Washington wants its own "String of Pearls" back: Part II

Yesterday's Washington Post covers the recent effort by the Pentagon to establishing new military basing agreements in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand, in line with the U.S.'s recent push to remilitarize the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.  Most interesting is the fact that all of the bases the Pentagon wishes to utilize were at one time bastions of American Cold War Power, which over the past 30 years the U.S. had been kicked out of.

Part II: Vietnam
Although it may be hard for the casual observer to believe, Communist Vietnam is slowly turning into an ally of the U.S. military.  While Hanoi has been "open" to the U.S. (economically, tourism) for nearly two decades now, it is only in the past few years that the Pentagon has been pushing for an increased military relationship, including basing rights.  Most recently, after attending the Shagri-La military conference in Singapore, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Cam Ranh Bay, home to a massive Naval facility and deep-water port constructed by the U.S.  during the Vietnam War.  After the war, the Soviet Navy's Pacific Fleet had docked at Cam Ranh until Hanoi stopped all military use of the port ten years ago.  Panetta's visit, the latest high-level trip (and the first for a U.S. defense secretary to the strategic port since the end of the war) signifies that the Pentagon is hoping to ramp up U.S.-Vietnamese military cooperation, and once again have Naval access to Cam Ranh Bay.

Vietnam's reembrace of the Pentagon can be traced back to 2003, when Hanoi began allowing once a year naval visits from the U.S.  By 2006, Navy Admiral William Fallon and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were visiting Vietnam, and the bilateral military relationship had expanded to include training of Vietnamese officers through the IMET program, as well as counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism joint military exercises.  In December 2009, Hanoi's Defense Minister, General Phung Quang Thanh, became just the second Vietnamese Defense minister to visit Washington since the end of the war.  This was shortly  followed in March 2010 by an unnannounced 16 day docking by a U.S. Naval Supply Ship at Cam Ranh's Van Phong port.  Panetta, now, is hoping that this relationship can be upgraded to allow permanent U.S. access to the strategic port.

There is, however, great trepidation on Hanoi's part to this new alliance with the U.S..  As the historian Gabriel Kolko (whose Anatomy of a War is one of the best scholarly accounts of the Vietnam War) recently wrote in an article for Counterpunch:

So much can go wrong with the Administration’s ambitious not-so-new, strategy. Not the least are divisions that exist within the Vietnamese military leadership, and perhaps the political leadership also, about making any kind of alliance—even informally—with the country that rained so much death and destruction on it for almost two decades; memories in Vietnam–among the people as well as political and military leaders–are an enemy of making some sort of arrangement with the Americans.

Washington wants its own "String of Pearls" back: Part I

Today's Washington Post covers the recent effort by the Pentagon to establishing new military basing agreements in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand, in line with the U.S.'s recent push to remilitarize the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.  Most interesting is the fact that all of the bases the Pentagon wishes to utilize were at one time bastions of American Cold War Power, which over the past 30 years the U.S. had been kicked out of.

Source: Washington Post

Part I: Thailand
Most recently, U.S. military officials, led by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey visited Thailand, where the major point of discussion was building a U.S. designed "regional disaster hub" at the U-Tapao Air Field, located 90 miles south of Bangkok.  NASA also has its eye on U-Tapao, as a headquarters of a proposed "Southeast Asia Composition, Cloud, Climate Coupling Regional Study," which will take place in August and September.  NASA has given Thailand a deadline of June 26th to allow or disallow the NASA project.

U-Tapao, which is currently run by the Royal Thai Navy, was constructed in 1965 by the U.S. military as a staging ground for the Vietnam War.  During the war, U Tapao's two-mile long runway served as a launching point for squadrons of B-52 bombers, which then flew north to drop ungodly tonnages of firepower on Vietnam (both North and South), Cambodia, and Laos.  In 1976, the U.S. withdrew its military from the base on request from the Thai government, however by the 1980's the Pentagon's access had begun to creep back.  Starting in 1981, the Cobra Gold military exercises between the U.S., Singapore and Thailand were held annually at the base.   After 9/11, Thailand was deemed a "major non-NATO ally" of the U.S. "war on terror," and sent 423 soldiers to Iraq between 2003-2004.  The Thai government also allowed U.S. military aircraft to stop at Thai airfields, including U-Tapao, on their way to the Middle East.  These developments, however, were kept quiet at the request of the Thai government, which wished to put forward a purportedly "neutral" stance on the U.S. invasion.

The most controversial part of this new alliance was the CIA's use of Thailand to host "black site" prisons and interrogation centers.  Although the location of these sites with Thailand is still contested, U-Tapao is thought to be a possible location.  As early as 2003, the New York Times reported that

Utapao is also probably where Qaeda operatives have been interrogated, retired American intelligence officials said, explaining that the base had facilities for sophisticated interrogations.  Last year, according to other American officials, at least two senior Qaeda operatives were brought here for interrogation -- Abu Zubaydah, thought to have been Al Qaeda's operations chief, and Ramzi bin al- Shibh, a planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Washington Post's famous article on the CIA Black Sites, written in 2005 by Dana Priest, elaborated on the details:

By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black-site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation. 

Many reports, including Priest's, indicate that the Thai black sites were closed at the end of 2002, replaced by similar sites in Poland.  Recently, however, evidence has come to light that this was not the case, as one man has testified that in 2004 both he and his pregnant wife were detained and tortured by the U.S. at Bangkok's Don Muang airport.  The man in question, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, was a veteran terrorist , an original participant in the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad and subsequently a leader in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.  In 2004, at the time of Belhaj's capture, Libya was a new ally in the "War on Terror," and Anglo-American leaders were quick to help Gaddafi with security policies, and as such renditioned Belhaj and his wife back to Libya (stopping on the way at UK sovereign territory at Diego Garcia), where he was imprisoned and tortured for a further six years.

When the Anglo-American alliance pulled an about face and overthrew Gaddafi in 2011, Bellhaj became one of the main commanders of the rebel forces that took Tripoli.  Concurrently, Human Rights Watch discovered documents at the abandoned Libyan Intelligence Headquarters that implicated the UK as having been central to Belhaj's torture and renditions.  As it was put by the Guardian Newspaper, Belhaj was "a gift" to Gaddafi, one that was given at a fortuitous time:

Two weeks after the couple were rendered to Libya, Tony Blair paid his first visit to the country, embracing Gaddafi and declaring that Libya had recognised "a common cause, with us, in the fight against al-Qaida extremism and terrorism". At the same time, in London, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell announced that it had signed a £110m deal for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast

Seeing these new documents, and taking advantage of his new position of power, Belhaj subsequently sued the UK government over his rendition.

One of the most troubling repercussions that sprung from the Thailand Black Sites is the use of the CIA's infamous "enhanced interrogation" method's by the Thai military against Southern Muslim dissidents.  An article from Asia Times Online explains that, "Thai security officials have recently used torture techniques ranging from sleep deprivation, forced nudity, exposure to extreme temperatures and even the threat to release German Shepherd guard dogs on detainees during interrogations."  The first thing that comes to mind at the mention of these practices are the infamous Abu Ghraib photos.

World Bank guarantees $100 million energy deal in Uzbekistan

As they often do, goodies from "International Finance" have gone hand in hand with goodies from the Pentagon, as the World Bank has just provided a $100 million guarantee for a natural gas deal in Uzbekistan, according to an article by Robert C. Murphy in Asia Times Online.  This is the first major such financing provided to Uzbekistan by the World Bank, under its "Multilateral Investment and Guarantee Agency" (MIGA), as well as the first major example of the World Bank's 7-month old "Country Partnership Strategy 2011-2015 (PDF)" with Uzbekistan taking hold.  Of note, the Partnership Strategy was agreed to at the same time (December 2011) that reports first began to come out about the Pentagon's "military transfers" to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgzistan.

According to Murphy, a senior research fellow at Canada's Carleton University and a longtime commericial analyst, the new MIGA financing amounts to:

US$100 million loan from a consortium of commercial banks having BNP Paribas Suisse as agent, for development of natural gas deposits in the Kandym Field group and the Khauzak-Shady bloc, of which the latter is already a producing reservoir, in the Bukhara-Khiva region of southwestern Uzbekistan.

Moreover, the World Bank's political backing was "a necessary condition" for the gas developments to receive so much attention from commercial banks.

Interestingly enough, the Anglo-American oil giants do not seem to be on the receiving end of any of this World Bank largesse.  Instead, the financing is being used mostly by Russia's Lukoil (through its subsidiary Lukoil Overseas Uzbekistan), as well as a South Korean company that plans to build a gas and chemical complex at Uzbekistan's Surgil field.  As I have discussed before, China is also heavily invested in the Uzbek energy sector, most directly with its ever-expanding Central Asia-China gas pipeline, which passes through Uzbekistan. In 2010, Uzbekistan agreed to export 10 bcm of gas a year to China through the pipeline, with a planned start date of earlier this year.  Although legal issues have mired this process, Uzbek officials say that they expect to export 2-4 bcm of gas to China this year.

Taking all this in, it seems that the World Bank financing, and perhaps entire 5 year "Partnership Strategy," is simply a Washington grab for political influence in Tashkent, and is not deeply rooted in the national interest of the U.S.  While previously Western multi-national corporations always had the upper hand, and were thus able to benefit from International Finance loans, now it is Russian and Asian multinationals that are on the ground.  As Washington hopes to greatly reduce its military footprint in Afghanistan, it still wants to assume its facsimile  of "control" over the region.  The political and economic reality on the ground, however, is currently much more rooted in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization bloc, which has its own postwar strategy for Afghanistan.  This means that states like Uzbekistan will continue to happily take Washington's guns and dollars, but are feeling no obligation to consider this a trade for U.S. long-standing influence in the region.

 

Karzai has a point to make

Following the dropping of a bomb on a wedding party in Afghanistan's Logar Province, killing 18 civilians, including nine children, earlier this month:

"An agreement has been reached clearly with NATO that no bombardment of civilian homes for any reason is allowed," Karzai said at a news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul. "This is an absolute disproportionate use of force."

"Even when they are under attack, they cannot use an airplane to bomb Afghan homes - even when they are under attack," he said to underscore his point.

Karzai said that at a meeting after the incident in Logar province, he asked U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan: "Do you do this in the United States? There is police action every day in the United States. ... They don't call in airplanes to bomb the place."

-h/t the indispensable Tom Englehardt

Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2012/06/12/4074260/afghan-leader-no-airstrikes-on.html#storylink=cpy

Update: U.S. military transfers to Central Asia

The Pentagon is finalizing the details of a major arms gift to Uzbekistan, Kyrgzstan, and Tajikistan, the states involved with the Northern Distribution Network.  A leading Russian newspaper, Kommersant:

Cited “well informed sources” as saying the three Central Asian states – all of them members of the Kremlin-led Collective Security Treaty Organization – would be given armored vehicles, tank transporters, prime movers, tank trucks, special-purpose graders, bulldozers and water trucks after US and NATO forces pull out of Afghanistan in 2014. Some of this equipment would reportedly be stored at local installations. In addition, the Pentagon plans to provide Afghanistan’s neighbors with medical equipment, communications systems, fire extinguishing equipment and even mobile gyms and other housing-related facilities.

In the short term, these weapon transfers are designed to secure better transit rates for the Northern Distribution Network, especially as U.S. supplies are increasingly reverse running the route.  As 2014 approaches ever closer (or if that date gets pushed up by political considerations or disasters on the ground) the Pentagon will need to move more and more supplies out of Afghanistan.  By giving the Uzbeks and others a small treasure chest of armaments, Washington hopes to grease the wheels of this process.

However, in the long term this is merely a continuation of U.S. policy to gain military influence in Central Asia, which began as soon as the states gained independence from the USSR in 1992.  Throughout the 1990's, this process slowly hummed along, with Central Asian states participating in NATO's "Partnership for Peace" military training program.  After 9/11, the Pentagon's ties to the region saw an immediate uptick, as within months of the attack and the subsequent Afghanistan invasion  military bases were opened in Kyrgzstan and Uzbekistan.  The 2003 invasion of Iraq distracted U.S. strategists, however by 2007 their attention was back on Central Asia.

Source: "Central Asia and the Transition in Afghanistan," Senate Foreign Relation Committee Report, 12/19/11

The main opposition to U.S. influence in the region comes from Russia, and to a lesser extent China, both of which see Central Asia as within their Sphere of Influence.  Through institutions like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Beijing and Moscow are working to make sure that Central Asian leaders don't grow to close to Washington.  Notice that none of the region's leaders accepted their invitations to the recent NATO summit in Chicago.  The SCO position seems to be to facilitate the U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan, and then to step in and gain control over the postwar environment.

Syria's "Four Seas" Strategy and China

What has gone unmentioned in the current year of Syria-bashing is the regional economic strategy proposed by Bashar al-Assad in 2009.  Known as the 'Four Seas" strategy, it called for Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran to unite in a bloc that would serve as a global crossroads for trade, connecting the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf.  Assad announced this ambitious plan with Turkish President Gul in a joint press conference in Ankara in May 2009, stating "Once we link these four seas, we become the compulsory intersection of the whole world in investment, transport and more.”

Between that time and the beginning of the Syrian protests in Spring 2011, Assad made a number of initial moves to reify his new strategy.  At the heart of the arrangement is the Syria-Turkey relationship, and energy links like the Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP).  The AGP connects Egypt to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, but in 2009 Syria and Turkey agreed to a 62 km pipeline extension to reach Turkey, to be completed by 2011, as well as an integration of their respective electricity grids.  In the short term, this would supply much needed energy to northern Syria, but in the long term (especially as more of the Iraqi energy sector comes back online) the pipeline would allow for Middle Eastern supplies to be exported overland through Turkey to Europe.  In the same vein, Assad visited Azerbaijan in 2009, the first visit to Baku from a Syrian President since the Azeris received independence from the Soviets in 1991.  On his visit, Assad signed 19 economic and political agreements with Azerbaijan, most importantly a deal to import one billion cubic meters of Azeri gas every year.

Perhaps the biggest supporter of Assad's regional strategy was Beijing, where the Communist Party called Syria "ning jiu li" or cohesive force.  Beijing saw a possible cooperation in their foreign policy, increasingly looking west towards Europe, and Syria's "four seas" mindset.  Starting with Assad's visit to Beijing in July 2004, the Chinese-Syria economic relationship began to blossom, and by 2008 China was Syria's largest supplier of imported goods.  Chinese energy companies have also invested hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade Syria's energy infrastructure, and have entered into joint exploration deals with Syrian oil exploration companies.  Another large development is "China City", a large, popular industrial center in the Adra Free Trade Zone, located 25 km northeast of Damascus.  China City was established by wealthy entrepreneurs, and its products--everything from office to factory equipment--are increasingly popular with Middle East Businessmen, especially from Iraq.

Anatolian Eagle

In October 2010, Chinese Premier Wen Jaibao visited Ankara, his first visit to Turkey in eight years, and his warm reception was of great political significance.  After long discussions on trade and investment, China and Turkey declared that they had upgraded their bilateral ties to “Strategic Cooperation.”  Anybody in doubt as to what this turn of diplomatic parlance meant only had to witness the unprecedented two-week long Air Force exercises between Turkey and China that had directly preceded Jaibao’s visit.  The exercises, known as “Anatolian Eagle,” were an annual Turkish affair usually held between Turkey, the U.S, other NATO members, and Israel.  But in 2010 the drill was exclusively held between the Turkish air force and the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), with Israel being disinvited and the U.S. choosing not to attend due to the lack of an Israeli presence.  For Chinese airmen, this was the first time they had trained in a NATO country, staging a mock dog-fight alongside Turkish pilots flying American-built planes, but according to Turkish and Chinese officials, it won’t be the last.  One Turkish analyst in London noted that Anatolian Eagle should be though of as a “debut,” and that “there is every indication to believe that the two militaries will engage in future cooperation wherever applicable.”[1]

 In a sign of the emerging geography of power, on their journey to Turkey the fleet of PLAAF SU-27 and MIG 29 fighter aircraft overflew Pakistan and stopped to refuel at the Gayem al-Muhammad air base near the town of Birjand, Iran, situated opposite the large American base near the Afghan-Iranian border town of Herat.[2]  The “Anatolian Eagle” exercises also overlapped the Shanghai Cooperation Organizations annual “Peace Mission” exercises in Kazakhstan, featuring China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgzstan, and Tajikistan.  These were only two of the 14 military-to-military training exercises that the People’s Liberation Army participated in that year, mostly with Asian or Oceanic countries, but also with Turkey, Romania, and Peru.[3]

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[1] “Turkey, China in Exercises: NATO blanches as Ankara looks east,” Defense News, 10/17/10. (http://www.defensenews.com/article/20101017/DEFFEAT04/10170302/Turkey-China-In-Exercises)

[2] “The New Silk Road: China’s Energy Strategy in the Greater Middle East,” Christine Lin, Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Policy Focus #109, April 2011, Pg. 10

[3] “2012 Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Regarding the People’s Republic of China,” Office of the Secretary of Defense, pg. 33

China's Indian Ocean Strategy: A String of Pearls

For China, the Indian Ocean is of vital national interest.  A vast amount of the energy and natural resources China imports from the Middle East, Africa, and Australia travel over the Ocean’s waters, as do the goods produced in China’s “workshop of the world” factory base.  Moreover, the Eurasian states littoral to the Ocean’s northern reaches, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, are booming economies with huge resource and population bases, as well as dangerous military powers (with nuclear weapons in the case of Pakistan and India). 

Historically, the seaborne shipping journey has had two chokepoints—the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia.  For China, the route between these points is known as its Sea Lane of Communication (SLOC) in the parlance of U.S. military planners.  As it stands today, and as it has stood since the days of the British Empire, the Anglo-American alliance has put great effort into militarily securing these chokepoints, and forming security agreements with the large powers of the region.  The U.S.-India military relationship grew very close after 9/11, and Washington even de facto recognized India’s nuclear weapons capability, which India had flouted the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to achieve.  Australia and Indonesia have both been longtime partners in U.S. post-World War II foreign policy (and hosts to U.S. military bases), as has Pakistan, although that relationship in beginning to sour.  Thailand, which was a vital American ally during the Vietnam War, has also once again grown close to U.S. planners.  The military nerve center of this operation is the secretive Diego Garcia Naval Station, a colonial leftover in Britain’s “Indian Ocean Territory” located at the southern tip of the Chagos Archipelago.

In the face of this militarization, China has embarked on its own strategy, of constructing highly developed ports in key strategic locations along the Ocean’s littoral.  This strategy was referred to as building a “String of Pearls” in a 2004 Pentagon commissioned report by military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and the name has stuck.[1]  One such “pearl” is a major port located in Gwadahar, in Pakistan’s Baluch region on the Arabian Sea.  Traveling southeast along the shipping route, the next strategic pearl is located at Hambantota, on the island of Sri Lanka.  Another, a container shipping facility, is located at Chittagong, Bangladesh’s main port.  Over the past decade, Myanmar has also moved very close to Beijing, and key Chinese energy, military, and shipping facilities are located all along Myanmar’s dangling coastline.  These include a deepwater port at Sitwe, a large oil facility at the offshore Shwe fields, and a base at Coco Island supposedly used for electronic espionage.  The Myanmar infrastructure projects are supplemented by China’s Irawaddy transportation corridor, currently under construction which features duel oil and gas pipelines and a high-speed rail line running North to China’s Yunann province.  Perhaps China’s most audacious proposal is to build the Kra canal across Thailand’s southern isthmus, connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and bypassing the Straits of Malacca all together.[2]  A string of ports and airstrips has also been developed in the South China Sea, all the way up to Hong Kong.

Ostensibly, these ports are purely for civilian use, as the Chinese military has no overt foreign bases, but states like Myanmar have large military-to-military programs with the Chinese.  This has led China’s geopolitical rivals, namely the U.S. and India, to fear that the Chinese pearls will be militarized and turned into bases for the growing Chinese Navy.  Chinese high-speed rail tracks also pose a threat in this regard, as it is easy to imagine them being used for troop transport in a crisis.  This militarization, however is not yet a reality and is far from becoming one, as pointed out in a report by Foreign Policy in Focus.[3] 

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[1] “China Builds Up Strategic Sea Lanes,” The Washington Times, 1/17/05. (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/jan/17/20050117-115550-1929r/?page=all#pagebreak)

[2] “The New Silk Road: China’s Energy Strategy in the Greater Middle East,” Christine Lin, Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Policy Focus #109, April 2011, pg. 11.

[3] “Is China’s String of Pearls Real?,” Vivian Yang, Foreign Policy in Focus, 7/18/11. (http://www.fpif.org/articles/is_chinas_string_of_pearls_real)  

Chinese Energy Infrastructure in Myanmar

Update 6.19.12: I recently found a good article titled: "Chinese Military Bases in Burma: The explosion of a myth."  Written by Published in 2007 by Australia's Griffith Asia Institute, the article throws serious cold water on the idea that China has covert military bases in Myanmar (China's PLA has no overt foreign bases).  It thoroughly  traces how this notion went from media speculation in the 1990's to accepted truth, without any real basis in fact, except for at times quotes from unnamed "Indian Defense Sources," who had a political bias that increased suspicion.  And then, in 2005, the Indian intelligence agencies officially stated that China has no military bases in Myanmar.  Regardless, I still suspect that China's patronage has bought them quite a lot of military influence in the country.

China has also spent heavily in Myanmar developing offshore oil and gas fields in the Bay of Bengal, as well as connecting pipelines to China.  This was part of a larger overall investment in Myanmar’s security, transportation, and industrial development, a project that begun shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  Myanmar, with its long, tentacled coastline and large natural resource base, served as a Chinese counterpoint to the U.S. presence in Iraq.  As it was put by F. William Engdahl:

Beijing poured billions of dollars of military assistance into Myanmar, including fighter and transport aircraft, tanks and armored personnel carriers, naval vessels and surface to air missiles.  China built up Myanmar’s railroads and roads, and won permission to station its troops in Myanmar.  China, according to Indian Defense sources, also built a large electronic surveillance facility on Myanmar’s Coco Island and was building Naval bases for access to the Indian Ocean.[1]

While the U.S. had just doubled down on its thirty-year old project to militarily control the Persian Gulf, China was building a similar security bastion across the Indian Ocean in Myanmar.

The Chinese government, through state owned companies like the Chinese National Petroleuam Company (CNPC), also made significant investments into Myanmar’s energy resources, namely the Shwe offshore gas field, discovered in 2004.  China and India had been in competition to develop and export this field, and in 2007 the Chinese National Petroleum Company won, signing a 30 year agreement with the Myanmar.  China’s project was actually a tri-project: a large deep-sea port at Maday Island, off the Arakan coast, and a set of duel 2,300 km oil and gas pipelines from this port to China’s Yunnan Province.[2]  China also set out to build a major oil refinery in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, and from there distribute the Myanmar oil and gas to the rest of Southwestern China.  The final details of the pipelines, estimated to cost $1.5 billion for the oil line and $1.04 billion for the gas line, were agreed to in November of 2008, and construction is still ongoing today, at a feverish pace, with aim to complete the projects by April 2013.[3]  A recent New York Times article on the subject describes “trucks laden with pipes,” that “trundle through villages around the clock,” and bulldozers that “dig trenches 12 hours a day.”[4] Altogether 240,000 barrels per day of crude oil are expected to be shipped to China, netting the Myanmar government $1 billion a year.

China is also constructing a high-speed railway, which follows the same route as the pipeline.  It runs from Ruili in Southwestern Yunnan Province and Kyaukpyu Port along the Irrawaddy River.  Construction, which begun in 2011, is already half complete, with tracks running north having reached Myanmar’s second city of Mandalay.  The 810km line is set to open in 2013.[5]  Spurs off of this main line are planned to Myanmar’s largest city of Yangon, as well as northeast towards Thailand and Cambodia, eventually creating an entire Southeast Asia trade system.[6]

However, there is a large amount of controversy associated with the pipelines, and Chinese projects in Myanmar altogether. Land seizures and displacements along the pipeline route have caused anger, as has the entire concept of exporting Myanmar’s energy resources, as many of its citizens go without daily electricity.  In its northern reaches, the pipelines cut through the Shan state, home to a multitude of ethnic separatist movements and paramilitaries that wage a simmering conflict with the (Burmese) government.  These areas can flare up when the Myanmar military, known as the Tatwada Army, conducts operations, as paramilitary opposition forces like the United We Stand Army (UWSA) and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) number 30,000 and 10,000 respectively, making them more than capable of causing trouble for government security and energy operations. [7]  A pipeline is an easy target to disrupt with big political value, and the Myanmar government will be reaping a windfall in taxes from the gush of oil flowing north to China every day.

One major Chinese project, the Myitsone mega dam at the northern head of the Irawaddy River, was already suspended by the Myanmar government in September 2011, after a large bout of popular protest opposed to the dam’s construction.  In the face of this action and other Myanmar opposition, China has pledged $6 million in aid and $1.2 for school construction in areas affected by Chinese projects.

Just as with the High-Speed Rail corridors, China’s goal in building these gas pipelines is to decrease their reliance on Indian ocean shipping, and specifically the chokepoint of the Straits of Malacca.  As of 2010, 82% of Chinese oil imports traveled through the Straits, virtually all oil imported from the Persian Gulf, Africa, or the Americas.  By developing energy infrastructure in Central Asia and Myanmar, China is able to cut down on its usage of this southern shipping route, which after the Straits of Malacca includes the contentious South China Sea.  While China will certainly not abandon shipping oil from areas like Africa, where they have made significant investments in the Sudan and Angola, the overland routes from neighboring states are of vital worth, as they provide diversity if one of the world’s shipping chokepoints (Straits of Hormuz, Straits of Malacca) were to be closed due to conflict.  The Chinese dreams is for their reliance on energy shipped through the Straits of Malacca to be  reduced to zero, with the Myanmar port and pipeline handling all cargo.

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[1] F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Baton Rouge: Third Millenium Press, 2009), p. 94.

[2] Ibid., p. 95.

[3] “China, Myanmar to Build $2.5 billion Pipelines, Nikkei Says,” Bloomberg News, 11/17/08. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a7TZ0v82ODSA)

[4] “Myanmar Reforms Set U.S. and China in Race for Sway,” New York Times, 3/31/12. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/world/asia/myanmar-reforms-set-us-and-china-in-race-for-sway.html?pagewanted=all)

[5] “China’s Pipelines in Myanmar,” Shivananda H, Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (India), 1/10/12. (http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ChinasPipelinesinMyanmar_shivananda_100112#.T9Inv679WMU)

[6] “China outward bound through Myanmar,” Bryan McCarten, Asia Times, 1/8/11. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MA08Ae01.html)

[7] [7] “China’s Pipelines in Myanmar,” Shivananda H.

Chinese energy infrastructure in Central Asia

IV.       Chinese Oil and Gas Pipelines

For China, the other half of the infrastructure puzzle is developing overland energy corridors, namely oil and gas pipelines from Iran and the Caspian Region.  This project started in the 1997, when Kazakhstan and China agreed to a “project of the century,” with Beijing promising to invest nearly $11 billion in Kazakhstan’s oil infrastructure and pipelines.  Development, however, was slow, and it took until 2003 for China to begin making waves in the Kazakh oil sector, when the Chinese National Petroleum Company bought 100% of the shares in the Northern Buzachi fields (Mangistau region) from Chevron-Saudi consortium.  And from that point on, the Chinese government has worked steadily to acquire more production companies in the field, as well as joint deal with Kazakh state owned companies like KazMunaiGaz.  According to the estimates of Kazakh government researcher Konstantin Syroezhkin, by 2012:

China’s share in oil production in Kazakhstan amounts to around 25-27% and in gas production to13-15%. Of course, these figures are far from those with which the Kazakhstani opposition and some deputies “frighten” the Kazakhstanis (40%), but they are quite considerable, particularly if we keep in mind the areas Chinese companies are operating in the country and the fact that the oil and gas sector is the basis of Kazakhstan’s economy and the main contributor of revenue to the budget.[1]

Also in 2003, plans were signed to develop a Westen Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline. Within a year construction on the first phase had begun, and by 2005 a ­­____mm oil pipeline from Atasu to the Kazakh-Chinese border at Alashankou was complete, at a cost of over $800 million. In July 2006, according to a press release from the state-owned PetroChina company, the first oil shipments were received in Dushanji, an oil refinery 240 km inland from Alashankou, of historic significance as these were the first overland crude oil shipments ever sent to China.[2]  In 2007, construction on the second phase, running from Keminyak to Kumkol began, and again within 2 years the project was complete.  Throughput of the overall pipeline network, which started at 10 million tons of crude oil per year, was planned to increase to 20 million tons in 2012 and 50 million tons in 2020.[3]

A natural gas pipeline has been constructed from Central Asia to China as well, connecting gas fields in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Khorgos at the southern end of the Kazakh-Chinese border.  The first stage of this pipeline, started in 2007 and completed in 2009, runs from the Uzbek-Kazakh border through Shykment to Korgos.  With a throughput capacity of 40 billion cubic meters of gas, the pipeline covered a distance of 1,333 km, and came at a cost of $7.5 billion.[4]  A second phase within Kazakhstan has also been planned, running from Beynu, near the Caspian Sea to Shykment.

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have also worked closely with the Chinese to develop petroleum resources and pipelines.  For Uzbekistan, this began in 2005, when President karimov visited Beijing and signed agreements for the Chinese government to invest in Uzbek energy resources.  By 2010, the Uzbek section of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline was complete, and agreements had been signed to export 10 bcm per year of Uzbek gas to China, with plans to increase this by 25 bcm.  This, however, is small potatoes compared to Turkmenistan, which has agreements with Beijing to export upwards of 40 bcm of gas to China every year, and at dirt cheap prices, making China by far the largest investor in Turkmenistan’s gas sector.  A meeting in ______ symbolized the new petroleum reality In Central Asia, with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kazakh President Nuralstan Nazarbaev all convening with their Turkmenistan colleague to inaugurate the new gas pipeline.  This reality was set in stone in November 2011, when Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, while on a visit to Beijing, signed an agreement to increase gas exports to China by 25 billion cubic meters per year, raising the total gas trade between the two states to 65 bcm per year, or roughly half of China’s gas consumption in 2010.[5]

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[1] “Chinas presence in the energy sector of Central Asia,” Konstantin Syroezhkin, Central Asia and the Caucasus (Sweden), Jan. 2012. (http://www.ca-c.org/online/2012/journal_eng/cac-01/02.shtml)

[2] “Crude Oil Imports Reach PetroChina Dushanzi Refinery via China-Kazakhstan Pipeline,” PetroChina Press Release, 7/29/06. (http://www.petrochina.com.cn/Ptr/News_and_Bulletin/News_Release/200608010011.htm)

[3]“Chinas presence in the energy sector of Central Asia,” Syroezkhin.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Turkmenistan to increase China gas supply by 25 bcm,” Reuters, 11/23/11. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/23/china-turkmenistan-gas-idUSL4E7MN0SD20111123)

Chinese High Speed Rail: Eurasian Land Bridges

My research interests recently have been captivated by Eurasian great-power competition, and as such I have been working on drafting and updating a longer article on the subject.  Accordingly, I will be posting them here, and welcome any comments or suggestions (either through blog comments or emails).  Sorry if some of this information is redundant based on past writings, but who really cares.  My most recent draft is focused on Chinese High Speed Rail networks.

III.  The Chinese-Turkish Relationship Grows.

Of course, as Ankara has turned away from its Western partners, the Chinese have moved in to the power vacuum with their brand of economic diplomacy.  The current Turkey-Chinese relationship can be dated back to an October 2010 visit to Ankara by Chinese Premier Wen Jaibao.  The stage for the visit was set by an unprecedented occurrence earlier in the month, when China and Turkey held joint military air exercises, the first Chinese air force exercises to ever be held in a NATO state.[1]  Almost as significant was the fact that the Chinese fighter jets had flown over Pakistan and Iran in order to reach the Anatolian plateau.  Considering that only one year earlier the Turkish leadership had been vocally angry about Chinese protest crackdowns in the ethnically Turkic Xinjiang province in western China, these developments signaled a major reapproachment.

On his visit, Jaibo’s main topic of discussion was increasing the already large trade between Turkey and China, which in 2009 amounted to $10 billion.  Jaibo pledged to raise this to $50 billion by 2015, and $100 billion by 2020.[2]  Moreover, he stressed that this trade should use Turkish and Chinese currency, leaving the U.S. dollar out in the cold.  The Turkish message was that increasing trade between two of world’s booming economy was great, but that an effort needed to be made to even out the balance, as Turkey was running up large trade-deficits buying Chinese goods.

Also of major discussion was Chinese investment in Turkish infrastructure, most importantly high-speed rail lines, which China has become the worlds leading producer of.  A report from the U.S. Jamestown Foundation lays out the details:

China’s high-speed railways are already the world’s longest and fastest, with speeds of up to 350 km per hour. As Beijing Jiaotong University Professor, Wang Mengshu, stated that China is “aiming for the trains to run almost as fast as airplanes.” Cheap construction costs and technological expertise might enable China to outperform Japan, Germany, and France. Reportedly, other countries, particularly India, have reached out to China to construct railway networks, with Russia, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Poland already considering China for their railway plans.[3]

At the time of Jaibo’s visit, Chinese Civil Engineering Construction Corp led consortium was already at work building the second phase of a planned 533km Istanbul-Ankara high-speed rail line, cutting the travel time between the two metropolis’ down from 7 hours to less than four.  The first phase, which runs 200km west from Ankara to Eskisehir, was built by a Spanish company, opening in early 2009.  Phase 2, secured by the Chinese-led consortium in 2006 for $1.27 billion (the majority being Chinese government loans) runs 158km between Inonu and Kosekoy, over and through difficult mountainous terrain.  The line climbs from an elevation low of 20m above sea level to 800m, and features 55km of tunnels, and 10 km of bridges, the longest being 6 and 2 km respectively.[4]  It is set to open in 2013.

But this feat of engineering pales in wonder at the other high-speed rail line being planned between China and Turkey, the Edirne-Kars line, which transverses the entire 2,000 km breadth of Turkey and connects South and Central Asia to Europe. This is roughly the equivalent in distance of New York City to Miami, Florida. The Kars-Erdine rail corridor was neatly summed up in a report in the Turkish English-language newspaper Today's Zaman:

The line is designed to pass through 29 provinces, connecting the east and west of Turkey and reducing the duration of travel from the current 36 hours to 12. With the completion of the planned Edirne-Kars line, the total length of high-speed rail inside Turkey is expected to reach 10,000 kilometers by 2023. Under an agreement signed between China and Turkey in October 2010, China agreed to extend loans of $30 billion for the planned rail network. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway connecting Azerbaijan's capital city of Baku to Kars, currently under construction, increases the strategic importance of the Edirne-Kars line.[5]

The Turkish-Chinese relationship was solidified in April 2012 when a large Turkish delegation led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited China, the highest-level visit for the Turkish leadership to Beijing in 27 years.  Of significant note, Erdogan began his visit in Urumqui, the capital of Xianjiang, the Western province home a Turkic, Muslim majority, as well as large oil deposits.  He was also granted high-level meetings with Vice President ­­­­­­­­Xi Jinping, slated to be the next Chinese President.[6]

Turkish-Chinese economic cooperation, led by the Edirne-Kars line, was the main point of discussion between the Turkish delegation and Chinese leadership. Chinese firms are bidding to build two nuclear power plants in Turkey, at Akkayu on the Mediterranean Coast and Sinop on the Black Sea, as well as a major bridge over the Bosporus and a proposed third airport in Istanbul. All together, 27 Chinese CEOs attended meetings with Turkish PM Erdogan on his visit to China.[7] 

But there is no doubt that solidifying Edirne-Kars was the highlight of the visit, and rightfully so, as the high-speed rail line would create a geopoliticial corridor with global ramifications.  For China, the rail line represented a large step in their Eurasian Land Bridge Strategy, designed to connect the massive Chinese factory base with the large markets of Western Europe by high speed rail, cutting the time needed for freight shipping in half compared to the maritime journey.  Edirne-Kars served as the final link in the planned third, southern Eurasian Land Bridge connecting the Chinese ports of Gaundong and Shenzhen to the Atlantic port of Rotterdam, and on the way hitting all the giant markets of Southern Asia, running through Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Iran.  At this point, the line connects to Edirne-Kars, and then hooks up with the existing lines to Western Europe. Overall, the third land bridge would touch 20 countries and have a total length of about 15,000 kilometers, a distance 3,000-6,000 km less than the maritime journey through the Indian Ocean and the Straits of Malacca.  This plan was developed in 2009, at China's Pan Pearl River Delta Cooperation and Development Forum.  There is also future hope to build rail lines from Turkey down through Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, connecting China directly to the African continent.  Ankara has found itself once again in control of a globally important land-bridge, and by all appearances they are taking full advantage of their geography and developing the worlds latest infrastructure.  As it was put by Selcuk Colakoglu, director of Asia-Pacific Studies at Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organization, “Turkey has transformed itself from a security state to a trading state during the past decade. If you want to be a trading state, you should have a very developed transportation link."[8]

View Larger Map
For an example of how the high speed rail networks effect commerce, one has to only turn back a year, to the launch of China's Second Eurasian Land Bridge Project, rail lines that run through Kazakhstan to Russia, then through Beluras to Western Europe.  May 2011 saw the launch of five-day-a-week direct freight rail service from Antwerp, Europe's second largest port and rail-hub, to Chongquin, the industrial center in southwest China.  It now only takes 20-25 for cargo like automotive and chemical goods to traverse Eurasia, compared to the 36-day maritime journey.  There are, however, plans to quickly cut the duration of the rail journey down to only 15-20 days, at which point the transcontinental journey would be cut in half, and the pace of industry doubled.[9] 

For BMW, this has already become a reality, with the October 2011 launch of daily freight shipments over high-speed rail from their plant in Liepzieg, Germany to Shenyang, in Northeast China, crossing a distance of 7,000 miles in only 23 days. According to Dr. Karl-Friedrich Rausch, a board member of DB Schencker, the transportation group that operates the German side of the railway, "the direct trains are twice as fast as maritime transport, followed by over-the-road transport to the Chinese hinterland."[10]

China has also been developing an inter Central Asian rail network, branching off from the main line in Kazakhstan.  One spur runs to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, the largest city in Central Asia with a population over two million (Tashkent had been the 4^th largest city in the USSR, and a major industrial center), and then connects to Samarkand, the second largest Uzbek city. A similar line is also being built between Kazakhstan’s two largest cities of Almaty and Astana.  Tajikistan and Kyrgzstan are working to secure funding for lines, as well.  Mongolia, which has begun to heavily exploit its resource base, is also factoring into the Chinese Land Bridge strategy.  As the economist F. William Engdahl puts it in an extensive article on the subject:

The aim is to literally create the world’s greatest new economic space and in turn a huge new market for not just China but all Eurasian countries, the Middle East and Western Europe. Direct rail service is faster and cheaper than either ships or trucks, and much cheaper than airplanes. For manufactured Chinese or other Eurasian products the rail land bridge links are creating vast new economic trading activity all along the rail line.[11]

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[1] “China, Turkey Deepen Ties During Rare Visit,” Voice of America, 10/10/10. (http://www.voanews.com/content/china-turkey-deepen-ties-during-rare-visit-104723729/166476.html)

[2] Ibid.

[3] “The Implications of China’s High-Speed Eurasian Railway Strategy for Central Asia,” Roman Muzalevsky, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 7 Issue 64, 4/2/10. (http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=36234)

[4] “High Speed Rail will set the pace in Turkey,” China Daily, 7/13/2011. (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-07/13/content_12888952.htm)

[5] “Turkey, China mull $35 bln joint high-speed railway project,” Sunday’s Zaman, 4/13/12. (http://www.sundayszaman.com/sunday/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=277360)

[6] “Eurasian Economic Boom and Geopolitics: China’s Land Bridge to Europe,” F. William Engdahl, Centre for Research on Globalization, 4/27/12. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30575)

[7] “Turkey, China mull $35 bln joint high-speed railway project,” Sunday’s Zaman.

[8] “High Speed Rail will set the pace in Turkey,” China Daily.

[9] “Antwerp-Chongqing Direct Rail Freight Link Launched,” Industry Leaders Magazine, 5/12/11.  (http://www.industryleadersmagazine.com/antwerp-chongqing-direct-rail-freight-link-launched/)

[10] “BMW rides Orient Express to China,” Global Logistics, October 2011. (http://www.inboundlogistics.com/cms/article/global-logistics-october-2011/)

[11] “Eurasian Economic Boom and Geopolitics: China’s Land Bridge to Europe,” F. William Engdahl