The United States of America's strategic policies towards the Caspian Dissertation

The United States of America's strategic policies towards the Caspian Sea and The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline - Dissertation Example Azerbaijani oil resources and the war in Chechnya - a groundbreaking event that demonstrated Russia’s military capabilities to US officials - were the two factors, which prompted Washington to initiate assertive policies from the second half of 1996 onward. The United States has announced that it considers the Caucasus and the Caspian a region vital to US interests (William Ascher, 2000). This study will focus mainly on two questions. Firstly, are U.S. policies in the region serving to divide instead of acting as an integrating or unifying force? Secondly, do U.S. policies in the region prioritize economic-energy security or political-military security? When one tries to respond to the first question, the second question automatically comes to the fore because the changing economic and political security understanding of Washington after 11 September made it evident that the United States today, unlike in the 1970s, is not concerned about its hegemonic decline anymore; on the contrary, it is affecting the global order. Most importantly, it no longer feels threatened by its dependence on imported oil (Mustafa Ayd?n, 2004). Then, under these circumstances, one can argue that it is to the advantage of the United States to focus primarily on economic security which, for liberals, means creating factor mobility among national economies or a joint gains view of economic relations in Buzan’s terms (Mustafa Ayd?n, 2004). In order to respond to the above-mentioned questions this article aims mainly to focus on changing U.S. energy policies in the region after the 11 September disaster in terms of its relations with the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The positive attitude of the United States toward the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline will be taken as a case study to assess whether Washington’s policies are serving to divide or acting to unify the countries in the region. In addition, Turkey’s incre asing geo-political importance in terms of the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is also a concern of this study (Michael P. Croissant, 1999). American Oil Diplomacy in Terms of Increasing U.S. Interest in the Caspian Basin The United States, who had become accustomed to expanding energy consumption with minimal concerns about the constancy of supply or sharp price escalation by 1972,3 never articulated or implemented a long-term and comprehensive energy strategy. Major energy initiatives were taken largely to address specific crises and they did not last. In other words, the Americans have done no way to deal with their ever-growing thirst for energy. The critics of the U.S. government claim that Washington has made energy goals secondary to other foreign policy objectives, particularly during the 1990s (Bahman, 2003). American sanctions policy, for example, has slowed the development of plentiful resources in Iran (and Libya), while Iraqi production has been held back by th e United Nations. The sanction policy, thus, meant less diversification of sources. The answer to the question ‘Why then does the Bush administration still continue the sanction policy on Iran?’ is that the Bush administration views diversification of sources as a means of assuring the United States of political-military security rather than energy security, while it