central asia resources

• Losing the Resources Game ; Distracted America Is Missing Opportunity's Knock

While Washington sleeps, China is winning the great new game in Central Asia, locking up its rich natural resources. S. interest in Central Asia is focused on three issues: First, keeping the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan open to supply U.S. and NATO forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan; second, promoting democracy on Kyrgyzstan to make it a poster example for the region; and third, lecturing the other Central Asian nations on promoting democracy - a policy that has had a spectacular lack of success, except in making American armchair intellectuals feel good.

• The Washington Times
• July 23, 2010

• Oil and Terrorism: Central Asia and the Caucasus

This essay examines American, European, Russian, and Chinese energy interests in the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. The author argues that in recent years this rivalry over hydrocarbon resources has been reinforced by efforts to increase political and security influence. Firstly, American, European, and Chinese energy outlooks are examined, followed by an analysis of the political rivalry between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. The argument is two-fold: A) The Caspian's hydrocarbon resources will contribute to global energy security, but they should not be seen as a substitute for Middle East oil. B) The rivalry between global powers in the region is likely to intensify further in the foreseeable future. This rivalry will fuel economic and political instability in the Caucasus and Centr...

• Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, The
• Vol. 30 Nbr. 3, October 2005

• Nuclear Trafficking: ; Black Sea Region Is Most Likely Focus for Contraband Smugglers

If terrorists ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb or the means to build one, it will likely occur in the area that surrounds and feeds into the Black Sea. This region, which includes Southeast Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, is with rife ethnic and cultural tensions, weak governance structures, rising nationalism, intense competition for resources, divisive geography, disputed borders, dueling great powers, Islamist terrorism and protracted warfare. It is a good place for terrorists to look for weapons of mass destruction. The United States has invested heavily in helping countries in the region to improve their nuclear security. For the most part, it seems to be working. Nuclear weapons storage facilities are pretty well guarded. Except for Pakistan, the threat of terrorists ...

• The Washington Times
• June 06, 2011

• A Comprehensive Report on the War for the Energy Resources of Southern and Central Europe, the Caspian Region and Central Asia.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/48fa31/war_for_energy_res) has announced the addition of the "War ...

• Business Wire
• July 23, 2008

• World Powers Eye Asian Resources; U.S. Must Tread Carefully in the Region Long Dominated by China and Russia

Like hungry vultures, three superpowers are watching the five countries that comprise Central Asia, hoping to grab some of their natural resources to feed their own growing energy needs, said Lee Zhu on Thursday. Zhu spoke on "Central Asia: Three Power Resource Rivalry," as part of the Great Decisions lecture series at Northeast Iowa Community College Town Clock Center for Professional Development. Zhu, a native of China, is an associate professor of history at Dubuque's Loras College.

• Telegraph - Herald (Dubuque)
• March 09, 2007

• U.S.-Russian Relations: What Should Be Done -and Not Done

On Aug. 8, Russia decided to rewrite the rules of post-World War II European security. It repudiated the Helsinki Pact of 1975, which recognized the sanctity of borders in Europe, and violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of NATO aspirant Georgia, whose troops had attacked South Ossetia the day before. In the process, Russia also tore up its own peacekeeping mandate in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Moscow desires to become a hegemonic power in the former Soviet space. The Georgian war brought Russia back to the Southern Caucasus in force, outflanking oil-rich Azerbaijan, and affecting control over the principal energy and rail arteries bringing natural resources from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia to the West and consumer and industrial goods to the East. The Russian milita...

• The Washington Times
• September 14, 2008

• The Global Food Crisis: A Social Democratic Assessment

The crisis is compounded by extreme weather due to climate change, including drought such as in Australia, one of [the] world's leading agricultural producers where wheat and rice crops have been devastated, and increasingly violent storms such as those that have wreaked havoc in Central America and parts of Asia and other regions in recent years. The worst effect of current policies has been the neglect and undermining of domestic agriculture in developing countries. The change in emphasis in recent decades from domestic production to importing basic grains and processed foods heavily subsidised by governments in the developed world has been driving small farmers out of business practically everywhere. At the international level there should be a reorientation and strengthening of p...

... the way it negatively affects water resources necessary for crop cultivation - threatens to redu...

• Democratic Left
• Vol. 36 Nbr. 1, July 2008

• Low and Mighty

Richard Halloran's column "U.S. forces stretched thin" (Opinion, Monday) accurately addresses the shortcomings of our political and diplomatic policies. Frederick the Great once said, "He who attempts to defend everywhere, defends nothing. Washington is directing its resources toward a costly conventional strategy in Central Asia at the expense of weakening our political presence in other areas of the world. This narrow- minded focus not only diminishes our ability to secure our own territories, but it leaves us ill-equipped to respond in timely fashion to additional international threats.

• The Washington Times
• July 07, 2009

• Energies Should Be Released Now

THE formal opening today of the $4 billion pipeline to carry oil more than 1,000 miles from the Caspian to the Mediterranean is a triumph of Western engineering, a strategic coup in the competition with Russia for influence in its former republics and a tribute to the acumen of BP, which holds the principal stake in the international consortium. This "project of the century", which will eventually be linked to the huge Kazakh oilfields in Central Asia, has been built, on time and within budget, in the face of strong opposition from Moscow. It is crucial in lessening Western dependence on oil from the Middle East. And it is an impressive demonstration of technology given that the pipeline traverses some of the roughest topography, political as well as physical, in the world. It would be ...

..... It will take the combined resources and commitment of Western governments, big busines...

• San Gabriel Valley Tribune
• February 01, 2006

• Russia and the U.S.A. in confrontation: military and political aspects.

... to achieve the objective set, is the central element of strategic management. . Strategy dictat... to gain a broader access to energy resources in Russia, South Caucasus, and Central Asia by act...

• Military Thought
• Vol. 18 Nbr. 3, July 2009