KIRKUS REVIEWS: July 15, 2003
After tagging along with Daily Telegraph correspondent
Kleveman on this vivid, well-narrated spin through the oil-rich
Caspian region, anyone who believed that the recent American invasion
of Iraq was about countering terrorism might want to reconsider.
That trumped-up war, Kleveman writes, was just one episode in
the developing "New Great Game"-the old one being the
19th-century race between Russia and Great Britain for control
of Central Asia-that is now playing out between East and West,
and more pointedly among the three poles of a fundamentalist Islam,
a protective Russia, and an energy-hungry US. (China figures in
there, too, as does Iran, which Kleveman believes is a more serious
contender.) Wherever the author travels, he turns up convincing
evidence of the international race to secure the mineral wealth
of the Caspian Sea basin, " the world's biggest untapped
fossil fuel resources," at least three times larger than
stores within the US, potentially representing some five percent
of the world market. All of which explains, he thinks, why American
interests began working in the 1990s to build a pipeline from
the bizarre dictatorship of Turkmenistan-"Stalin's Disneyland,"
in Kleveman's memorable phrase-through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan
and on to the Indian Ocean, much to the annoyance of Russia's
Yeltsin and Putin administrations. The author provides plenty
of whip-smart asides to entertain and enlighten the armchair traveler:
"Turkmenistan is probably the only country in the world where
a taxi to the airport is more expensive than the ensuing flight";
"The cockpit door opens, and one of the two Ukranian pilots
greets me with a heavy accent and a strong whiff of vodka, 'Come
in! Welcome! No problem, don't worry, no problem!'" They
do not detract from the solid case he builds for thinking that
American adventurism in the region is less about national security
than about lining the pockets of oil industry executives. A well-argued,
well-observed journey into a little-known area likely to be of
much importance in days to come.
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