IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v39y2011i10p6505-6513.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Deconstructing the "energy weapon": Russia's threat to Europe as case study

Author

Listed:
  • Karen, Smith Stegen

Abstract

As the likelihood increases that Russia will dominate the European Union's (EU) energy supply, questions have emerged as to whether Russia would use the energy weapon to influence EU member policies and extract political concessions. Countervailing voices argue that Russia would be restricted by interdependence and market forces. As of yet, no one has analyzed the assumptions underlying the energy weapon thesis. Moreover, many scholars examining EU-Russian energy relations rely on non-Russian data. This article seeks to fill several informational and theoretical gaps by including Russian sources and first-hand data and by systematically analyzing the conditions that must obtain before an energy supplier can successfully convert its energy resources into political power. The resulting model can be utilized to analyze the capacity of a supplier to use the energy weapon'whether it be Russia, Iran, Venezuela or any other energy heavyweight'and to assess whether the deployment was successful. Five purported cases of Russian manipulation are analyzed in this article and the findings indicate that, more often than not, Russia failed to achieve political concessions. Looking to the future, the plausibility of Russia using the energy weapon to exploit Europe's dependence, particularly on gas, is also examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen, Smith Stegen, 2011. "Deconstructing the "energy weapon": Russia's threat to Europe as case study," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 6505-6513, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:10:p:6505-6513
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511005866
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Pomfret, 2011. "Exploiting Energy and Mineral Resources in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Mongolia," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 53(1), pages 5-33, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kropatcheva, Elena, 2014. "He who has the pipeline calls the tune? Russia's energy power against the background of the shale “revolutions”," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 1-10.
    2. Hartvig, Áron Dénes & Kiss-Dobronyi, Bence & Kotek, Péter & Takácsné Tóth, Borbála & Gutzianas, Ioannis & Zareczky, András Zsombor, 2024. "The economic and energy security implications of the Russian energy weapon," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 294(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Annageldy Arazmuradov, 2012. "Foreign Aid, Foreign Direct Investment, and Domestic Investment Nexus in Landlocked Economies of Central Asia," Economic Research Guardian, Weissberg Publishing, vol. 2(1), pages 129-151, May.
    2. Chingunjav Amarsanaa & Yoshinori Kurokawa, 2021. "The Extensive Margin of International Trade in a Transition Economy: The Case of Mongolia," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 63(4), pages 648-673, December.
    3. Horváth, Roman & Zeynalov, Ayaz, 2016. "Natural resources, manufacturing and institutions in post-Soviet countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 141-148.
    4. Christopher A. Hartwell & Roman Horvath & Eva Horvathova & Olga Popova, 2019. "Democratic Institutions, Natural Resources, and Income Inequality," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 61(4), pages 531-550, December.
    5. Gurbanov, Sarvar & Nugent, Jeffrey B. & Mikayilov, Jeyhun, 2017. "Management of Oil Revenues: Has That of Azerbaijan Been Prudent?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 5(2), pages 1-20.
    6. Mazhikeyev, Arman & Edwards, T. Huw & Rizov, Marian, 2015. "Openness and isolation: The trade performance of the former Soviet Central Asian countries," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 935-947.
    7. Aliya Aktymbayeva & Arailym Orazgaliyeva & Aizhan Omarova & Anvar Tulaganov & Aigul Akhmetova & Yuliya Tyurina & Marija Troyanskaya, 2021. "The Central Asian Economies of Water-energy security: The Future Role of Hydro and Fuel-based Systems," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 11(1), pages 417-425.
    8. Richard Pomfret, 2018. "Exploiting a natural resource in a poor country: The good, the bad and the ugly sides of the Kyrgyz Republic’s gold mine," Working Papers 372, Leibniz Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Institute for East and Southeast European Studies).
    9. Pomfret, Richard, 2012. "Resource management and transition in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Mongolia," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 146-156.
    10. Colin O’Reilly & Ryan H. Murphy, 2017. "Exogenous Resource Shocks and Economic Freedom," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(3), pages 243-260, September.
    11. Arman Mazhikeyev & T.Huw Edwards & Marian Rizov, 2014. "Openness and Isolation: the comparative trade performance of the Former Soviet Central Asian countries," Discussion Paper Series 2014_02, Department of Economics, Loughborough University, revised Feb 2014.
    12. Ganbold, Misheelt & Ali, Saleem H., 2017. "The peril and promise of resource nationalism: A case analysis of Mongolia's mining development," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-11.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:10:p:6505-6513. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.