The Great Gamble Geoffrey Kemp Regarding the Caspian region, there are two points to keep in mind. One, that this is not a Great Game. This is a Great Gamble. Nobody knows whether these projects are ever going to come to fruition, in part because of the unique geography and politics of the region. Two, no one really knows how important they are going to be in their right, except for the local countries, who clearly will gain a lot of money if they start producing two to four million barrels of oil a day some time in the next century. The first thing that I want to emphasize is that a lot of the issues under discussion are future projects, and there is something of a gamble about it. One of the reasons they are such a gamble is because the geopolitics of the Caspian, in which the United States is now getting itself embroiled in many different ways, are very different from other areas where the United States has taken firm and demonstratively assertive positions over the years. Very different, for instance, from the Gulf, where there was, for years, massive American economic investment that is now backed up by massive military power. In the case of the Caspian, it is not clear that either of those ingredients is present or ever will be present. Therefore, a great deal is going to depend upon the regional rivalries that exist and that could become worse, as the case may be. In particular, as long as the United States policy towards the Caspian deliberately excludes the participation of one of the key Caspian players, namely Iran, a lot more pressure is clearly going to be put on the other countries who have to live with Iran and who are also being asked to become the roots for oil and gas that cannot, as of this moment, according to American policy, go through Iran. Of course, this relates to the other strategic reality that although our formal policy is to encourage multiple routes out of the Caspian, including routes through Russia, there is a distinct impression in Moscow that our policy is a little less generous than that. In fact, if 29