Pipeliners

05.06.2008 - New Europe News - The Russo-Hellenic agreement on Greece’s participation in the South Stream gas pipeline signifies a major change in southeast Europe which has gradually shifted from an Anglo-American to a European sphere of influence.South Steam brings Siberian, and other Gazprom controlled resources, gas mainly, through a pipeline crossing the bottom of the Black Sea to Bulgaria where it then splits into two directions. The first towards Central Europe through Serbia, Hungary and Austria and the second towards the South to Greece and from there on to Italy.The South Stream pipeline secures better gas supplies to Europe because it bypasses Ukraine, a population deeply divided between its alliances to Russia and the United States. This ongoing instability includes potential dangers in the regular flow of Siberian gas to Europe. The European Union has already sensed such a threat, once in the recent past.South Stream, however, while it satisfying the EU energy strategy, is in direct competition with the Nabucco US-UK promoted pipeline which will hopefully bring Caspian gas to Europe via Turkey.The US government expressed its deep dissatisfaction with the Greek initiative and the reason is not so much that South Stream is in competition with the Nabucco pipeline but because the Greek initiative implements and locks in a new geopolitical reality for Southeast Europe.The decline of American influence in Southeast Europe is due to a series of wrong choices by the US administration in the area. In Turkey, the US administration has aligned with the interests of the “deep” Turkish state and the military. Turkish society, however, is not stuck in the past, it is progressing and this is reflected by the popular support towards the Tayip Erdogan government, which is introducing bold structural changes in the administration and the economy.To this effect the “deep” state (Administration and Justice) and the Military have lost their absolute political rule, which for decades held control over Turkish public affairs and are now trying to negotiate a political role and the continuation of their economic existence.The Turkish army is the biggest business-financial complex in the country since various military funds have managed to acquire, at a nominal price, all state-owned enterprises and banks that have been privatised. Now, both the “deep” state and the military, are trying to negotiate with the political leadership of the country by blackmailing the ban, through a pending case before the Supreme Court of, the ruling party and 71 politicians including the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic.The diminishing influence of the US in Turkey has manifested through the US war in Iraq when the Turkish government, to the great disappointment of the military, did not allow the US to invade Iraq from the north through Turkey.The initial US military plan was to operate from the Diarbakir base, at first occupy the US friendly Kurdish territories of north Iraq and set their own Kurdish-ked, also US- government friendly, in Mussul and then continue marching in the south, to take over Baghdad. Instead, the American troops invaded Iraq from Kuwait, and moved to Baghdad through hostile territories with high losses and big delays. It is in this context that neither Washington nor London can use Turkey to manipulate and destabilise Southeast Europe anymore.Yet the US recently committed further mistakes in Southeast Europe. It was the US that “pushed” Serbia, under the influence of Russia, into granting independence to Kosovo with the only real reason to set in Southeast Europe a “secure” military base with a similar status to the Guantanamo base in Cuba. Yet, Cuba is next to Florida, while Kosovo is next to Italy and Greece, and thus any situation in the area against European interests is destined to fade out.The most recent mistake of the US administration was to support the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in its dispute over the name of that country. In this case, regardless of the essence of the issue, the mere fact that the United States, set against one of its long time faithful NATO allies Greece in favor of a newlyformed state created from the remains of Tito’s Yugoslavia, constitutes a prime political blunder. As a direct result, during the recent Bucharest NATO Summit and after US president George W. Bush pompously announced the welcome of “Macedonia” to NATO, Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, immediately vetoed the membership of FYROM to NATO with the full support of Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Jean-Claude Juncker, Romano Prodi, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and others.It was there, in the NATO Summit in Bucharest, that Washington lost the upper hand in Southeast Europe in favour of the European Union, and the signing of the South Stream agreement between Greece and Russia last week is only one of the manifestations of this new reality.