Security Dynamics in the Former Soviet Bloc by Graeme P. s> Herd Jennifer D. P. Moroney (review)

Abstract

790 SEER, 84, 4, 2006 competing pipeline routingswhich bring Caspian oil from Azerbaijanto the West. Karagiannis's book charts the impact of oil politics on struggles in Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and Turkish Kurdistan. These rather nasty internecine disputes and the often authoritarianlocal dynastic regimeswhich provide their context, however, alwaysneed to be seen against the biggerpicture. Pipelinepoliticsimpliesthat the routesthat bring oil to the West are also the determinantsof wider regional political influence in which pro-Westernor anti-Russianforces strugglefor dominance where previously there was the secure hegemony of the Soviet Union. Now increasinglyvital in the shiftingand uncertain reconfigurationof the post-Soviet empire, the politics of oil representthe concluding but unfinished chapter in the saga of the Cold War. Turkey, Russia and the United States are thus all enthusiasticplayers in the great game and the client states are Azerbaijan,Armenia and Georgia. To give but one example, Turkishrestrictions on tanker trafficthrough the Bosphorus had less to do with ecological concerns than with a desire to limit any increases in Russian transportation of Azerbaijan oil delivered via the 'northern' pipeline from its sea port of Novorossiysk.At the same time, this was usefulfor Turkeyin securinga third pipeline route to the West through its own territory,directlylinkingBakuvia Tbilisi to the TurkishMediterraneanoil port of Ceyhan. The sponsorsof this recently inauguratedbut much criticizedventure are an alliance of Western multi-national oil companies with a somewhat disreputable group of local players seeking a piece of the action. Crucially, it is control over the flow and routing of this Azerbaijan oil which decreasesWesternreliance on oil from the Gulf States and at the samne time diminishesRussianinfluencein the region. Karagiannis'sachievementin this work is to make a complex story comprehensibleto those for whom the artof geo-politicsis a somewhatarcaneand dauntingchallenge.One need not subscribefully to all the theoreticalpremises of this work transposedfrom a doctoral dissertation,regarding the cohering of 'energy security complexes', to find much that elucidates in an exposition which is fascinating,precisely because its final outcomes are still undetermined. Universiy of Glasgow andUniversi_4 ofLatvia CHARLESWOOLFSON Herd, Graeme P. and Moroney,Jennifer D. P. (eds). Securit_ Dynamics in the Former Soviet Bloc.RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, 2003. xiv + 233 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. C70?.?. THIS volume attempts the difficult and complex task as the editors acknowledgein the preface of analysingthe securitypolicies of and interstate relationsbetween the successorstates of the USSR. It bringstogether a number of scholars,policy practitionersand analystswith directexperience of the region and manages to cover the entireformerSoviet Union, groupedinto three sections: Baltic security politics, interstate relations in the 'core CIS' Russia,Ukraine and Belarus and securitypoliticsin the 'CIS periphery' REVIEWS 79I Moldova, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Although several of the contributionsare excellent and the project is well conceived, overallthis is an uneven book. The introductory chapter by Ella Akerman and Tracey German is a whistle stop tour of Soviet foreign policy-makingand post-Cold War security thinking, focusing on the 'democraticpeace', democratizationand transition theory. None of these is dealt with in any great detail, however; the chapter relies mainly on citations from well-known writers on these topics and the contributors'own views are, in the context of the themes of the book, rather sketchy. In the section on Baltic security politics, the chapter by Adam Grissom,a specialistin defence planning and militarystrategy,similarlyraises a number of importantissues for example, EU membershipfor the Baltic states and the problem of Russian minorities post-independence -without analysingin depth theirsignificancefor the countriesconcerned.The chapters by Mel Huang on securitycooperationbetween the three Balticcountriesand by Ingmar Oldberg on Russia's economic policy towardsthe latter are more focused and provide more detail, though hardly fulfilthe promise in chapter one to 'drawon some of the theoreticalperspectivesraisedin the introduction' (p. I3). In the section on interstaterelationsin the core CIS, Rosaria Puglisioffers a thoughtful chapter on the evolution of Russian foreign policy approaches and the role played by economic interestswhich, within the inevitablelimitations of a book chapter, manages to achieve analytical depth and move beyond the lazy preconceptionswhich are stillto be found in some writingon Russia. The chapterby FrankMorgese on the securityimplicationsfor Russia and Ukraine of the dual NATO/EU enlargementis less successful;it tells us little about what this process means...