American Policies Towards the Caspian Sea and The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline

Year 2005, Volume: 04 Issue: 1, 17 - 34, 01.01.2005

Özden Zeynep Oktav

Abstract

Washington has abandoned its traditional policy of making energygoals secondary to other foreign policy objectives and of taking energyinitiatives as specific crises came out. In fact, Washington has put a specialemphasis on securing more oil from foreign sources in order to support U.S.and global economic growth. The paper focuses mainly on the changingenergy-security perceptions of the United States after the 1990s. The essayalso suggests that Washington has prioritized the enhancement of U.S.power projection so as to guarantee the continued flow of energy not only tothe American market but also to those of major U.S. trading partners. In this context,Turkey’s increasing geo-political importance and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhanpipeline are concerns of the article

Keywords

Energy security, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, constructive engagement, Central Asian Border Security Initiative CASI , The NATO Partnership for Peace Program PfP , Main Export Pipeline Company MEPCO