Lastly, high-ranking Azerbaijani officers are to attend the NATO Partnership for Peace Silk Road General/Admiral workshop in Turkey in June, one which featured 104 generals and admirals from 49 countries last year and whose purpose this is to "discuss the security, military-political situation in the world, security of the transportation infrastructure, energy security and expected threats."
(30)
Azerbaijan offers the US and NATO direct access to the Caspian Sea and to transport routes from the west for the deployment of troops, armor and warplanes and for the transfer of the same from Iraq to Afghanistan.
It borders northwest Iran on the Caspian and like Georgia can be used for attacks on that nation whenever the West orders it to permit the use of its territory and airbases for that purpose.
Last September Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said that "Russian intelligence had obtained information indicating that the Georgian military infrastructure could be used for logistical support of U.S. troops if they launched an attack on Iran.
"'This is another reason why Washington values Saakashvili's regime so highly,' Rogozin said, adding that the United States had already started 'active military preparations on Georgia's territory' for an invasion of Iran."
(31)
Other Russian sources affirmed that Russia's defeat of Georgia last August preempted a planned attack on Iran, and commentators in the Caucasus have speculated that had Saakashvili succeeded in South Ossetia not only would he have immediately turned on Abkhazia but Azerbaijan would have launched a similar assault on Nagorno-Karabakh which would have led to Armenia certainly, Turkey probably and Iran possibly being dragged into a regional conflagration.
As to Western plans for Armenia, NATO has made incremental progress in integrating it through the Partnership for Peace and its own Individual Partnership Action Plan, but the nation remains a member of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization and would first have to be weaned from the latter to be a likely candidate for an Alliance Membership Action Plan or an equivalent of Georgia's and Ukraine's Annual National Program.
The European Union's Eastern Partnership program, however, may be designed as a way of cutting through this Gordian knot, as with two fellow former Soviet republics "there are serious hopes in Ukraine and Georgia that the EPP will be one more step towards their integration with NATO and the EU as it requires that partner countries coming closer to adopting the mutual values of NATO and the EU."
(32)
Early this year the former Indian diplomat and journalist M K Bhadrakumar synopsized the role the US intends for its South Caucasus surrogates to play:
"The US is working on the idea of ferrying cargo for Afghanistan via the Black Sea to the port of Poti in Georgia and then dispatching it through the territories of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. A branch line could also go from Georgia via Azerbaijan to the Turkmen-Afghan border.
"The project, if it materializes, will be a geopolitical coup - the biggest ever that Washington would have swung in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus. At one stroke, the US will be tying up military cooperation at the bilateral level with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
"Furthermore, the US will be effectively drawing these countries closer into NATO's partnership programs."
(33)
Just as the intensified and interminable war in Afghanistan and its extension into Pakistan provide the testing ground and training camp for a NATO global army, so the US and its allies are employing it to achieve military and political and economic objectives far broader that their limited stated goals. In the middle of the far-reaching swathe of Eurasia the West plans on thus acquiring lies the South Caucasus.
(1) United States European Command, April 6, 2009
(2) Trend News Agency, April 3, 2009
(3) Georgian Daily, March 10, 2009
(4) Itar-Tass, March 10, 2009
(5) Georgian Daily, February 24, 2009
(6) Civil Georgia, March 30, 2009
(7) Interfax, March 30, 2009
(8) Trend News Agency, March 30, 2009
(9) Trend News Agency, March 30, 2009
(10) The Messenger (Georgia), April 1, 2009
(11) Civil Georgia, March 31, 2009
(12) The Messenger, April 1, 2009
(13) Associated Press, April 2, 2009
(14) Russia Today, April 1, 2009
(15) Russian Information Agency Novosti, April 4, 2009
(16) Trend News Agency, April 4, 2009
(17) Azeri Press Agency, April 3, 2009
(18) Stop NATO, January 2009 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/36874
(19) Russian and Eurasian Security, March 30, 2009
(20) Neurope.eu, May 12, 2008
(21) Oil, War and Russia, George Gregoriou; Greek News, February 2, 2009
(22) U.S. Department of State, June 24, 2008
(23) Agence France-Presse, February 6, 2009
(24) Trend News Agency. March 30, 2009
(25) Itar-Tass, March 31, 2009
(26) Azeri Press Agency, April 2, 2009
(27) Azeri Press Agency. April 6, 2009
(28) Azeri Press Agency, March 31, 2009
(29) NATO International, Cooperative Marlin 2009
(30) Azeri Press Agency. March 29, 2009
(31) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 9, 2009
(32) The Messenger, March 31, 2009
(33) The Day After (India), January 2, 2009
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
