Pipelines and Politics in the Post-Soviet Space

Andreas Heinrich, Heiko Pleines (eds.) (2014). Export Pipelines from the CIS Region Geopolitics, Securitization, and Political Decision-Making. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press, 340 pp.

Review by Vadim Kashavoy.

The publication under review is a collection of scholarly articles by participants in the 8th “Changing Europe Summer School”, devoted to the topic “Export Pipelines from the CIS Region: National Debates, Political Decisions and Geopolitics”. This summer school for young researchers has been organised by the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen since 2006; the eighth school was held in Almaty in 2014.

The book is an attempt to summarise and analyse the main trends in energy policy pursued in the post-Soviet space over recent decades. Although it is in fact a collection of articles and papers by different authors, it has the coherence of a scholarly work, carefully thought through both in structure and in content. Its unifying basis is the interconnectedness of energy problems, as well as the shared history of energy relations.

Although the authors’ objects of study differ, their subject is essentially common: the system of political relations in the post-Soviet energy sphere. The methods and approaches of individual authors vary. On the one hand, this makes the book more difficult to read; on the other, it offers readers new tools for studying the subject. Most contributors focus on gas policy. At the centre of attention are Russia’s gas policy and Gazprom. Another thread linking the volume together is the Russian-Ukrainian gas conflicts. The collection consists of an introduction and four chapters, each containing three articles by different authors. It also includes appendices, a bibliography and short descriptions of the authors.

In the introduction, the editor makes a fairly successful attempt at a broad generalisation, as well as a historical overview of the energy policy of building a system of export pipelines, both in the Soviet period and in the post-Soviet space after the collapse of the USSR. Andreas Heinrich gives a very detailed account — the introduction is more than fifty pages long — of the history of the creation of the modern system of export gas and oil pipelines in the post-Soviet space, as well as of the political and economic aims and circumstances of these projects.

The book uses a variety of sources published both in the post-Soviet space and in the West. The emphasis, however, is placed specifically on English-language publications, despite the fact that most of the authors come from the post-Soviet space. For example, there are frequent references to works by Jonathan Stern, Margarita Balmaceda, Martha Olcott, Benjamin Sovacool, Randall Newnham and Simon Pirani.

The interests and roles of all key geopolitical actors in the region are briefly examined: Russia, the United States, the EU, China, Turkey and Iran. The author describes the established balance of power, referring to the concept of the “New Great Game” proposed by Ariel Cohen. This “game” implies a struggle between Russia and, above all, Western countries for the energy resources of the Caucasus-Central Asian region. Andreas Heinrich calls it the Caspian region and emphasises its primary importance.

Moreover, the main aim of the collection is defined precisely as the study of “further prospects for research into the export of crude oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea region”. The reason for this emphasis is the appearance on the global market, relatively close to the European Union, of resources from this region that are not controlled by Russia or OPEC. In addition, the editor draws an important conclusion: most authors and experts study the region from a geopolitical perspective, while forgetting the agency of the Caspian states themselves.

Although the first part of the collection is devoted to Russia’s external energy policy, the policy of this arguably central geopolitical actor in the post-Soviet space receives considerable attention in most of the papers. The last, sixth section of the introduction, somewhat inconveniently for the reader, describes the structure of the book.

The volume itself, however, is arranged quite successfully. The editor notes that it is divided into four geographically focused parts. Yet this is not entirely accurate: the chapters “Russian External Energy Policy”, “Energy Policy in Central Asia” and “Ukrainian Energy Policy” do indeed concentrate on the problems of the corresponding countries and regions. The thematic block “The Southern Energy Corridor” does not have such a clear geographical focus.

This chapter is supposed to focus on the Caucasus region, but the authors from Azerbaijan and Armenia approach the region’s energy issues in different ways. This is, in principle, understandable: unlike Azerbaijan, Armenia is neither an exporter nor a transit country for energy resources. As a result, the topic of energy itself recedes into the background in Lusine Badalyan’s article, while the centre and the title of the article are occupied by the issue of the European Union’s promotion of democracy in the Eastern Partnership countries.

The successful arrangement of the volume is also evident, for instance, in the fact that the first chapter explains the political aims and causes of the energy policy pursued by the Russian Federation. From the outset, this gives the reader a coherent view of the policy of the main geopolitical actor in the post-Soviet energy sphere.

For example, Inna Chuvychkina offers a critical analysis of existing Russian energy institutions, whose functioning also shapes Russia’s external energy policy. These already established positions allow the reader to understand more fully the problems discussed in the following chapters, above all the Ukrainian energy question, as well as the problem of transporting energy resources from the Caspian countries.

The main concept used by most authors is the idea of Russia’s use of the “energy instrument” in foreign policy. András Molnár, for example, explains this by arguing that with Vladimir Putin’s rise to power Russia recognised the inadequacy of what was at that moment its last remaining instrument of influence in world politics: an ageing arsenal of weapons. A transition was therefore needed from hard power to other instruments of influence over regional and global politics.

The second chapter of the collection discusses the problems of energy-exporting states. Boris Barkanov focuses on the difficulties faced by Turkmenistan — which has the fourth-largest proven gas reserves in the world — after independence in bringing its gas to external markets. First and foremost, this concerns relations with Gazprom. Particularly interesting is Barkanov’s distinction between two Gazprom strategies toward Turkmenistan: “winner-takes-all” and “rent-sharing”. The full or partial copying of these strategies can be traced in Gazprom’s policy in other directions as well.

In the third chapter, “The Southern Energy Corridor”, Irina Kustova pays considerable attention to the problems of European integration in the energy sphere. She notes that “energy policy remains one of the most politically sensitive areas of European integration”. Among the reasons for this are the lack of unity, above all in the European Union’s external energy policy, the limited financial capacity of EU institutions, and the fact that most projects are sponsored by national governments and energy companies. Kustova argues that it was the Russian-Ukrainian gas conflicts that activated European policy on energy diversification, one important component of which became the Southern Gas Corridor project.

The fourth chapter is devoted to Ukraine’s energy problems and will probably be of greatest interest to the Belarusian reader. Unlike the previous chapters, it consists of only two articles rather than three. Eric Pardo Sauvageot studies the gas conflicts between Ukraine and Russia connected with the interruption of gas supplies and transit, and attempts to analyse what explains particular Russian political decisions, reaching interesting conclusions.

The author argues that in the conflicts of January 2006 and March 2008 Russia retreated from the positions it had previously declared during the conflict primarily because it feared serious reputational risks among European consumers. Only in the 2009 conflict did Russia go all the way, since otherwise it would have lost most of the positions of the previous status quo; this ultimately led to the prolongation of the conflict and to more serious consequences for its parties and for final European consumers.

Overall, the book will be useful above all to researchers of energy issues in the post-Soviet space. It brings together a large number of contemporary English-language sources on this subject, sources that are often absent from dissertations defended in CIS countries. In addition, it offers alternative views by young researchers on the most pressing energy questions.