Competition for Energy Resources
Market and Power in Central Asia
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are of strategic importance for global energy markets. The competition for resources and pipelines often stands under the key word Great Game. This recourse to the imperial past distorts the view of contemporary developments. Geo-politics, questions of power and market control may dominate. The EU’s alternatives for providing political order – which rely on multilateral co-operation, international law and market mechanisms – are making little impact. But the reasons are not only to be sought in international projections of power and the politicisation of the energy issue. The reasons are that Central Asia’s authoritarian regimes insist on non-intervention in their internal affairs and find grateful and politically comfortable clients in Russia and China.
(Osteuropa 8-9/2007, pp. 463–478)