July has seen a sudden reversal of fortune in Caspian and Black Sea Basin pipeline politics. The Nabucco pipeline project has staged a noteworthy comeback, while a competing Russian-backed route, dubbed South Stream, now seems to be losing steam. Uncertainty surrounding future demand, however, raises the possibility that neither pipeline ever becomes a reality.
The early July inter-ethnic violence that hit China's western Xinjiang Province may have been shocking, but it shouldn't have been surprising. Tension between the Uighur and Han Chinese communities had been steadily building over the past three decades, and Communist authorities in Beijing hadn't been doing much to defuse simmering anger.
Iran has counted for a long time on Russian and Chinese support to block, or at least mitigate sanctions. Tehran has also looked to Moscow and Beijing for deals concerning hydrocarbon and nuclear energy, as well as arms sales. This support has helped Iran defy the United Nations and the West on the nuclear issue.
Russia is growing increasingly worried about losing its grip on Caspian Basin energy exports, and this fear is causing the Kremlin to take bold steps. The latest evidence of this is the memorandum of understanding signed between the Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).
Once Kyrgyzstan succumbed to Russian pressure and unceremoniously evicted the United States from its base at Manas, media attention turned to the question of alternatives. A careful discussion of possible alternatives to Manas requires that a distinction be made between routes for non-military logistics, and facilities from which military missions can and do take place.
