The New Great Game: Opportunities for Trans-Atlantic Cooperation in the Caspian

Natural resources in the Caspian region are vital to the European Union’s future energy policy. Though the United States has been focusing on the region since the 1990s, European decision-makers have largely neglected its strategic importance.

In July 2006, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline, which runs from the Caspian port of Baku, through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan on the Turkish Coast, became operational. The successful completion of this oil pipeline and the opening in coming months of a gas pipeline mirroring the BTC route, to ship Azerbaijani gas to Turkey, and perhaps ultimately to Europe, make clear the critical importance of the Caspian region to the United States and Europe. Since the nineties, successive American Administrations have focused attention on this region. Policymakers understood the link between geopolitics, the development of energy resources and commercial interests.

The European Union and member states have taken a less focused view and have generally taken the position that decisions relating to energy are commercial in nature, and governments should not interfere with those decisions. The successful completion of BTC and Europe’s over-dependence on Russian natural resources – which has made the supply of natural gas to Europe an issue of public concern for the first time since the Cold War – demonstrate that this position is ill-advised, that European Governments should take a high profile in promoting the development of Caspian natural resources and that Europe and the United States should work together in achieving this goal.

Der Spiegel