In a landmark speech at Johns Hopkins University in 1997, the then-US deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, said: "For the last several years, it has been fashionable to proclaim or at least to predict, a replay of the 'Great Game' in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The implication of course is that the driving dynamic of the region, fueled and lubricated by oil, will be the competition of great powers to the disadvantage of the people who live there.
"Our goal is to avoid and to actively discourage that atavistic outcome. In pondering and practicing the geopolitics of oil, let's make sure that we are thinking in terms appropriate to the 21st century and not the 19th century. Let's leave Rudyard Kipling and George McDonald Fraser where they belong - on the shelves of historical fiction. The Great Game, which starred Kipling's Kim and Fraser's Flashman, was very much of the zero-sum variety. What we want to help bring about is just the opposite, we want to see all responsible players in the Caucasus and Central Asia be winners."...Yet, eight years on, precisely what Talbott was keen on avoiding seems to be unfolding in Central Asia...
atimes.com
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About a year ago I visited the US air base in Bagram, some thirty miles north of the Afghan capital of Kabul. A US Army public affairs officer, a friendly Texan, gave me a tour of the sprawling camp, set up after the ouster of the Taliban in December 2001. It was a clear day, and one Chinook helicopter after the other took off to transport combat troops into the nearby mountains. As we walked past the endless rows of tents and men in desert camouflage uniforms, I spotted a wooden pole carrying two makeshift street signs. They read "Exxon Street" and "Petro Boulevard." Slightly embarrassed, the PA officer explained, "This is the fuel handlers' workplace. The signs are obviously a joke, a sort of irony."
As I am sure it was. It just seemed an uncanny sight, as I was researching the potential links between the "war on terror" and American oil interests in Central Asia. I had already traveled thousands of miles from the Caucasus peaks across the Caspian Sea and the Central Asian plains all the way down to the Afghan Hindu Kush. On that journey I met with and interviewed warlords, diplomats, politicians, generals and oil bosses. They are all players in a geostrategic struggle that has become increasingly intertwined with the war on terror: the new "Great Game."
In this rerun of the first "Great Game," the nineteenth-century imperial rivalry between the British Empire and czarist Russia, powerful players once again position themselves to control the heart of the Eurasian landmass, left in a post-Soviet power vacuum. Today the United States has taken over the leading role from the British. Along with the ever-present Russians, new regional powers such as China, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan have entered the arena, and transnational oil corporations are also pursuing their own interests in a brash, Wild East style...
thenation.com
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One Nation Plays the Great Game Alone
By James Dao
New York Times
Saturday, 6 July, 2002
WASHINGTON -- IF anyone in the United Nations still believed that the United States sees itself as part of the family of nations, and not as its patriarch, last week may have come as a rude awakening.
First, to the great dismay of its closest European allies, the Bush administration threatened to block all United Nations peacekeeping missions as they come up for renewal unless American peacekeepers are granted immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which came into being on Monday.
The allies responded with howls of outrage, accusing the United States of trying to stand above international law and promoting double standards. Then, reports surfaced in Washington that planning for a large-scale invasion of Iraq had reached an advanced stage _ even though most European governments have cautioned against such an invasion and none of the nations that would be expected to assist American troops as staging areas have been formally consulted.
In fact, as last week's events point up, a double standard is precisely what the Bush administration is pursuing. As the world's lone superpower, the United States is increasingly the main guarantor of global security and economic well-being, administration officials contend. To treat it like any other country would defy reality, they say.
"The United States plays a role in the world unlike any other," Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, told reporters last week in explaining the administration's position on the criminal court. "Therefore this affects us unlike any other nation."
To many foreign policy experts, that worldview is a natural outgrowth of America's preeminent position in the post-Soviet world, which it dominates militarily, economically and culturally. And while many of these scholars fault the Bush administration for a brusque, even arrogant brinkmanship at the United Nations, far fewer blame it for trying to control the international rules of the road. That, they say, is what all great powers have done through the ages...
Past administrations tended to consult publicly with allies or work through multinational organizations like the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund, even if, behind the scenes, they used their power to get their way.
President Clinton, for example, also disliked the court on grounds similar to the Bush administration's. But he signed the treaty on the premise that it would be easier for the United States to change it as a member of the court. He then declined to submit it to the Senate for ratification. In May, the Bush administration invalidated Mr. Clinton's signature...
truthout.org
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>> You have to wonder how a Kennedy, Clinton or Gore would have handled it...
Does the above answer your question? Perhaps not completely, but one thing is clear. Whereas the previous admininstration sought a world in which US leadership would bring about a cooperative framework in which all would prosper, the present admin saw an opportunity for grab-all-you-can in a zero sum game that quickly has turned the world against us and has fostered structural changes that that will hinder the rule of law around the globe for generations. I truly believe that this administration pissed away one of the mostl golden moments in mankind's history...the kind of opportunity that comes along may be only once every few thousand years. What a short sighted greedy bunch of bastards!!
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