When Russia, Ukraine and Belarus announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, not all of the leaders of the constituent republics responded joyfully. The man most critical of the move was Mr Nursultan Nazarbayev, first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Mr Nazarbayev had every reason to be disappointed for he was strongly tipped to succeed Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the USSR and chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Now that Mr Nazarbayev is president of independent Kazakhstan and in an impregnable position in domestic politics, his attitude to the countries which were once Kazakhstan's fellow Soviet republics has begun to change. Ethnic Russians who once outnumbered Kazakhs have fled the country in large numbers and Mr Nazarbayev has begun to use Kazakhstan's oil wealth as a weapon with which to pursue national interests.
His announcement in December that he was considering sending at least some of Kazakhstan's production of up to 28 million tonnes of oil through the proposed pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan was the action of a politician who is no longer in Moscow's thrall. Mr Nazarbayev, once a champion of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which replaced the USSR, has recently begun to make critical comments on the organisation.
The Ceyhan pipeline announced as a done deal by President Clinton would complete the containment of Russia. To its west, an expanded NATO runs almost to the Russian borders; to the east, China's burgeoning market economy is creating stronger ties with the US. And now to the south, Turkey, a centuries-old rival, may get its hands on Caspian and Central Asian oil.
Turkey is a NATO member and therefore within the American sphere of influence. Russia consequently sees its traditional power base in the Caspian region and Central Asia being undermined just as its influence in the Balkans has been virtually destroyed.
While Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have agreed to the construction of the pipeline, which makes far more political than economic sense compared to a pipeline across Russia to the Black Sea, the oil companies led by BP-Amoco are holding their fire for the moment and are unlikely to make a final decision until next autumn.
The oil scenario puts Russia's war in Chechnya into a much clearer context than Kremlin statements on the ["]fight against banditry and international Terrorism["]. If Russia can pacify the northern Caucasus then its chances of persuading the multinational oil companies to abandon the "political pipeline" through Turkey in favour of the "economic pipeline" through Russia, will have improved considerably.
But the very fact that three former Soviet republics have opted for the Turkish deal indicates a major shift in the relationships between Moscow and its former colonies. In Azerbaijan the population is extremely close ethnically to Turkey while the languages of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are all members of the Turkic family.
Behind the scenes, former US policymakers including Mr James Baker, Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski and Mr Alexander Haig, all of them imbued with Cold War ideals, have been active in dealing with the governments of the states of former Soviet Central Asia.
Mr Haig has been particularly active in Turkmenistan, a gas-rich state under the rule of Saparmurad Niyazov, a former Communist Party first secretary who has taken on the name "Turkmen Bashi" (Father of the Turkmens). Niyazov rules in the style of an old fashioned dictator. He built a series of palaces and luxury hotels for his supporters while oppressing the population in general.
In its current report on Turkmenistan, the Human Rights Watch organisation states that the Niyazov regime: "continued to deny its citizens nearly every civil and political right" and operates "a Soviet-style secret police which denies political opposition, freedom of assembly, and all opportunities for public debate". There appears little hope of any improvement in the foreseeable future.
In April 1999, the American-sponsored GUAM group of countries - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova - which rivals the CIS, was joined by Uzbekistan, another Central Asian country whose record on human rights and democracy leaves a lot to be desired.
The parliamentary elections there in December were regarded as so flawed that the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has refused to send observers to January's presidential elections in which the incumbent, President Islam Karimov, is expected to gain an overwhelming victory over his rival, Abdulkhafiz Dzhallalov of the Democratic Party. The poll, as has become traditional in Uzbekistan, will be "well over 90 per cent".