by  John Laughland 

It is easy enough to understand what is going on in 
the Caucasus. Just go and see the latest James Bond 
movie, The World Is Not Enough. In it, the sultry 
villain-heroine, Elektra - the powerful oil heiress 
played by the beautiful Sophie Marceau - is determined 
to build an oil pipeline from the capital of 
Azerbaijan, Baku, across Georgia and Turkey and out to 
the Mediterranean Sea. 

This part of the film is completely true. Western oil 
companies and the major Western governments, have made 
massive financial and political investments to secure 
a reliable source of oil. They want to reduce reliance 
on oil from the Gulf and on any pipeline through 
Russia. At present, the main oil pipeline flows 
through Chechnya, which is why the Russians are 
determined to control the province. 

For the past decade, the US has been working hard to 
bring the three Caucasus republics, Azerbaijan, 
Armenia and Georgia into its orbit. It has been 
largely successful because it has sustained in power 
brutal old dictators from the Soviet era - former 
party bosses like Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia and 
Heidar Aliev in Azerbaijan. The oil companies, 
meanwhile, have spent countless millions exploring for 
oil and gas in the Caspian Sea and preparing to 
construct the "safe" pipeline through Turkey. The 
West's key role in the Caucasus was symbolised when 
Bill Clinton attended the signing ceremony last 
November, at which the pipeline contract was sealed. 
Russia, which wants the oil to flow through its 
territory instead, sees the deal as a way of cutting 
its regional influence. 

The role of Turkey - a key American ally and Nato 
member - also became apparent at the weekend when the 
Turkish president visited Georgia, just days after the 
Azeri president had visited Turkey. On both occasions, 
the subject for discussion was how to proceed with 
building the pipeline through Turkey. On Saturday, 
President Demirel of Turkey said that it was essential 
to create a "stability pact" for the Caucasus region 
along the lines of the one the West has just created 
for the Balkans following the war against Yugoslavia. 

He did not draw the comparison with the Balkan 
stability pact lightly. This is the term given to the 
supranational agreement for governing the entire 
Balkans which was signed by the European Union, the 
United States and most of the Balkan countries 
themselves, once Nato troops were safely installed in 
Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania. What Mr Demirel is 
saying, therefore, is that there might need to be 
military intervention if the West's oil supplies are 
to be safeguarded. Since the Turks, the Azeris and the 
Georgians - and probably the Americans as well - are 
convinced that the purpose of the Russian campaign in 
Chechnya is to increase control over the whole 
Caucasus region, so that the Turkish pipeline is never 
built, this implies a potential confrontation between 
Nato and Russia in one of the most unstable regions in 
the world. 

It is not the first time that the possibility of a 
Russian-Nato confrontation in the Caucasus has been 
evoked. In May last year, Nato announced that it was 
considering Georgia for membership and the US Defence 
Secretary, William Cohen, visited Eduard 
Shevardnadze's dictatorship and called it "a model 
democracy". In June, the Azeri defence minister called 
for Nato to intervene in the war between Azerbaijan 
and Armenia over the disputed territory of 
Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has asked to be admitted 
as a member of Nato. Indeed, Moscow has accused the US 
of supporting the Chechen rebels precisely to scupper 
the Russian plans to secure their pipeline, while 
Turkey is also believed to be helping the anti-Russian 
militants. 

The problem is that if the Turks did get involved in 
guaranteeing the security of Georgia or Azerbaijan, 
then any Russian attack would be an attack on Nato as 
a whole. The key provision in the Washington Treaty, 
which is Nato's constitution, is that an attack on one 
Nato member will be considered an attack on all. TO 
MAKE matters worse, acting Russian President Vladimir 
Putin has said that Russia is abandoning its doctrine 
of not using nuclear weapons first and may well deploy 
nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional attack. 
In other words, if Nato were foolish enough to attack 
Russia in the way it attacked Yugoslavia, there would 
be a nuclear war. And such an attack is not 
unimaginable if Nato got sucked into defending Georgia 
or Azerbaijan, an incursion into a Russian sphere of 
influence which Russia might well deem threatening. In 
fact, the outcome could be rather like the explosive 
end of a James Bond movie - only this time it would be 
for real. 

© Express Newspapers, 2000