil
would help pay for rebuilding villages. Finally, Turkey could offer
amnesty to all Kurds in prison for criticizing the Turkish destruction of
Kurdish schools and the damage done to Kurdish culture by Turks.
Books:
Amazon.com is pleased to have The Abridged History of Central

Asia website in the family of Amazon.com Associates. All of the
books quoted in this online history are available from the
AMAZON.COM Web site. Click on the book title to find out more
about the book.
Chapter 1: Turkey
Constantinople : City of the World's Desire 1453-1924

by Philip Mansel
The Rommel Papers by Liddell Hart

The Dawn of Peace in Europe by Michael

Mandelbaum
Chapter 2: Armenia and Azerbaijan

Chapter 3: Iran
The Prize by Daniel Yurgin

The Iranians, Sandra Mackey
God Has Ninety-Nine Names by Judith Miller
Chapter 4: Iraq
Republic Of Fear by Samir AlKhalil
Chapter 5: The Peoples Republic of China
The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress by Andrew J.

Nathan
The Coming Conflict with China by Richard Bernstein
and Ross Monro
Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker
Chapter 7: Russia
Das Capital by Karl Marx

The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire by David
Pryce-Jones
Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire
by Michael Dobbs
Afghanistan:Soviet Vietnam by Vladislav Tamarav
Without Force or Lies: Voices from the Revolution of
Central Europe in 1989-90, an anthology with essays
by Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Norman Manea,
and Adam Michnik. Edited by William M. Brinton and
Allan Rinzler.
Lenin by Dmitri Volkogonov
The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Moscow and Beyond 1986 to 1988 by Alexander

Solzhenitsyn
Lenin:The First Account Using All the Secret Soviet
Archives by Dmitri Volkogonov
Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. by Dmitri Volkogonov
Russia: People and Empire. by Geoffrey Hosking
Chapter 8: Threat Perception and China's Role in Asia
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc : The Dynamics of a

New Empire by Willem van Kemenade
Chapter 9: The Viability of Central Asia
Requiem for Modern Politics by William Ophuls

Ecology of and the Politics of Scarcity by William
Ophuls
Death by Default A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's
State Orphanages by the Human Rights Watch
Chapter 10: The Black Sea

Interesting links to other Web sites:
AKA-Kurdistan
http://www.akakurdistan.com/
Contested Borders in the Caucasus

http://www.vub.ac.be/POLI/ch0101.htm
British Information Centre

http://www.britain-info.org/
United Nations
http://www.un.org/

ABC News Archive

http://archive.abcnews.com/

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BRINTON, WILLIAM-An Abridged History of Central Asia PDF

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BRINTON, WILLIAM-An Abridged History of Central Asia PDF

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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF CENTRAL ASIA 1

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

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Amazon.com is pleased to have The Abridged History of Central

Constantinople : City of the World's Desire 1453-1924

Chapter 2: Armenia and Azerbaijan

The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the

The Prize by Daniel Yurgin

Republic Of Fear by Samir AlKhalil

Chapter 5: The Peoples Republic of China

The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress by Andrew J.

Das Capital by Karl Marx

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Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

Chapter 8: Threat Perception and China's Role in Asia

China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc : The Dynamics of a

Chapter 9: The Viability of Central Asia

Requiem for Modern Politics by William Ophuls

Chapter 10: The Black Sea

The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the

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Interesting links to other Web sites:

Contested Borders in the Caucasus

British Information Centre

ABC News Archive

The World Cultures Report: Ecocide in the USSR

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Soviet Union but now is independent within the Confederation of

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In November, 1996 the Chevron Corporation announced the

Besides Chevron, other companies with an interest in the consortium are

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of China via pipeline. China National Oil Company also announced an

Republics on the periphery of the former Soviet Union -- now the

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population is expected to increase by 25 percent. Expansion on such a

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Even a short account of Chinese culture, which has been a success in

The Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years

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measure of increased religious autonomy and control in 1989. The

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In mid-December, 1997, Turkey's 33 year bid to enter the European Union

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western leaders commented that Turkey had made no progress on human

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eleven million people, in two. In 1994, Turkey, citing environmental

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In 285 A.D., Emperor Diocletian undertook the reorganization of the

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the city, renamed Constantinople, remained the capital of the Roman

Christianity was introduced into Anatolia through the missionary activity

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Islam is a religion with revolutionary implications. Rulers are considered

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forced to withdraw. Even before this unsuccessful invasion of infidel

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In 1915, the Turkish government regarded its Armenian population as a

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