Iakovos Alhadeff
Introduction
With
this essay I want to provide a summary of why oil was the main cause of the
First World War (1914-1918), which could be also called the First World War for
oil, and also compare this oil war with the oil wars of 2014 one hundred years
later. The main alliances of WW1 were England, France and Russia on one side,
known as the ‘allies’, and Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy on the other side,
known as the “central powers”. See the following, very rough, map.
The British and
German Empires
At
the beginning of the 20th century (1900) England was what the U.S.A.
is today. England was an empire extending from Canada and East Africa, to India
and Australia, covering most of the globe as you can see on the following rough
map (green colour).
However
after her victory against France in 1871, Germany established itself as one of
the great powers, and with its rampant industry she became England’s main
competitor. In a sense Germany was for England what China is for the U.S.A.
today. The most important problem in the Anglo-German relations was Germany’s
wish to extend her influence to the Persian Gulf through the Ottoman Empire.
Even
though the shaky Ottoman Empire had lost most of her lands, she was still
extending to the Persian Gulf through what today are Syria, Iraq and Saudi
Arabia (parts of the green area on the above map). The alliance between the
German Empire, the Empire of Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire,
was a great threat for the English interests.
As
you can see from my rough (red) diagram, the alliance between Germany,
Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria and Ottoman Empire, would form a solid block extending
from Germany to the Persian Gulf, since Syria and Iraq were Ottoman
territories. A large part of
the Balkans was also part of the Ottoman Empire at the time, and it was
possible for the German Empire to connect to the Ottoman Empire and the Persian
Gulf through Austro-Hungary, as you can see on the following 1912 map of the
Balkans.
The Balkans in 1912
The
above situation was a threat for the control of the Persian Gulf, which is the
richest region in the world in terms of oil reserves, it was a threat for the
control of the Caspian Region, which is the second richest region in the world
in terms of oil reserves, and which was controlled by the Russians, it was a
threat for India, which was England’s most important colony, and it would also
bring the Germans very close to the Suez Canal and Egypt as you can see on the
following map.
The
Suez Canal and Egypt were under British Control, and were crucial for the
control of India in South Asia, since the Suez Canal was cutting almost in half
the distance between England and India. The Suez Canal (black circle) was
inaugurated a few decades earlier (1869).
The Triple
Alliance Between England, France and Russia
Facing
the rising German influence in the Middle East, the English tried and managed
to close their long and significant disputes with the French and the Russians,
in order to form an alliance against the Germans and their allies. The major
disputes between the French and the English concerned their colonies in Africa
(see the following map).
At
the beginning of WW1, France was controlling almost all of West Africa (yellow
colour), and England was controlling almost all of East Africa (red colour),
and therefore Africa was a source of disputes between the English and the
French.
However
when confronted with the German ‘threat’, the French and the English rushed to
close their disputes with a series of agreements known as ‘Entente Cordial’. As
you can read at the following Wikipedia link, with Entente Cordial in 1904,
England and France closed 1000 years of disputes and wars.
Among
other things, with this agreement England accepted France’s control over
Morocco, which was crucial for controlling the Straits of Gibraltar, and France
accepted England’s control over Egypt, which was crucial for controlling the
Suez Canal (see lines 1 and 2 on the following map).
Moreover,
with their alliance with the English and the Russians, the French were hoping
to take their revenge for their defeat from the Germans in 1871, and regain
control of the rich in iron and coal area of Alsace and Lorraine, which was
lost during this war. Coal was in the 19th Century what oil became
in the 20th Century, and even the navies were using coal, until coal
was finally replaced by oil in the early 20th Century (1900). Indeed
after the defeat of the Germans in 1918, the French regained control of Alsace
and Lorraine.
Moreover,
with the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the English promised that in case of victory
they would offer the French some of the Ottoman Empire territories. According
to this agreement, England would take the oil rich Iraq, and France would take
Syria. Actually there was no Iraq and Syria at the time. The Ottoman territory
that would be taken by the English with this agreement was later given the name
‘Iraq’, and the Ottoman territory that would be taken by the French with the
same agreement was later given the name ‘Syria’.
This
is the reason that the members of the ISIS army (Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria) are saying that they are destroying the Sykes-Picot Agreement by
reuniting Syria and Iraq. You can see the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the
following rough map.
You
can also read about the Sykes-Picot Agreement at the following Wikipedia link.
Moreover
with the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907, the English and the Russians closed
their centuries’ long disputes for the control of Central Asia and the Middle
East (Iran, Afghanistan and Tibet). You can read at the following Wikipedia
link, that in 1907, the English and the Russians agreed to split Iran,
Afghanistan and Tibet in spheres of influence.
The
agreement between the English and the Russians allowed them to stop
antagonizing each other and turn their attention to the Germans and the
Ottomans who were a threat for the control of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian
Sea.
However
from their alliance with the French and the English, the Russians did not
simply expect to protect the oil rich Caspian Sea region from the German and
Ottoman threat, but were also hoping to gain control of Constantinople, the
Bosphorus Straits and the Dardanelles, which were controlled by the Ottomans,
and which would give the Russians uninterrupted access to the Aegean and the
Mediterranean Seas (see maps below).
At
the following Wikipedia link you can read that with the Constantinople
Agreement, the English, the French and the Russians, agreed that in case of
victory, Russia would take control of Constantinople, the Bosphorus and the
Dardanelles.
However
even though the allies did finally win the war, Russia did not get
Constantinople (today Istanbul), because Russia collapsed in 1917 and exited
the war, since she entered a painful civil war between the tsarists and the
Communists.
By
agreeing with the Russians to split Iran into spheres of influence, the English
would gain control of the Persian Gulf while the Russians would retain the
undisputed control of the Caspian Sea, and together they could fight the
Germans and the Ottomans. You can see on the following map that Iran is the
region between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, holding itself a very
large amount of oil and natural gas reserves. Iran is the second and fourth
richest country in the world in terms of natural gas and oil reserves
respectively.
However
at the time most of the region’s oil was coming from Iraq and Baku, since oil
in Iran was only discovered in 1908.
The
Anglo-Franco and the Anglo-Russian alliances, together with the Franco-Russian
alliance, encircled Germany and her allies (see following rough map).
The Role of the
Balkan Countries in WWI
One
of the reasons there was so much tension in the Balkans before the outbreak of
World War 1, was that the Balkans was the connection between Germany and her
allies with the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Gulf. The following map shows
the Balkans before the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913.
The Balkans Before the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913
It
can be seen on the above map, that with the status quo that existed before the
Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, Germany would have no problem to connect to the
Persian Gulf by railway, using the Austro-Hungary-Ottoman Empire corridor.
However with the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913,
Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania, managed to annex almost all the European
territories of the Ottoman Empire. Greece, Serbia and Romania, all of which
were on the side of the allies during the First World War, formed a wall
between Germany and the Ottoman Empire as you can see on the following map,
(Bulgaria finally entered the war on Germany’s side in WWI).
The Balkans after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913
The
German plan was to construct the famous Baghdad Railway, that would connect
Berlin to the Persian Gulf (see later sections), and Greece, Serbia and Romania
were forming a wall against the Baghdad Railway Project. It is not a
coincidence that World War I broke out on the 28th of July 1914,
with the Austro-Hungary declaring war to Serbia, with all other countries
running behind these two countries. The following map shows the Balkans today.
It
can also not be a coincidence that the Balkan Wars took place in 1912 and 1913,
and the First World War broke out in 1914. When I am saying that the Balkan
Wars were not a coincidence, I do not mean that Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria
attacked the Ottoman Empire because they wanted to prevent Germany from
connecting to the Persian Gulf. These countries did want the Ottoman
territories, and they were supported by England, Russia and France, in order to
prevent the German-Ottoman connection. The Ottoman territories were simply
their rewards.
As
you can read in section ‘Reaction Among the Great Powers During the Wars’ of
the following Wikipedia link, Germany was already heavily involved in
the internal politics of the Ottoman Empire, and officially opposed the attack
on the Ottoman Empire, but because it was obvious that the shaky Ottoman Empire
could not protect for long her European territories from Greece, Bulgaria and
Serbia, Germany was supporting Bulgaria from the opposite camp, which was
called the ‘Balkan League’’. And in the end, Bulgaria did indeed join Germany’s
camp in WW1.
In
the same Wikipedia link, you can also read that Russia was the primary
mover of the Balkan League countries i.e. Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria against
the Ottoman Empire. This seems very natural, since Russia not only wanted to
prevent Germany from obtaining access to the Caspian Sea, but she was also a
traditional enemy of the Ottoman Empire and wanted to gain control of
Constantinople, Bosphorus and the Dardanells, which would allow the Russian
Navy to access the Mediterranean Sea, as I already said.
You
can also read in the same Wikipedia link that Austria-Hungary was
totally opposed to the advancement of the Balkan countries, Greece, Serbia and
Bulgaria, in the region. France, a Russian ally, informed Russia that
she was not ready for a war. England, even though a supporter of the
Ottoman Empire, encouraged the advancement of the Balkan countries. That’s what
Wikipedia says about the reactions of the Great Powers during the Balkan Wars
of 1912 and 1913.
We therefore see that Germany and Russia were
supporting the sides we would expect them to support in the Balkan Wars.
However things were a bit more complicated for England. Because on one hand
England was facing the threat of German expansion to the Persian Gulf and
India, and on the other hand she was facing the threat of Russian expansion
through the Straits of Bosphorus and the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean Sea,
which could pose a threat for the sea corridor between the Mediterranean Sea
and the Indian Ocean i.e. the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.
The
following map depicts the situation for the English. The purple arrows
represent the German threat to the Persian Gulf and India, and the red arrows
represent the Russian threat to the Suez Canal.
The German threat for the English (purple lines), and the Russian threat
for the English (red lines).
England
perceived the collapsing Ottoman Empire as less dangerous than the Russian Navy
for the control of the Suez Canal and Egypt. However in the end, under the
German threat for the Persian Gulf and India, England accepted Russian control
over the straits of Bosphorous and the Dardanelles in case of victory. With the
Constantinople Agreement as I already said, France, England and Russia agreed
on the control of Constantinople and the Straits by Russia.
Another
factor that helped England and Russia to reach an agreement was that around
1880, England had taken control of Cyprus, Egypt and the Suez Canal, and was
feeling more confident that it could prevent the Russians from taking control
of the Suez Canal.
Before
I close the section on the Balkans, I must mention that the ‘wall’ formed by
Greece and Serbia in 1914 against Germany and the Baghdad Railway, which
prevented the Germans from connecting by railway to the Ottoman Empire and the
Persian Gulf, was still there 80 years later. Greece and Serbia, two
traditional Russian allies, were forming a wall in the 90’s against the
Americans and the Europeans, who wanted to bring oil and natural gas from
Azerbaijan to the Adriatic Sea and Italy through the AMBO pipeline.
The
Greek-Serbian wall was broken first by the creation of the state of FYROM
(Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) in 1991, and by the NATO war on Serbia
and the autonomy of Kosovo in South Serbia on 1998 (see following map). You can
read more about the NATO attack on Serbia and the AMBO pipeline in my essay
‘The NATO attack in Yugoslavia – Another Energy War’.
Arab Nationalism
While in the Balkans the Russians
were helping the Greeks, the Serbs and the Bulgarians to attack the Ottoman
Empire and annex her territories, in order to prevent the Germans from
connecting to the Ottoman Empire through the Baghdad railway, and in order to
gain control of Constantinople, the English were organizing an Arab revolt
against the Ottomans.
The English were organizing the Arabs
at the Southern parts of the Ottoman Empire, the regions that today are Saudi
Arabia, Iraq and Syria, in order to push the Ottomans away from the Persian
Gulf. Therefore we see that the allies were helping the local populations both
at the Balkans and in the Arab world, in order to turn them against the
Ottomans and prevent Germany to connect to the Persian Gulf through the Baghdad
railway. For the Arab revolt, 1916-1918, see the following Wikipedia link.
Therefore by supporting Balkan
Nationalism, the allies managed to block the connection between the German and
Ottoman Empires (black line), and at the same time, by supporting Arab
nationalism in Syria and Iraq, they managed to block the connection between the
Ottoman Empire and the Persian gulf (red line).
The Oil Factor
in the First World War
From
all the above it can be said that the main cause of World War I was the
Germans’ wish to use the Ottoman corridor in order to expand to the Middle
East, which threatened the British interests in the Middle East and India. The
importance of oil can be also seen from the fact that the English, the French
and the Russians that had centuries’ long disputes, managed to put these
disputes aside, in order to form an alliance against the rise of Germany.
It
is of course no coincidence that just before the outbreak of the First World
War, oil engines had started replacing coal engines, dramatically increasing
the geopolitical importance of the oil rich regions. Note that both England and
Germany were very rich in coal but very poor in oil. At the following Wikipedia
link, at section ‘Lord of the Admiralty’, you can read that in 1911 Winston
Churchill, as the head of the British Navy, ordered the replacement of the coal
engines with oil engines, something that would soon become the norm for all
navies and armies, making the 20th Century the century of oil. The use of oil
would ensure greater speed for the British Naval ships. Moreover smoke would
stop exposing their position.
The Baghdad Railway
Since
the Baghdad Railway was a very important German project for the connection of
Germany with the Persian Gulf (see red line on the following map) I must say a
few words about it.
Note! Even thought the Baghdad
Railway would follow the route of what today is Germany- Czech
Rep-Austria-Hungary-Serbia-Bulgaria-Turkey-Syria-Iraq, and would pass from
Baghdad and Basra, my red lines on the maps are rough and not exact lines.
For some people the Baghdad Railway
was the real cause of the First World War, since it is this very railway that
would connect Germany to the Persian Gulf, also bringing Germany close to
India. I think it seems more appropriate to consider Germany’s wish to expand
to the Persian Gulf as the cause of the war, than to consider the Baghdad
Railway as the cause of the war.
What was important was the decision
of the Germans to expand to the Persian Gulf, not the actual way they would do
so. Whether this connection would be achieved by the Baghdad Railway or some
other means, it seems to be of secondary importance. However nobody can deny
that the Baghdad Railway was very important, and therefore I will provide some
Wikipedia sources to demonstrate that this is so.
You can read at the following
Wikipedia link that the construction of the Baghdad Railway started in 1903 and
was completed in 1940, and its aim was to connect the German Empire to the
Persian Gulf, because the Germans wanted to acquire control of a port in the
Persian Gulf. Please note that the project started in 1903, and the English and
the French closed their differences with the Entente Cordiale in 1904, and the
English and the Russians closed their differences in 1907.
At the end of the 3rd
paragraph of the following Wikipedia link, you can read that the Germans had
managed to obtain ownership of some oil fields in Iraq, and with a railway to
Basra they could obtain oil supplies while avoiding the sea lanes and the Suez
Canal, where the British Navy was dominant. At the same time, they could use
the Persian Gulf to export their products to Asian countries.
Therefore
this railway would have two roles. The first one would be to supply the German
industry and the German army with oil, and the second to transport the German
products to the Persian Gulf, and from the Persian Gulf to export them to the
Asian countries, India included.
More
specifically, according to Wikipedia:
“The
Germans gained access to and ownership of oil fields in Iraq, and with a
line to the port of Basra would
have gained better access to the eastern parts of the German colonial empire, by avoiding
the Suez
Canal”.
In
the beginning of the 4th paragraph of the following link, you can
read that the Baghdad Railway had become a source of tension in the years
before WW1.
“The railway became a source of international disputes during the years
immediately preceding World War”.
In
the first paragraph of the following Wikipedia link, in section ‘Overview’, you
can read that the Baghdad Railway would offer the German Empire safe access to
oil by avoiding the British Navy.
At
the second paragraph of the same Wikipedia link, you can read that the Baghdad
Railway was also a threat to Russia, since it would offer the German Empire
access to the Caucasus Mountain. Caucasus is located next to the oil rich
Caspian Sea region, which was controlled by the Russians.
Moreover
in the beginning of the 4th paragraph of the following Wikipedia
link, it is mentioned that as early as 1871, geologists had already discovered
rich and high quality oil fields in the area of Mesopotamia (Iraq), which was
at the time part of the Ottoman Empire.
At
the paragraph before the last one in the following Wikipedia link, you can read
that as early as 1903 there was unrest in France, England and Russia for the
beginning of the Baghdad Railway.
In
the first line of section ‘After the War’ of the following Wikipedia link, you
can read that after the end of WW1, with the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was
stripped from the ownership of the Baghdad Railway (Deutsche Bank was a larger
investor in this project).
In
the last line of the 3rd paragraph of the following Wikipedia link,
you can read that there were negotiations between the English and the Germans
before WW1 regarding the Baghdad Railway, and the Germans had agreed to allow
some Englishmen in the board of directors, in order to ensure that the railway
would not rich the Persian Gulf.
This
is actually the reason that some people believe that this railway was not the
cause of WW1, since the Germans and the English had an agreement about it.
However I do not think that a paper agreement would make the English and the
Russians feel very secure.
And
like if all these disputes for the Iraqi and the Baku oil were not enough, in
1908 oil was discovered in Iran too, as you can read in the following Wikipedia
link, further increasing the geopolitical importance of the region.
If you wonder why Saudi Arabia, which is the
king of oil, is not mentioned at all in my essay, it is because the first
important oil field of Saudi Arabia was discovered in 1938. As you can see on
the following map, at the beginning of WW1 the interior of the Arabian
Peninsula (Saudi Arabia) was not controlled by any great power since oil had
not been discovered yet. The Ottomans and the English were only controlling its
outer parts which were important for controlling the sea lanes
As
you can read in section ‘Before the discovery of oil’ of the following
Wikipedia link, the consensus at the beginning of the 20th Century
(1900), was that there was not oil in the Arabian Peninsula.
As
you can read in section ‘Discovery of Oil’ of the following Wikipedia link, oil
was finally discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.
The Second World
War for Oil 1939-1945
The
Second World War for oil cannot be considered as an independent event from the
First World War for oil. After wining the war, the allies imposed extremely
hard conditions on Germany. The German people suffered, and this led a lunatic
to power, and as soon as Germany was strong enough she stroke back. According
to historians, the decisive battle of WWII was the Battle of Stalingrad (blue
circle). Stalingrad was later renamed to Volgograd.
As you can see on the map, if Hitler
had won in Stalingrad, he would have marched to Baku, and he would have secured
oil reserves for his army. Today we can easily go to a gas station and get
fuels, so it is difficult to imagine that an army can actually run out of fuel.
And yet it was very often the case for whole army divisions to run out of fuels
in the Great Wars. And it was the allies that were controlling both the Caspian
and the Middle East oil.
If Hitler had taken control of Baku,
he would have oil supplies to launch a Panzer attack to the Middle East. And if
he had won the English in the Middle East, the war in Europe and North Africa
would be over. This is the reason that the battle of Stalingrad is considered
as one of the most decisive battles of WWII.
It seems strange that Hitler turned
against Stalin and the Soviet Union, his former ally in 1941, since until then
it was the Communists who were supplying the Germans with the oil and minerals
they badly needed. As you can read in section “Later Events and Total Trade”,
of the following Wikipedia link, the Communists supplied the Nazis with 900.000
tons of oil in the period 1940-1941, that is before the Nazi attack on Russia.
At the end of the first paragraph of
the same Wikipedia link, you can read the following:
“The Soviets fulfilled their
obligations to the letter right up until the invasion, wanting to avoid
provoking Germany. All these agreements were terminated when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June
1941, in violation of the treaties between the two countries.”
However the oil that the Communists
were supplying was not enough for Hitler who was fighting a global war, and he
needed total control of the Baku oil. The Nazis were not crazy to terminate the
Nazi-Communist alliance which would mean a giant enemy on their east. They
simply needed more oil than the Communists were supplying.
In the second paragraph of the
following encyclopedia.com link, you can read that according to the
Nazi-Communist Economic Agreement that was signed on the 20th of August of 1939
by Karl Schnurre and Yevgeny Babarin, the Communists would supply the Nazis
with raw materials i.e. oil, wood, manganese etc, and the Nazis would supply
the Communists with manufactured goods.
You can read about how the Communists
were feeding the Nazi war machine at the Marxist site www.marxist.org, at the following link.
In the 5th paragraph of
the following article of The Guardian, you can read the following:
“The pact eventually extended to
the economic sphere, with Germany providing military equipment in exchange
for raw materials such as oil, grain, iron and phosphates”.
For the importance of the Nazi
Communist Economic Agreement, you can also read the article of the historian
Heinrich Schwendemann, “German-Soviet Economic Relations at the Time of the
Hitler-Stalin Pact 1939-1941”, at the following address:
Similarities of WWI with the Oil Wars of 2014
Today, 100 years after the First
World War for oil in 1914, we see the oil and natural gas wars in Syria and
Iraq, in Ukraine and in Libya, and we can assume that nothing has changed. The
wars in Libya, Ukraine, Iraq and Syria, are the first flames of the Third World
War for oil, and of course everybody hopes that these first flames will not
become a big fire like it happened in the previous World Wars for oil. However
since the current wars take place in three continents, i.e. Ukraine in Europe,
Iraq and Syria in Asia, and Libya in Africa, we can assume that we are already
in a mini World War for oil.
The situation in the Persian Gulf and
the Caspian Sea is very similar to the situation in these regions in 1914. The
difference is that the Americans have replaced the English, and the Chinese
have replaced the Germans. In WW1 it was the British Navy that was dominating
the seas, and it was Germany that was trying to exploit its geographical
advantage in order to avoid the British Navy and connect to the oil rich region
through the Ottoman Empire and the Baghdad Railway, since Germany was much
closer than England to the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea (black line).
Today, instead of Germany, it is
China that is trying to exploit its geographical advantage in order to
circumvent the American Navy and connect to the Persian Gulf, except that due
to technological advancements the Chinese are not using railways but oil and
natural gas pipelines.
The Chinese have already connected to
the Caspian Sea by a pipeline network that connects China to the rich in oil
Kazakhstan and the rich in natural gas Turkmenistan (red lines), and they are
trying to construct a pipeline network that will connect China to Iran and the
Persian Gulf. The war in Afghanistan is definitely relevant to the Chinese
effort to connect to Iran and the Persian Gulf, since Afghanistan is very poor
in oil and natural gas. What makes Afghanistan important is its position
between Iran and China (see my essays ‘The 21st Century War for
Iran’s Oil’ and ‘Why the U.S.A. Invaded Afghanistan’ for more information on
the connection between China and Iran).
The other similarity between the
First World War for oil in 1914 and the 2014 oil wars is the Baghdad Railway
and the Qatar-Turkey Pipeline. In 1914 Germany wanted to construct the Baghdad
Railway in order to connect to the Persian Gulf and obtain oil, but Greece and
Serbia were blocking her. Or to be more accurate nobody was blocking her, since
the European territories of the Ottoman Empire bordered Austro-Hungary, but
with the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, the English and the Russians helped Greece
and Serbia to absorb the European territories of the Ottoman Empire in order to
block the Baghdad Railway that would connect Germany to the Ottoman Empire and
the Persian Gulf (black line).
In 2014, actually earlier since the
war in Syria started in 2011, Qatar and Turkey wanted to construct a Sunni
natural gas pipeline that would transport Qatari natural gas to Europe through
Turkey (red line), but the Shiite Iraq and Syria were blocking this pipeline,
and as a result the wars in Iraq and Syria broke out. The wars in Iraq and
Syria also broke out to prevent the Shiite pipeline (green line), which would
transport Iranian oil and natural gas to the Mediterranean Sea through Iraq and
Syria (see my essay ‘The Energy War Between U.S.A. and Russia).
We therefore see that everything is
almost the same. Serbia and Greece were blocking the Baghdad Railway in 1914,
and Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia in 1914, while in 2011 the Shiite
Iraq and Syria were blocking the Qatar-Turkey pipeline and were promoting the
Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, and the wars in Syria and Iraq broke out. Therefore
the wars that broke out in Syria and Iraq in 2011, have a lot of resemblance to
the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913.
The story is the same for Russia too. Russia has
always been invading and controlling the countries around the Caspian Sea. This
region was under Russian occupation during the
Russian Empire era i.e. during the tsarist Russia, and nothing changed during
the Communist era.
Former
Soviet Union Map
The
Russian Communists kept the Caspian countries under Russian control until the
fall of the Soviet Union, as you can see on the above map of the former Soviet
Union. Actually the Caspian Region i.e. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan is comprised of 90% Muslim populations,
which are much more similar to the Turks rather than the Russians who are
Christians.
However
Russia has always been the strongest country, she has been on the winning side
in both World Wars, and therefore the oil rich Caspian region has always been
under her control. The Communists, exactly like the tsarists, did not grant
these countries independence because of the oil riches of these countries,
which were very important for Russia’s energy security.
At
the following Wikipedia link you can read how Russian Communists invaded
Azerbaijan in 1920.
At
the following Wikipedia link you can read how Russian Communists invaded
Georgia in 1921.
In
section ‘Kazakhstan under Soviet Rule’ of the following Wikipedia link, you can
read the following:
“During
the 1930s, many renowned Kazakh writers, thinkers, poets, politicians and
historians were killed on Stalin's orders, both as part of the repression and
as a methodical pattern of suppressing Kazakh identity and culture”.
At
the following Economist’s article about Central Asia titled ‘Stalin’s Harvest’,
you can read the following:
“After the October revolution of
1917, new autonomous republics were created. In 1924 Stalin divided the region
into different Soviet republics. The borders were drawn up rather arbitrarily
without following strict ethnic lines or even the guidelines of geography.
The main aim was to counter the
growing popularity of pan-Turkism in the region, and to avoid potential
friction. Hence, the fertile Fergana Valley (formerly ruled by the Khanate of
Kokand) was divided between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Some of
these borders were redrawn several times until 1936. After 1991, this led to
lively demarcation disputes among the newly independent countries”.
In
the First World War for oil, the Russian tsar was trying to prevent the Germans
from approaching Baku. In the Second World War for oil, the Russian Communists
were again trying to prevent Hitler from getting the Baku oil. Note that the
very rich oil reserves of Kazakhstan were discovered much later than the ones
in Baku.
Today,
in the Third World War for oil, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin
is trying to keep a firm hand on the Caspian countries, in order for Russia to
have monopolistic power in the European natural gas markets (see my essay ‘The
Energy War Between U.S.A. and Russia’). Actually the war between Russia and
Georgia and the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan were Russia’s revenge for
the cooperation of Azerbaijan and Georgia with the Americans on the Baku-Ceyhan
pipeline. To retaliate, the Americans supported the Chechens, and the Russian
Chechen war broke out (see my essay ‘The Three Wars for the Baku-Ceyhan
Pipeline’.
As
you can read in the second half of following article of the Guardian, Vladimir
Putin threatened the Kazakhstan sovereignty after the Kazakh President and
dictator, Nursultan Nazabayev, threatened to quite the Eurasian Economic Union.
Here
there is one more article on Putin’s pressure on Kazakhstan.
In
the First World War for oil in 1914, Russia was on the side of the country that
had the advantage in the seas i.e. Great Britain. In the Second World War for
oil in 1939, the Russians were initially on the German side, that is on the
side of the country that had the geographical advantage, with the famous
Nazi-Communist alliance which came into effect with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
in 1939, according to which the Nazis and the Communists were splitting Eastern
Europe into zones of influence. For the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact see the
following Wikipedia link.
For
the Nazi-Communist alliance you can also read the following link of
Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the third paragraph you can read the following:
“To
this public pact of nonaggression was appended a secret protocol, also reached
on August 23, 1939, which divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and
Soviet spheres of influence”.
In
the first paragraph of the same Britannica link, you can also read the
following:
“The
Western democracies’ hesitance in opposing Adolf Hitler, along with Stalin’s
own inexplicable personal preference for the Nazis, also played a part in
Stalin’s final choice”.
Therefore
one should not be misled to think that the Russian Tsars or the Russian
Communists were better than the Americans or the British. They were simply
located next to the richest region in oil and natural gas reserves in the
world. And Russia has many more oil and natural gas reserves than the Caspian
ones. Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of natural gas
reserves, and one of the richest countries in the world in terms of oil
reserves. Please note that the countries with the richest reserves are not
necessarily the ones with the largest production, since production also depends
on technology and other factors.
Today,
in what I call the beginning of the Third World War for oil, Russia is closely
working with China, that is with the country that has the geographical
advantage, and not with U.S.A. which is the country that dominates the seas.
The Famous Phrase ‘History is Repeating Itself’
When
examining the First World War for Oil, and comparing it with the oil wars of
2014, one tends to think about the very famous phrase which says that history
is repeating itself. We have heard this phrase so many times that it is very
difficult to examine the oil wars without thinking about it.
However
this is a very silly phrase which is used all the time by the so called
intellectuals. In reality it is not history that is repeating itself, but
rather the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea remaining the richest regions in
the world in terms of oil and natural gas reserves. From the beginning of the
20th Century, when oil replaced coal, the Persian Gulf and the
Caspian Sea became the heart of the world economy.
On
the following map it can be seen how small this region is in comparison to the
whole world. When it is taken into account that this region holds between 50-65
per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves, it is no surprise that
people have been, and will keep killing each other around it.
This
will not change, unless huge amounts of oil and natural gas reserves are found
somewhere else, or until oil and natural gas are replaced by some other form of
energy. Therefore the phrase “history keeps repeating itself” must be replaced
by the phrase “the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea remain constant”.
The
reason witticisms of the “history repeating itself” kind are always popular, is
because intellectuals do not want to explain to us what is really happening.
And one wonders why this is so, why is it that intellectuals never help us
think?
Murray Rothbard used to say that it
is the responsibility of the intellectuals to convince us that we need all
these bureaucrats. I think he is right. The responsibility of the intellectual
is not to help us think, but rather to convince us that we need the
bureaucrats, because as Murray Rothbard used to say, intellectuals have a
special relationship with the state, and most of the time they are directly
financed by the state. Therefore their job is to convince us that we cannot
live without their employer, and they are very good at it.
It is therefore very natural that
intellectuals do not help us think, because that’s not at all their job.
Nowadays everybody seems to wonder where were the intellectuals before the
economic crisis? How could the intellectuals let us fall into this crisis?
However this is again a very silly question. This crisis occurred exactly
because the intellectuals did their job very well, and they convinced us that
we needed their employers i.e. all these bureaucrats. This is how this crisis
came about as I explain in my essay ‘The Socialist Myth of Economic Bubbles’.
Ayn Rand used to say it should not be
expected from intellectuals to be ideologically independent since they are
financially dependent on the state and the bureaucrats. However the internet is
changing all that. With the internet we, the intellectual off springs of Murray
Rothbard and Ayn Rand, can attack the intellectuals. And they know that they do
not have the arsenal to confront us, that’s why you already hear socialist
countries planning to build their own internet networks. Russia and Latin
America want to build their own internet networks, and China does not allow its
citizens to use the internet.
Most socialists and intellectuals
support such decisions. The reason is not that they are afraid of espionage as
they say. The reason is that they know that they cannot confront us in the age
of the internet. It is like a race. We have to finish them off before they have
the time to unplug us. And we have to do it not only because it is in our
interest to do so, but also because it is extremely fun.
The problem is that the first flames
of the Third World War for oil are already here, and war is always the best
excuse for statists and socialists to take total control of a country. It is
the best excuse for the state to take over everything. It was with the First
World War that American statists destroyed the American liberal economic model
of the previous centuries and introduced the socialist ideals.
