Chapter 83 messing with the balkans

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European Union, backed by France, Italy and the Netherlands, announced an energy security strategy.Stability in the Balkans is at the heart of the strategy. In June 1990, at a summit of the European Union, Dutch Prime Minister Luther Loubers proposed to the European energy sector to establish a link between the European Economic Community and the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern European countries.The Lubbers Plan was the first in a series of EU energy security plans after the end of the Cold War. In 1992, the EU created the Energy Charter, which provided a legal framework for EU oil and energy investments in the collapsed Soviet Union.The newly independent Caspian states, most notably Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, are high on the agenda for future EU energy security.However, the attention of the new Clinton administration does not seem to be here, and Caspian Sea oil has not paid much attention.However, this situation is slowly changing.

In December 1994, when the European Union placed its hopes on 49 countries, including the United States and Russia, to ratify its Energy Charter, Washington suddenly rejected it on the grounds that it was technically untenable.The EU pushes ahead without U.S. support. In December 1998, countries that had signed the Energy Charter established a Transition Working Group.The working group's secretary-general stressed the importance of new oil and gas producing regions, "such as the Caspian Sea region, where ensuring energy supply security is an important strategic task for the government".The EU proposes to establish a "milestone of East-West energy cooperation".

From 1990 until the bombing of Serbia in 1999, the European Union had undertaken a series of low-profile initiatives or actions, including, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report, an effort to "remove oil from the East Caspian Sea Transport capacity increased to 500,000 barrels per day” to help Azerbaijan upgrade its port near the capital, Baku. In 1995, in order to achieve this goal, the European Union launched the "International Transport of Oil and Natural Gas to Europe" (INOGATE) plan to "promote the security of energy supply". In February 1999, just before the Clinton administration began bombing Belgrade, European Commissioner Hans von de Bruck said that the purpose of the "Transnational Transport of Oil and Gas to Europe" project was to "break the bottleneck of access to local and European markets and ensure that the Caspian A large amount of natural gas and oil in the basin can enter the European market without any obstacles."But the biggest bottleneck is: NATO air strikes on Belgrade.

Western European governments are well aware that the region from the Balkans to the Caspian Sea is a strategic priority for oil and gas investment, especially as North Sea oil reserves begin to decline, a potential step toward greater European energy independence.But this was definitely not the main policy view in Washington in 1999. By the mid-1990s, thanks in part to aggressive lobbying by Brzezinski and American oil companies, the Clinton administration had begun to realize that the Caspian oil issue was a strategic one. In July 1996, Washington launched a development plan for the Southern Balkans, discussing oil pipeline cooperation with Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania.The plan envisages two Caspian oil pipeline routes.One will run from Baku through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. In 1997, James Baker, former Secretary of State for Bush Sr., wrote an article for the July 21 issue of The New York Times entitled "America's Vital Interests in the 'New Silk Road'."Baker, who will soon become a major figure in the Bush administration, believes that "it is in the strategic interest of the United States to establish the strongest economic, cultural and political ties with Georgia." Georgia is located in the middle of Caspian Sea oil and Western markets. . "Caspian oil could eventually have as much impact on the industrial world as Middle East oil does today," he added.At the time, Baker was also representing BP Amoco's interests in Baku.

The second pipeline route, the Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria Oil Pipeline Company (AMBO), which is backed by the US government and First Boston Bank, has been cooling off for several years.Before moving forward, Washington decided that the Milosevic regime had to be removed as an obstacle. The democratically elected president of Yugoslavia Milosevic, a former banker who once received the support of Washington and was also considered to be able to follow the rules of the IMF game, was described by the US media as the new "Adolf Hitler".Numerous reports from both regional observers and unbiased outside observers consistently concluded that, by the mid-1990s, atrocities had been committed by all factions in the turbulent former Yugoslavia—Bosnian Muslims, Croatian Catholics, and Serbian Orthodox Christians.But media coverage dominated by Washington and NATO has focused on one side: the recalcitrant Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.Since he firmly opposes the so-called "reform" of the International Monetary Fund and the military presence of NATO, as long as the country he leads with strong military defense capabilities is still in the center of the Balkans, even if it is surrounded, Washington will control the Caspian Sea for a long time. Visions of oil pipelines and a Central Asian geopolitical agenda would be thwarted.

By early 1999, the Clinton administration decided it was time to change all that.In Rambouillet, the United States made a request to Milosevic, the infamous Rider B: "To prevent genocide, to implement humanitarianism", ordering that Milosevic must first agree to NATO's presence in Kosovo, and then put the garrison in Kosovo. The scope was further extended to Serbia.An angry Milosevic rejected the US request.This expected refusal justified the "justifiable" reason for waging war.Washington disregards the norms of international law, the UN Charter (in fact the entire process involved the UN), the NATO Charter (which emphasizes the role of defense), the 1975 Helsinki Agreement and even the US Constitution (which states that only Congress has the power to declare war) , began a large-scale bombing campaign.Citing "humanitarian" reasons and the impending genocide of Kosovar Albanians, President Clinton began the brutal bombing of Serbian civilians.

After dropping hundreds of tons of bombs and causing an estimated $40 billion in economic and infrastructure damage to Serbia, the Pentagon began construction on one of the world's largest U.S. military bases.Establish a military camp called Bangstier near the Jinilane area in southeastern Kosovo. This is a military fortress that can station 3,000 soldiers. It has an airfield and the most modern communication facilities. The Balkans brings a permanent military base that can reach deep into the Caspian Sea. In June 1999, immediately after the bombing of Serbia ended, the US government announced that it was funding a study of the feasibility of establishing an Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria oil pipeline company.Referring to NATO's control of Serbia and Kosovo, a senior U.S. government official, Joseph Goran Mason, said: "The U.S. government is expected to provide security and economic guarantees in the region, which makes the Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria Oil Pipeline A very attractive proposition."

The engineering feasibility study for the Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria Petroleum Pipeline Company had been conducted by Brown and Root of Halliburton Corporation, when Dick Cheney was the company's president.When the new study was published in May 2000, U.S. Ambassador Richard Armitage, who later became deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration, said that for those surrounding countries that supported NATO in the Kosovo conflict, Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria , and now receive financial compensation from the West for their support, one could call this a "bomb bonus".

Before the First World War, in order to open up trade routes to the Arabian Gulf and get rid of the sea routes controlled by the British Navy, Germany on the European continent made unremitting efforts to build the Baghdad Railway.Similarly, the construction of a series of new oil pipelines through the Balkans will potentially diversify the EU's sources of oil supply and, to a certain extent, free Europe from the control of energy by the United States and Russia and achieve energy supply independence.When the Kosovo war began, the United States had already seized the opportunity for energy independence, imposing NATO and American control on possible oil pipelines and resources.As Belgrade scrambles to emerge from the rubble of the Kosovo war, the US appears to have a firm grip on any potential pipeline to the EU.

By the end of the Kosovo war, the last remaining superpower had taken a giant step forward in its military control of Eurasia.Dollar democracy has moved forward again.The flag of the free market was planted firmly on the ruins of Yugoslavia.The scion of a wealthy Texas oil family and the new U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, William Farish, pointed out that the rich oil resources of the Caspian Sea region are the best interests of the United States in the Balkans. In an interview with The Sunday Times on September 23, 2001, Farish revealed that his planned visit to the Balkans was an unusual surprise for an ambassador to Britain, to say the least Say.Farish is a trusted friend of the Bush family and heir to the Standard Oil fortune, and he understands the geopolitics of oil well—his real reasons for being the U.S. ambassador to the U.K. are beyond doubt.He mentioned that to strengthen NATO's presence in the Balkans, the Balkans can serve as a "buffer zone against unstable regimes in the East."As a consequence of the "9.11" terrorist attacks.He also mentioned the strategic importance of energy resources and pipelines in the Caspian Sea.

As the new decade began, Washington was an unrivaled economic power whose military superiority played a less obvious role.But in just a few months, that has changed dramatically.Stocks on Wall Street crashed, the economy went into recession and unbelievable events in New York and Washington led to this change.The consequences of change are of great significance to the American people and to the world.