Caspian Sea Oil – Still the Great Game for Central Eurasia

Abstract

A book with a foreword by Pat Clawson of the National Defense University and editor of ORBIS, and dedicated to Ronald Reagan and Target Ozxal, announces its U.S. far-right wing political pedigree literally up front. However the book is chock full of information, alas most already well known to anyone even remotely familiar with the problematique under review; but it also offers some incisive analysis. The twelve contributed chapters by fourteen authors and coauthors are divided into three parts dedicated to examining and analyzing the general history and mutual background of the Caspian Sea region; to the ?ve littoral states of Azerbaijan, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan; and to three ‘external’ interested states, the United States, Turkey, and Georgia. Nonetheless, the review by each author goes well beyond the nominative boundaries assigned to him or her and trespasses over into the topics, territories and their relations assigned to other authors. Quite prop-erly so, in view of the mutually complex real-life interrelations in the Caspian Sea Basin, so that no topic or state could be adequately understood in itself other than in relation to the others. Indeed, we are witnessing the contemporary continuation of the nineteenth century “Great Game” for the control of Central Eurasia. However, the oil connection also reaches well beyond Caspian Sea and must make this book pertinent also to readers of this journal.