Setting America Free... From Dubious Energy Security Thinking

From Venezuela to Russia, the increasing control that state-owned companies exercise over world oil and gas reserves is empowering some energy exporters to act with increasing boldness against U.S. interests and policies. In a recent article for The National Interest, Flynt Leverett and Pierre Noël argue that U.S. foreign policy is ill-suited to cope with the challenges to American leadership that flow from the new petropolitics because current policy does not take energy security seriously as a foreign policy issue or prioritize energy security in relation to other foreign policy goals.

While each of the individual developments is challenging to U.S. interests, Leverett and Noël contend that the various threads of petropolitics are now coming together in an emerging "axis of oil" that is acting as a counterweight to American hegemony on a widening range of issues. At the center of this undeclared but increasingly assertive axis is a growing geopolitical partnership between Russia (a major energy producer) and China (the paradigmatic rising consumer) against what both perceive as excessive U.S. unilateralism.

Video of this event is available at right, while an MP3 audio recording and Noel's presentation slides can be downloaded below.

Participants

• Pierre Noël
  Research Associate at the Electricity Policy Research Group,
  Judge Business School, University of Cambridge (UK)
• Flynt Leverett
  Senior Fellow and Director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative, New America Foundation
  Visiting Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  

Related Links

• “The New Axis of Oil,” The National Interest, Summer 2006