The new great game - Lutz Kleveman

The Caspian Region, lying south of Russia, west of China and north of Afghanistan, contains the world's largest untapped oil and gas resources. As much as 200 billion barrels of crude oil and 40 per cent of the world's global gas reserves can be found in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. In the years between the death of the Soviet Union and September 11, 2001, oil companies and politicians have struggled to possess and develop these resources. Using a concept immortalised by Kipling in his novel Kim, Lutz Kleveman argues that there is now a new "Great Game" in the region, in which the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran - most of which are nuclear powers - are competing. He contends that after 9/11, the formidable power of the US has started to drive towards "full spectrum dominance"; that is, global hegemony in the military, political and economic sphere. Kleveman has produced an insightful and exacting portrait of a new theatre of war, a region in which there are few rules and in which the rewards for victory are nothing less than power and prosperity in the new century.