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U.S. Policy in the South Caucasus

2002; Procon Ltd.; Volume: 01; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.11610/connections.01.3.08

1812-2973

Martha Brill Olcott,

Global Energy Security and Policy

The three tiny countries of the South Caucasus have each gotten far more attention from U.S. policy-makers than one would have initially expected, given their size and their geographic isolation.The explanation for this lies in Azerbaijan's oil, Armenia's powerful international diaspora, and Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze's popularity in the West. AzerbaijanSince the mid-1990s, the Azerbaijanis have been working hard to get more direct U.S. engagement in their country, hoping that Washington would serve as a buffer between them and Moscow.But despite Azerbaijan's considerable oil reserves, 2 Washington's initial tilt in the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the status of the contested Karabakh region was toward Armenia.Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, passed in October 1992, was probably the greatest manifestation of this.It sharply restricted U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan until that state took "demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh."Moreover, it proved very difficult for the Azerbaijanis to demonstrate that they were desisting from the use of offensive force against the Armenians (and that the Armenians were behaving aggressively to Azerbaijan as well).Azerbaijan's oil, though, became an increasingly attractive magnet for the Americans.Several U.S. firms are involved in the oil consortia active in Azerbaijan; Chevron, ExxonMobil, Unocal, and Amerada Hess all have stakes in one or more projects.Since the merger of BP and Amoco, the U.S. has also become a greater stakeholder in Azerbaijan's largest oil project-the development of Azeri, Chiraq and the deepwater portions of Gunashli, which BP agreed to develop in a 30-year contract signed in September 1994, which created the Azerbaijan International Oil Operating Company (AIOC).BP holds 34.1 percent of the shares in AIOC and is the project operator.Unocal holds 10.2 percent of the shares, and ExxonMobil another 8 percent.Heydar Aliyev seems to have fully understood the value of the "oil card" as, under his leadership, the Azerbaijani government has proven quite savvy in the assembly of these projects in order to ensure that the major global powers were