Caspian Agreement Another Step in Continuing Disintegration of USSR, Dubnov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 13 – Vladimir Putin once described the disintegration of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century,” but yesterday, by joining with the heads of the four other Caspian littoral states in dividing that body of water among them, the Kremlin leader participated in the continuing disintegration of the USSR, Arkady Dubnov says.

            What is striking, the Russian journalist who specializes on international relations says, is that “the disintegration of the USSR is continuing but doing so without a catastrophe” and that Putin for all his bluster about the events of 1991 has become an active participant in that process (echo.msk.ru/blog/dubnov/2257716-echo/).

            The agreement Putin and the other leaders signed in the Kazakhstan city of Aktau puts “a period de jure on the question as to who the Caspian Sea belongs to.” Although it does not resolve all the issues there, “it puts an end” to many legal conflicts that had lasted “more than a quarter of a century after the disintegration” of the USSR.

            Specifically, it replaced the division of the Caspian that had existed between the USSR and Iran since the 1930s, in which Iran had legally recognized control over only “about 13 percent of the surface” of that body of water and where its ships could not move beyond that area “without serious consequences,” Dubnov says.

            With the demise of the Soviet Union and the appearance in its place of four new countries, the old system collapsed but a new one was not put in its place as they and Iran jockeyed for position.  

            Iran called for dividing the waters into five equal parts, but Russia was “categorically” against that because it would limit the freedom of action of its Caspian Flotilla and because it wanted to retain a veto over any trans-Caspian pipelines between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan that would compete with its own gas exports.

            At the same time, the three other states, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan had “diametrically opposite” positions to these.  Consequently, “a compromise was needed, and they searched for it for 22 years,” the journalist says.

            But the Aktau summit and the accord announced there are not the end of the road, Dubnov points out. The wording of that document only sets out framework positions and there are many specifics which must be worked out in the future including critically on the use of the seabed.

            But h e continues, Russia dropped its opposition to a trans-Caspian pipeline between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan apparently in exchange for a delimitation of the sea allowing its navy free movement over all but coastal areas and for an agreement among the five to exclude naval forces of all outside powers.

            “President Putin was forced to approve this,” even though it represents a continuation of the process of the disintegration of the Soviet Union he has so often decried.  That means, Dubnov says, that the Russian president will now have to give up such populist rhetoric if he doesn’t want to become known as the creator of this ‘catastrophe’ in the 21^st century.”