Shayan Fallahi, May 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Russian Federation has been a petrostate for its entire legal existence” (Yuval Webar, 2018). Such a statement is an accurate one. 45% of Russia’s federal budget comes from energy revenue, and Russia’s crude oil production represents 14% of the global supply. Consequently, energy constitutes a crucial component of Russia’s foreign policy. The key aims of Moscow’s foreign policy must first be understood to comprehend how effective energy has been as an instrument in achieving them. This essay understands the reassertion of Russia as a global power and resistance to American hegemony, which Moscow sees as hostile, to bring about a multipolar order as key aims of Moscow’s foreign policy. Russia’s government officially stated the latter part of this understanding in its 2023 “The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation.” From this perspective, despite certain setbacks, energy has been an effective tool for the Russian government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To reassert Russia’s position as a global power and defend against the expansion of American hegemony, Russia prioritised maintaining influence over the post-soviet space and other strategic areas in its near abroad, such as the Black Sea region. Moscow has utilised energy as a key instrument in achieving these objectives and has mostly succeeded. Russia took advantage of the dependence of many post-Soviet states in the 2000s on Russian energy to maintain influence over these states by threatening to cut such supplies off if they moved closer to Western influence or aggravated Moscow in other ways. Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine experienced such Russian tactics. Russia either cut off or steeply increased the price of energy to Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia to force those states to accept agreements which expanded Russian influence over their energy sectors (Steven Woehrel, 2009). Such policies were often successful despite resistance. Russia maintained near-monopolies of energy supplies to Belarus and Armenia and kept most other post-Soviet space under Russian influence throughout the 2000s and 2010s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Russia’s failures regarding Ukraine and the Baltics, and to some extent Georgia, have not gone unnoticed by scholars, and many have criticised Russia’s overly aggressive usage of energy, which they contend had unnecessarily forced these countries away from Russia’s sphere of influence into the hands of the West (Monoghan, 2007). Indeed, due to Russian energy cuts to Georgia and Ukraine in 2006, they began moving westwards politically, eventually resulting in Russian military action in both instances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, this may not have been the failure of energy policies. Ukraine decisively headed westward only after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 by military force. Moreover, despite aggressive Russian energy actions, Georgia fell back into Russian influence. In 2022, it increased its energy imports from Russia by 172%, leaving it again economically dependent on Moscow. This demonstrates that energy was more effective than military force in maintaining Russian spheres of influence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding Russia’s other foreign policy objectives, namely resisting American hegemony and bringing about a multipolar world order, energy has also been an effective tool. Russia has utilised its energy reserves to influence key Western powers like the EU. Indeed, the EU’s imports of Russian energy have played a crucial role in restraining its ability to counter Russia’s increasingly aggressive foreign policies (Elena Kropatcheva, 2011). In 2011, 80% of Russian gas went to the EU. In 2022, Germany remained Russia’s second-biggest energy importer. Indeed even President Trump, a statesman who aimed to improve relations with Russia, suggested in 2019 that Berlin’s overreliance on Russian energy “really makes Germany a hostage of Russia if things ever happened that were bad.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, “bad” things did occur, and in response to Western support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, Moscow cut energy supplies to the EU by three-quarters. This forced the EU to spend 800 billion dollars protecting its people and businesses from jumping energy prices, illustrating the pain Moscow can inflict by utilising energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consequently, the EU has had to limit its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. France and Germany have seemed more receptive to compromising with Russia and have been less ready and slower to arm Ukraine with more modern weaponry than the US and especially the UK, who were far less reliant on Russian energy. Moreover, by early 2023 the EU was still yet to sanction Russian gas sales, a key component of its financial ability to continue the war In Ukraine. In this sense, Russia’s use of energy as a weapon against American hegemony has been effective as it has slowed and muted Western responses to its aggression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, Russia’s aggressive use of energy can again be seen as counterproductive to its aims. Europe is now resourcing its energy. Though it will struggle economically to achieve this in the short term, it will permanently alleviate Russian influence over the EU in the long term. This reality illustrates the broader problem with Russian energy: its one-dimensionality. If energy prices fall, Russia has few other options to generate revenue. Moreover, without Europe to buy its energy, it must sell at lower prices to India and China, putting itself at the mercy of states that could financially ruin Russia by restricting energy imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In conclusion, however, energy has been an effective tool of Russian foreign policy. Energy has successfully been used to damage Western economies and American hegemony by raising the energy prices for the EU, preventing it from responding decisively to Russian aggression. It has also successfully been used to reassert Russia as a global power by allowing Moscow to dominate the energy supplies of states in the post-Soviet space. Though energy as a Russian tool has downsides, as it relies on high prices and European demand, it remains one of the most effective instruments Moscow possesses to achieve its lofty foreign policy aims. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How effective has energy been as a component of Russian statecraft? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,30,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-russia","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4314"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4321,"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4314\/revisions\/4321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.consecon.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}