All power to Russia

When asked recently about Iran’s proposal to Russia to create a global gas cartel, a number of top Russian leaders and experts commented that the move appeared rooted more in politics than in economics – in particular, the politics of opposition to the

United States and of counteracting its growing global aggressiveness.

Certainly powerful economic considerations are driving the emergence of new global confederations of gas and oil, but the political motivations are profoundly potent as well.
With new global energy groupings in oil and gas, Russia and its partners will find that leverage, which could be exercised to fracture Europe further along the dividing line of those who support US aggressiveness and those who do not. It could further divide the European Union from the US, and thereby scupper their plans to undermine Russia’s interests and those of its partners.

Additionally, such a global energy grouping as described in Part 1 of this series, one incorporating key consumers as well as producers, would enhance Russia’s already growing ability to gather Eurasian powers into close alignment with itself – an ability that pays many valuable dividends, not the least of which is the de facto undermining of US-led unipolarity.

However, increasingly potent as such political motivations have already become, they also constitute a bombshell that Russia and its global partners prefer to keep out of public awareness and debate for fear that such exposure will create sufficient a backlash that would risk a forfeit of their shared goal of a stealthy undermining of US-led unipolarity. When it comes to any acknowledgement of such political motivations, large doses of ambiguity and deniability are the key – for purely pragmatic reasons.

When one hears that proposals for a new global gas grouping are politically motivated, one should not assume that such motivations are therefore not pragmatic, or not truly considered desirable by the potential grouping’s membership.

Asia Times