Pipelines Are the New Colonial Borders
I remember on my first map of world energy pipelines, I started to see infrastructure and then I stopped seeing infrastructure. I began having edges.I began seeing borders. Not school-taught borders, nor walls, checkpoints or military fences, but invisible lines of influence that cross continents. Today, the survival of economies, the leverage of governments and the dependence of populations on others is determined by steel tubes, which are buried in deserts, seas and mountains. Today the pipelines are not just engineering feats, they are 21st century works of art. They are weapons of geopolitical power. Maybe that’s how modern empires get their armies overrun. This is one of the aspects I learned when I studied the geopolitics of the Turkmenistan–Azerbaijan–South Caucasian energy corridor, the Trans-Caspian Pipeline. It looks like a standard energy infrastructure project, which is meant to diversify Europe’s energy mix. Yet under that jargon of technology is a more fundamental one of power, dependency, sovereignty and strategic control.[1]
The Caspian region has some of the world’s biggest natural gas reserves. The basin is believed to contain almost 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, one of the most strategically important energy areas in the world. However, geography has always been its blessing and its bane. It is an area that lacks borders, and control of the export avenues frequently translates into control of the political destiny of the exporting states. That’s why pipelines are important. In history, the conquest of territories has been done by the use of military force. Influencing today is often done by dependency on infrastructure. You can manipulate the politics of a nation that still has one single export route. Energy routes establish dependency links that are akin to today’s colonial hierarchy, albeit more subtle than traditional colonialism, but just as important.
As I started to learn more about the Trans-Caspian Pipeline I noticed that one thing I found in most of my reading was the lack of an exclusive focus on economics. The question that came back in almost every analysis was, who would gain geopolitical power if the pipeline is constructed? The project has long faced resistance from Russia and Iran, due partly to environmental issues over the Caspian Sea. The project has been supported by the European Union and the United States, as it could help to alleviate Europe’s reliance on Russian gas.[2] That came as a very big change to my perspective of pipelines. A pipe is not a pipe. It’s a corridor of influence. The rivalry over the Caspian area is like a re-run of colonial competition – except, in this case, strong players vie for control of the transport and trade lines and energy supply over the Caspian region, rather than actual land. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the new independent Central Asian nations found themselves with a huge amount of hydrocarbon resources, but without their own avenues into the international market. This vulnerability was a source of strong competition from the countries of the region and the world for influence over the export infrastructure.[3]
I can still recall talking with a friend who was studying international relations who once said to me, “The country that controls your energy route, controls your political breathing space.” The statement initially seemed like a dramatic one. Subsequently, it rang true. The modern geopolitics is becoming more and more corridors. In modern geopolitics it’s more and more corridors than colonies. Belt and Road is built by China. Russia shields pipelines’ influence on Europe. Western countries promote the diversification corridors in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Western countries advocate the diversification corridors in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Strategic infrastructure is now a part of the environmental conversation. Access to energy is not just a vital issue, it is now a political obsession.
My most intriguing aspect of this struggle is that it is not obvious to the general public. Pipelines are only of concern to most citizens when prices are going up or wars are about to break out. However, the decisions which are taken around infrastructure corridors work in the background to influence international alliances, sanctions, military plans and diplomatic relations for decades. There are very complex ethical issues involved with this system. Backers of projects such as the Trans-Caspian Pipeline say diversification helps to bolster smaller nations by lessening any monopoly power in energy exports. That’s right. The move to decrease reliance on Russian energy fuels in Europe grew acute in the wake of the war in Ukraine and alternative energy corridors became attractive strategic options.[4] For nations such as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the westward routes may offer economic opportunities and a newfound geopolitical leeway.
However, there is a flip side. While projects that are intended to make us independent, they in turn become a source of dependency. Local communities can become pressure points over pipelines that traverse through politically volatile or geopolitically sensitive areas. Projects negotiated by governments, multinational corporations and foreign powers are unlikely to have equal influence on communities. The question is who actually owns the natural resources in such cases? Is it the state? The corporations that are mining them? The world’s financial markets that fund them? Or the people who live on the ground whose lives and landscapes are forever changed by these projects? Without doubt, that moral dilemma is compounded if you are considering the environment. The Caspian Sea is an ecologically sensitive area and critics say that the drilling of extensive underwater pipelines could endanger marine ecosystems.[5]
The moral murkiness of modern infrastructure politics is that almost everyone is talking about security, sustainability and cooperation, and yet everyone is trying to gain influence. As I dug deeper into pipeline geopolitics, the more I became aware that colonialism in the modern world seldom comes in the form of a blatant declaration. No longer comes with imperial flags. Rather, it shows as contracts, corridors, investments, sanctions, transit deals and financing of infrastructure. Steel replaced soldiers. Debt replaced occupation. Direct rule was replaced with dependency. And pipelines were substituted for borders. This strategic thinking is reflected in the online discussion of the Trans-Caspian project. The pipeline’s detractors openly talk of how the project will help to reduce Russian influence on Europe and increase alternate partnerships in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey. The technical aspect seems to be a small episode on paper, but it is a bigger geopolitical struggle for influence in Eurasia.
It is expected that this competition will increase in the next few decades. Infrastructure, which is being expanded and developed to meet the growing needs of energy transition, is already being viewed as the area of global power struggle as countries vie for control of gas, hydrogen, electricity grids, rare earth minerals and maritime trade routes. In future wars, it’s not always a matter of some nation invading another. Some may involve closed-up corridors, dislocated pipelines, hacking into energy systems, or strategic manipulation of transport networks.
That’s why I feel like it’s important to have more than engineering knowledge to understand pipelines today. It needs to be remembered from the past. History is a guide to us and has shown that when infrastructure dictates who will benefit and who will be dependent, power is never equitably distributed. Plans and guns were used to delineate the world into colonies once more. These are now hooked up today through pipelines.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Opinion Desk.
[1] https://www.vifindia.org/article/2020/january/20/geopolitics-of-trans-caspian-gas-pipeline?
[2] https://www.vifindia.org/article/2020/january/20/geopolitics-of-trans-caspian-gas-pipeline
[3] https://www.ca-c.org/index.php/cac/article/view/1491?
[4] https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/trans-caspian-pipeline-could-be-regional-game-changer-luke-coffey?
[5] https://ejournal.um.edu.my/index.php/AEIINSIGHTS/article/view/31673?