Alexandros Petersen is Advisor with the European Energy Security Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the author of The World Island: Eurasian Geopolitics and the Fate of the West. This post is the result of a recent visit to China and Central Asia.

On a recent visit to China, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov smiled broadly as he was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor at Peking University. Yet his satisfaction was probably less  the academic distinction than a lucrative energy export deal he had signed earlier that day -- 65 billion cubic meters of natural gas, roughly half of China's 2010 gas consumption, would eventually flow from Turkmenistan's massive fields to China's seemingly insatiable consumers.

This end-of-year agreement prompted some observers to proclaim that gas-rich Turkmenistan had achieved a coup against regional political powerhouse Russia: For years, Moscow has been negotiating a gas export deal with Beijing, but what would it do now that China was receiving so much supply from Turkmenistan? Yet that analysis is backwards: Rather than a Turkmen power play, the natural gas deal was a geopolitical chess move by Beijing, whose fundamental interest in the region is both raw resources, and raw power. While the West is focused on constraining China's actions in the Asia-Pacific, Beijing is capitalizing on vast space for influence to its west in Central Asia.

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