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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (18735)	2/13/2002 10:16:16 AM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

SR, I have to concur with you about US ties with Saudi. It's an alien culture, but we do have shared interests. On the Kazakhstan / alternative oil supply front, I remain skeptical. Whatever the flaws of Saudi Arabia, it has been stable, after a fashion, for quite some time. Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian former Soviet Republics are still run by former Soviet apparatchiks, to the best of my knowledge. They ( and Russia itself) have a long way to go. The history of oil as a development engine throughout the world is not pretty, either. It's not just the middle east; consider Nigeria and Mexico, for example. The idea of a smooth transition of Kazahkstan into the Western sphere seems pretty hypothetical to me.