“Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia …they are the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world,” wrote George Nathaniel Curzon in 1898, at the high noon of the British Empire.

Central Asia all but ceased to figure in international relations during the Soviet era. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, triggered off another struggle for influence over the newly independent states in Central Asia and the Caspian region. A century after Lord Curzon, the American energy secretary, Bill Richardson, highlighted the geo-strategic importance of the region, albeit in more prosaic terms. “This is about America’s energy security, which depends on diversifying our sources of energy worldwide,” he said in October 1998. “It’s also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don’t share our values. We’re trying to move these newly independent countries toward the West. We would like to see them reliant on Western commercial and political interests than going the other way. We’ve made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it’s very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right.” A new Great Game had been launched in Central Asia.

Though the theatre of contest remains broadly the same, the players as well as the stakes are very different today. In the 19th century, the principal players of the Great Game were Russia and Britain. Today, the leading players in the new Great Game are the United States of America, Russia and China, together with a supporting cast including the European Union, Turkey and Iran, among others. Central Asia was only the theatre of the 19th-century contest; the principal stake lay elsewhere. The stake was the control of the approaches to Britain’s Indian empire, rather than the resources of the arid lands of Central Asia. The objective in the current contest is to control access to Central Asia’s vast oil and gas resources. The geopolitics of the new Great Game no longer focuses on potential invasion routes, as it did in Curzon’s time, but on the alignment of oil and gas pipelines.

Since the Caspian-Central Asian region is landlocked, its petroleum and natural gas production can reach major foreign markets only through pipelines leading directly to consumer countries or to international ports from which they can be shipped to consumer countries. During the Soviet era, all pipelines constructed in this region passed through Russia. Even today, the bulk of oil and natural gas produced in the region is exported through pipelines running northward through the Russian Federation. Thus, for instance, gas from Turkmenistan is currently delivered to Central Europe via Russia.

Two new pipeline routes have radically changed the geopolitical map of the Caspian-Central Asian region. An east-west oil pipeline now runs from Baku in Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey, bypassing Russian territory. A new west-east pipeline transports oil from Kazakhstan to China. Both these ambitious ventures have important strategic implications.

The strategic objective of the US-backed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is to reduce Western dependence on Russia for energy imports. Russia, with its vast deposits of oil and gas, is an energy superpower. The EU is already heavily dependent on Russia for gas imports and this dependence is expected to increase further as a result of declining offshore production in the North Sea. The new pipeline will enable the EU to secure access to Caspian oil and gas without giving Russia the control or leverage that it might exercise as a transit state.

The construction of the pipeline was an immense political enterprise in a region divided by deep animosities. The shortest routes from Baku to Ceyhan lie through Iran or Armenia but neither was politically acceptable. The US would not even contemplate an option involving Iran, a “rogue state” in its eyes. The latter option was impracticable because Armenia’s relations with Azerbaijan are characterized by deep hostility, while its ties with Turkey are still marred by historical animosities. Ruling out these shorter — and more economical — alignments, the only feasible option was the pipeline that now initially runs northward from Baku (Azerbaijan) to Tbilisi (Georgia) and thence southwards to Ceyhan (Turkey).

The alignment of the pipeline thus took into account existing regional political realities. At the same time, it is also creating new political realities. The Western alliance is building closer ties with both Georgia and Azerbaijan. Both countries have contributed troops to current peacekeeping operations in Iraq and Kosovo. Georgia has received sizeable military aid from the US, and is now an eager candidate for Nato membership. Washington is pressing for Georgia’s early admission, but several of its west European allies are reluctant to get drawn into Georgia’s dispute with Russia over the status of the territories of Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia. Azerbaijan, more wisely, has thus far refrained from seeking Nato membership, while indicating that the option remains open for the future.

China’s search for energy security provides the strategic rationale for the Kazakhstan-Xinjiang pipeline. China’s spectacular economic development can be maintained only if it is able to import increasing volumes of oil and gas. The quest for energy security has led China to invest heavily in oil and gas fields in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America. This enables Beijing not only to secure access to overseas “equity oil” but also to diversify its sources, thereby minimizing the risk of a disruption of supplies on account of political instability in an oil-producing country.

The Chinese have been prepared to pay high prices for oilfields in Central Asia. Heavy costs are also involved in transporting oil and gas over a distance of 3,000 kilometres from Kazakhstan to China’s industrial heartland. Many analysts have drawn the conclusion that Chinese policy in this regard is shaped by strategic factors. They maintain that Beijing is prepared to pay a premium for oil and gas transported by overland routes because it apprehends that, in certain contingencies, the US may employ its naval supremacy to impose a maritime oil embargo against China. As in the case of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, energy security considerations (rather than purely economic calculations) appear to provide the rationale of the Kazakhstan-China pipeline.

How does India fit into this new geopolitical map? Indian officials are reportedly holding talks with their Turkish and Israeli counterparts to examine the feasibility of transporting Central Asian oil from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon on the Mediterranean, linked by an overland pipeline to the Red Sea port of Eilat, from where supertankers could pick up shipments destined for India. This route would avoid the overcrowded Suez Canal or the long detour around the African continent.

The Ceyhan route might be an attractive short-term option. The preferred long-term goal, however, must be to obtain access to Central Asia’s oil and gas reserves through less circuitous southward routes running through Iran or through Afghanistan and Pakistan. For example, crude oil from Azerbaijan could be carried through pipelines to Iranian ports for shipment to India. Gas from Turkmenistan could be delivered to India through Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Political factors obstruct early implementation of these projects. The Iran option would face strong opposition from the US, and would be practicable only if other powerful countries can be recruited as partners in the enterprise. The Pakistan-Afghanistan option must await restoration of peaceful conditions in southern Afghanistan and adjacent areas of Pakistan. Yet, we must not lose sight of these alternatives because of the important contribution they can make to our energy security — and to consolidating our ties with neighbours.