Chinese imperialists recently opened a pipeline that will deliver 70 billion cubic meters of natural gas yearly from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan to China’s Xinjiang province. This sharply intensifies the inter-imperialist dogfight over central Asia’s vast energy resources, benefiting the China-Russia-Iran axis while inflicting a serious blow to U.S. bosses’ geopolitical interests. China’s gains will force the U.S. rulers to launch more regional wars, accelerating the drive toward World War III.
The Chinese pipeline is a major blow to the U.S.-EU plans for the Nabucco and TAPI pipelines that led to the increased U.S. troop commitment in Afghanistan. Nabucco would deliver central Asian gas to Europe through Turkey, bypassing Russia and Iran and breaking Russia’s chokehold on the European energy market. TAPI (the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline) would take this gas to Pakistan and India, further isolating Iran.
Now, Moscow can continue to use its virtual monopoly of Europe’s energy market to align major European countries with its geopolitical interests. Pakistan and India may have to rely on Iranian gas via IPI (the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline) which Pakistan and Iran, against U.S. opposition, have agreed to build.
Bypassing Malacca Strait Crucial
to China’s War Strategy
Eighty percent of China’s imported oil passes through Malacca, a narrow sea passage easily closed by the U.S. in case of a major confrontation with China. To get around this, China is building pipeline ports in Pakistan and Myanmar, both of which border China, to deliver this oil and future Myanmar gas via land routes to China’s northwestern provinces.
U.S. bosses have already deployed war ships in the Indian Ocean, positioned to intercept these Chinese oil tankers, and are negotiating for more naval bases in the area. China’s response: speed up construction of its blue-water navy and build a string of naval bases along the Indian Ocean rim.
Middle Eastern Oil Indispensable for China’s Growth And Military Power
The richest energy sources for China, available via land, lie in Central Asia, the Middle East and Russia. Thus, China has also built a pipeline from oil-rich Kazakhstan that, starting this year, will carry 400,000 barrels per day to Xinjiang. China is also signing mega-deals with Russia to deliver, also through Xinjiang, Siberian oil and gas for the next two decades.
Central Asia can satisfy all of China’s gas needs, but not all of its oil. Imperialist alliances are temporary. Russia, an imperialist competitor, could in the long run be an unreliable source. Thus, Chinese bosses need to confront the U.S. for control of the Middle East, most sharply right now over Iraq and Iran.
In spite of the fact that Exxon Mobil and Shell won bids on the biggest oil fields in Iraq’s June oil auction and almost got double the price China and Russia will receive per barrel of oil produced, US bosses are not happy. As oil magnate T. Boone Pickens told the Congressional Natural Gas Caucus in October, “We’re entitled to it… Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars. We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil.”
That won’t happen peacefully. The US rulers did not butcher over a million Iraqi workers for China’s sake! The U.S. oil majors did not even bother to participate in the bidding at Iraq’s December auction. With over 250,000 soldiers and mercenaries still occupying Iraq, they plan to change the rules of the game. Chinese bosses also know that they are at a disadvantage in Iraq. That only leaves them Iran – for now.
Iran has the second largest gas and third largest oil deposits in the world. It’s China’s best bet for securing its oil by land. So China has invested over $120 billion in Iranian energy infrastructure over the last five years, while becoming Iran’s main trading partner and a main arms supplier.
But the U.S. bosses want that Iranian gas, too, especially after China’s gains in Central Asia. That’s what could resurrect Nabucco and TAPI. If they can’t take advantage of current Iranian political unrest to install a pro-U.S. regime, the U.S. ruling class will sooner, rather than later, possibly have to risk invading Iran.
War has increasingly become the only option for U.S. imperialism. Richard Morningstar, US special envoy for energy, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about China’s use of its huge monetary reserves to back its geopolitical thrust into Central Asia: “…and we [U.S.] can’t compete in this way.” Stephen Blank of the U.S. War College wrote last October that Xinjiang, China’s doorway to Central Asia’s trade and energy and Russian oil, is a “pressure cooker” that Beijing can’t control. His implication: the U.S. could use its ties with the province’s Uighur separatist movement to make the pipelines inoperable.
U.S. covert operations in Xinjiang and Tibet and widening regional wars in Yemen and Afghanistan show that the profit system is marching inevitably toward WWIII. It is ever more urgent to spread our communist line among workers, soldiers, and students and win masses of them in the US and worldwide to join PLP. We must prepare to turn the world bosses’ bloodbath into an armed uprising for communism.