Geopolitics, Energy and Ecology: American Foreign Policy and the Caspian Sea

Douglas Blum

Abstract

        The Caspian Sea is the site of large, newly discovered oil and gas deposits.  It is also bedeviled by ecological problems, including pollution, fisheries depletion, and a rising sea level, which are likely to be exacerbated by extensive development of hydrocarbon reserves. In Chapter 4, Douglas Blum shows how these changes have posed a dilemma for American foreign policy toward the Caspian's littoral countries: Is it better to promote collective "environmental security," or should the United States focus on energy extraction for more explicitly self-interested and geopolitical ends? Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the United States has taken various steps to address environmental degradation. In the Caspian, however, despite a number of programmatic statements endorsing environmental protection, U.S. policy has strongly emphasized other objectives: energy security, autonomy for non-Russian actors in the region, isolation of Iran, and projection of American influence. For these reasons, the pursuit of energy exploitation and geopolitically preferable transportation routes has dominated the U.S. agenda. Meanwhile, regional and international efforts to address the Caspian environment have gathered strength. Blum reviews the prospects for multilateral environmental cooperation surrounding the Caspian, and suggests that such cooperation offers hope for political stability and economic development in the region. U.S. policy remains malleable and may be responsive to significant changes in global energy markets and regional politics, which tends to support the priority of multilateral cooperation for sustainable development in the Caspian basin.