Michael Klare interview on the new energy world order

From AGAINST THE GRAIN
MONDAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY FROM NOON TO ONE ON KPFA (Pacifica) RADIO


Wed 4.16.08 New Energy Order
In his new book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Michael Klare argues that a global political realignment of historic proportions is under way, based on ever-more-intense competition for reliable energy supplies. Klare describes emerging Big Power alliances and rivalries in energy-rich sites like the Caspian basin and Africa.
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Russia stands to benefit from the oil markets

graphic: yellow = demand, green = supply

Asia Times just published the article The rise of the new energy world order by Michael T Klare. Klare writes:

The combination of rising demand, the emergence of powerful new energy consumers, and the contraction of the global energy supply is demolishing the energy-abundant world we are familiar with and creating in its place a new world order. Think of it as rising powers/shrinking planet.

This new world order will be characterized by fierce international competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal and uranium, as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-deficit states like China, Japan and the United States to energy-surplus states like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In the process, the lives of everyone will be affected in one way or another - with poor and middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states experiencing the harshest effects. That's most of us and our children, in case you hadn't quite taken it in.
Here, in a nutshell, are five key forces in this new world order which will change our planet . . .

Read the article for the five key forces, and how Russian stands to benefit.

Russia - Online Resources & Recommended Readings from the Foreign Policy Association

Russia
Online Resources

Great Decisions 2008: Spring Updates [PDF]
Great Decisions 2008 Spring Updates available online or download as PDF

Great Decisions 2008 Spring Update: Russia
Read the Spring Update to the Great Decisions 2008 topic "Russia."

A George Washington Moment, Putin Style
From Foreign Policy Magazine, "Russia's outgoing president may think he can hang on to the reins of power, but his own story is the best reminder that even hand-picked successors can have minds their own."

Across Putin's Russia
A five-part multimedia slideshow by a Financial Times correspondent who traveled through eastern Russia to discover why President Vladimir Putin, increasingly feared and distrusted abroad, enjoys rising popularity at home.

BBC: Putin Project
A BBC World Service special feature on Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration and how he has built widespread support among Russians for his policies and his allies.

GDTV 2008 Transcript - Reexamining Russia
Transcript for the Great Decisions Television Series 2008 show #4, Reexamining Russia.

novayagazeta [English Language]
Leading Russian newspaper English language site.

Pravda [English Version]
Leading Russian newspaper English language site.

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Official site of Russia's Foreign Ministry.

Johnson's Russia List
News and analysis from David Johnson.

Russia: Key Facts
Background and Key Facts on Russia from the BBC.

Carnegie Moscow Center
Established in 1993, the Center accommodates foreign and Russian researchers collaborating with Washington staff on a variety of topical areas and policy-relevant projects.

Harriman Institute
A leading center for the advancement of knowledge in the field of Russian and Eurasian studies, the Institute seeks to create a forum for intellectual exchange.

Kennan Institute
The Institute, in conjunction with the Woodrow Wilson Center, is a nonpartisan institution improving American expertise and knowledge about Russia and successor states to the Soviet Union with experience in shaping U.S.-Russian policy.

National Council for Eurasian and East European Research
The organization is the largest provider of resources to U.S. scholars for postdoctoral research in the fields of the economic, political, social and historical development of Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe.

National Opinion Balloting 2008
Download the 2008 Ballot or take the online version!


Recommended Readings »

The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West
In late 1999 when Vladimir Putin was named Prime Minister, Russia was a budding democracy. Multiple parties campaigned for seats in the Duma, the nation's parliament. The media criticized the government freely. Eight years later as Putin completes his second term as president of Russia and announces his bid for prime minister, the country is under a repressive regime. Human rights abuses are widespread. The Kremlin is openly hostile to the West. Yet the United States and Europe have been slow to confront the new reality, in effect, helping Russia win what experts are now calling the New Cold War.

Kremlin Rising : Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution
In the tradition of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, Robert G. Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power, and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb comes an eloquent and eye-opening chronicle of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from this generation's leading Moscow correspondents.
With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia launched itself on a fitful transition to Western-style democracy. But a decade later, Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, a childhood hooligan turned KGB officer who rose from nowhere determined to restore the order of the Soviet past, resolved to bring an end to the revolution. Kremlin Rising goes behind the scenes of contemporary Russia to reveal the culmination of Project Putin, the secret plot to reconsolidate power in the Kremlin.

Russia in Search of Itself
In the turbulent decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, conditions have worsened considerably for many Russians, and a wide-ranging debate has raged over the nature and destiny of their country. In Russia in Search of Itself, James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress and a noted expert on Russia, examines the efforts of a proud but troubled nation to find a post-Soviet identity. The agenda has not been controlled from the top-down and center-out as in Russia's past. Nor has it been set by any intellectual giant such as Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn.

Russian Iranian gas pact

Russia gas pact energizes Iran
By Pepe Escobar
Is online at Asia Times

Here is an excerpt to give you a taste:

As any European Union negotiator in Brussels is forced to admit over a few
bottles of Morte Subite beer, the EU is a virtual hostage of Gazprom. Adding to
European angst, both Russia and Iran want the formation of a gas equivalent of
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sooner rather than
later - a likely scenario at least from the point of view of Russian-Iranian
coordination in investment policy and pricing.

Teymur Huseynov, head of
the Eurasia department at the Exclusive Analysis risk consultancy, confirms
"Gazprom's vulnerability to US sanctions is minimal". Gazprom supplies over 25%
of Western Europe's gas. Much of Iran's future production will also go to
Western Europe anyway. Russia and Iran are competitors in the world gas market -
but up to a point: Europe needs both.
. . .

Iran is also basking in
good news in the oil front. The first phase of early production from the giant
Azadegan oilfield, west of Ahvaz in Iranian Khuzestan, is already on. According
to Iranian estimates, Azadegan holds no less than 33 billion barrels of crude
oil. For the moment it's pumping only 25,000 barrels a day - but the point is
that the whole technology was Iranian.

According to the deputy manager
of technical affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Hamid Deris,
the Iranians had to take over when experts of Japan's largest oil and gas
explorer, INPEX, under no-holds-barred US pressure, balked at investing in the
enormous project. The Japanese share was initially 90%; in the end it fell to
10%
. . .

. . . Iran - already exchanging energy with Azerbaijan, Armenia and
Turkmenistan - will also connect to Russia's national power grid. Fattah said
Iran and Russia would cooperate in the construction of two power plants in
Tajikistan. The results are obvious: the merging of Russian and Iranian
electricity networks will cover virtually all the demand in Central Asia and the
Caucasus. Most of the new investment will be Russian.

You can read the whole article here.

Biden On Russia After Putin

Joseph Biden has published After Putin in the Wall Street Journal.

Russia is the world's largest energy exporter, and the only state with enough nuclear weapons and delivery capability to wipe us out. It is also facing endemic corruption, a demographic collapse, and a brewing insurgency in the north Caucasus. The Kremlin's use of "managed democracy" has failed to address these and other major challenges. Whether in the form of loose nukes or environmental catastrophe, Russia's domestic failings have consequences beyond its borders. It is legitimate for the West to be concerned about Russia's internal affairs. We should encourage responsible Russians to move toward a political system that is better equipped to address Russia's many problems.

Click here to read the entire article.

Why Vladimir Putin rigged an election he was always going to win

As our next topic is Russia, here is an article on the recent presidential election:

Why Vladimir Putin rigged an election he was always going to winThe secret policeman's election; Russia.(Why Vladimir Putin rigged an election he was always going to win)
The Economist (US) 385.8558 (Dec 8, 2007): p60US.

Vladimir Putin did not rig the ballot to win control of parliament, but to assert his power over the Kremlin's warring factions

To read the full article click here: Why Vladimir Putin rigged an election he was always going to win