{"id":276,"date":"2007-04-19T08:56:01","date_gmt":"2007-04-19T13:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=276"},"modified":"2007-04-19T08:56:01","modified_gmt":"2007-04-19T13:56:01","slug":"from-russia-to-israel-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=276","title":{"rendered":"From Russia (To Israel) With Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Language\" content=\"en-us\" \/> <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=windows-1252\" \/><title>One of the central assumptions b<\/title>One of the central <em>assumptions<\/em> behind discussions of the domestic  political influence within the US of the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/v28\/n06\/mear01_.html\">Israel  Lobby<\/a>&#8221; is that the power <em>must be<\/em> grounded in domestic lobbying  because there is no coherent <em>strategic rationale<\/em> that justifies the  &#8220;special relationship&#8221; between the US and Israeli.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on  \tshared strategic interests&#8230; Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region  \tderives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the  \tactivities of the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIsrael Lobby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Without minimizing <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=157\">the  importance of domestic politics<\/a>, there may be more to say about the  strategic significance of Israel.<\/p>\n<p>Consider the role of oil.<\/p>\n<p>In a region that is home to enormous oil reserves, why favor a country that  has almost no energy of its own?<\/p>\n<p>Because much of the geopolitics of oil is about oil <em>transport<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Consider, for example, an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eia.doe.gov\/cabs\/East_Med\/Oil.html\">October 2006 report<\/a>  by <span class=\"misctext\">the Energy Information Administration (EIA),  statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"misctext\">Israel has one main operational oil pipeline,  \tknown as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Trans-Israel Pipeline\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tipline,&#8221; built in 1968 to ship  \tIranian oil from the southern Red Sea port of Eilat to the northern  \tMediterranean port of Ashkelon, as a gateway to Europe. The pipeline went  \tinto disuse after relations with Iran soured in 1979. The 152-mile pipeline  \thas a reported current capacity of 1-1.2 million bbl\/d (having been expanded  \tfrom 400,000 bbl\/d) and 18 million barrels of storage capacity&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>During 2003, the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC) modified the  \tpipeline to reverse flows on the 42-inch line, to facilitate Russian Caspian  \tpetroleum exports to Far East. In October 2003, it was first reported that  \tSwiss trader Glencore would ship 1.2 million barrels of Kazakh CPC Blend  \tcrude and 600,000 barrels of sour Russian Urals through the line as an  \talternative to the Suez Canal, which can accommodate only smaller, &#8220;Suezmax&#8221;  \ttankers. In July 2006, Israel also signed and agreement with the State Oil  \tCompany of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) to import and transport Azeri Light Crude  \tthrough the pipeline.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\"><span class=\"misctext\">That brief EIA narrative raises a whole  host of interesting questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span class=\"misctext\">Who, for example, might harbor the dream  of restoring the original direction of the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline as an  Iranian-Israeli route that reaches Europe but bypasses Arab oil?<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span class=\"misctext\">Who dreams of bypassing the Suez canal?<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span class=\"misctext\">Who dreams of oil, <\/span>loaded onto  VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers) in the Red Sea for shipment to markets in  Asia?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Note, too, the possibility that the Israeli pipeline route might  get tangled up in the Great Power rivalry between the United States and Russia.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">After all, the Azerbaijan oil that flows through the BTC  pipeline is specifically designed to bypass Russian influence in the  transportation of Caspian Sea oil.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">But Russia is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.turkishpress.com\/news.asp?id=144008\">making its own play for  the Israeli route<\/a>, also via Turkey.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">Black Sea ministers&#8230; faced conflicts over competing  \tpipeline projects, such as Russia&#8217;s plans to expand its Blue Stream gas  \tpipeline through Turkey to Israel and possibly Europe, which would rival the  \tplanned [US-backed] Nabucco pipeline.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">One might even imagine Israel being wooed by Russia <em>and<\/em>  the US.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span class=\"misctext\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the central assumptions bOne of the central assumptions behind discussions of the domestic political influence within the US of the &#8220;Israel Lobby&#8221; is that the power must be grounded in domestic lobbying because there is no coherent strategic rationale that justifies the &#8220;special relationship&#8221; between the US and Israeli. One might assume that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,9,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}