A new language for energy

Successive presidents of the US have enunciated security doctrines for guaranteed supplies of abundant and cheap sources of energy. In 1980, President Carter declared that access to Persian Gulf oil was a vital national interest and that the US would be prepared to use military force to protect it. President Carter’s Rapid Deployment Joint Task force has evolved into the US Central Command, with an area of operations that is contiguous with the energy-rich west/central Asian and Caspian Sea regions.

At the turn of the millennium, the project for ‘The New American Century’ recommended massive power projection capability globally, both to intensify pressure on nations labeled as rogue states and for taking action for acquisition of new and existing oil and gas fields. In May 2001, President George W. Bush’s New Energy Policy recommended that ties with oil-rich countries should be deepened and US presence broadened. The 2001 Quadrennial Defence Review spoke of the need for the US to enhance ability to send forces to critical points around the globe. It identified overseas oil-producing regions as these critical points.

The net result of these policies and action is that an opinion got created in large parts of the world that Iraq was never about WMDs, Al Qaeda or even democracy. It was all about oil. There are similar perceptions about Afghanistan too, as it lies at the geographical crossroads of strategic pipeline routes. Erroneous as it may be, opinion is more often than not shaped by perception rather than reality.

Integrating energy into foreign policy and security also introduces a political element into an essentially economic calculus. There is a school of thought that canvasses that supplies from the Caspian region must not go through either Russia to

Europe or through Iran to the Persian Gulf which is the cheapest and the fastest route. Oil should instead flow from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan through the turbulent Caucasus and end up at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, a process that is both expensive and a route that is long. Similarly, gas from Turkmenistan should flow through Afghanistan to Pakistan, and piped through the hostile and volatile regions of Afghanistan and Balochistan, a nightmare for those who have huge investments at stake.

In the past eight years, President Putin has leveraged Russia’s energy resources as both strategic and tactical assets towards regaining Russia’s erstwhile position in the world. As a vital supplier of gas and oil to Europe and Japan, Russia first experimented by shutting gas supplies to Ukraine. Though the quarrel was ostensibly over tariffs, experts believe that Russia was really testing the ‘gas’ weapon for possible future use. Russia’s canceling of production sharing agreements with foreign companies is further evidence of these commodities occupying a central place in its aspirations for a greater global role. Russia may have lost the Cold War but is not prepared to lose the energy sweepstakes as the election of Dimitry Medvedev, chairperson of Gazprom, as president clearly demonstrates.

China has made the acquisition of equity oil the preeminent objective of state policy. It has made important gains in Africa where it is likely to be in contention with other powers that have similarly elevated the pursuit of equity oil into a similar goal of statecraft.

An equally significant development is taking place in India’s neighbourhood. Pakistan has now begun to claim that Gilgit and Baltistan, illegally occupied by it in 1947, are not part of the erstwhile princely state of J&K ceded to India by the ruler of that state. This claim has become shriller of late. This is ostensibly because the proposed overland pipelines from the port of Gwadar (developed with substantive Chinese investment) to Xinjiang and onwards into mainland China would run through these occupied Indian territories. While these proposed pipelines may enable China to mitigate the risks attendant in traversing the sea-lanes from the Hormuz to Malacca and help it resolve the Malacca dilemma itself, let us not forget that this power play is taking place at the tri-section of three declared nuclear weapon states.

In the post-Cold War era, western strategic thinkers impelled by visions of unipolarity and aided by the occupation of Kuwait and continuing instability in the larger Middle East started articulating energy interests in the language of competition and conflict. Their arguments stemmed from the zeal to lock down sources of supply amid concerns relating to depleting global supplies, the ostensibly hostile role that major hydrocarbon producers were playing in global politics, and burgeoning demand for energy by the Asian economies.

While their concerns may not be entirely incorrect, it leads the rising political and economic powers to start scouring unstable regions for their own spheres of influence, positioning energy as the pivot to reenergise fossilised 19th century mindsets? Would this century have to contend with further aggression and re-politicisation of energy flows between the emerged and emerging players?

Frequently, the refrain ‘hunger for resources’ sets off alarm bells of attendant conflict. Can we not turn energy into the fuel of peace? Is it not time to start exploring a framework of global cooperative arrangements that can truly delink energy from foreign and security policies?

The writer, an advocate in the Supreme Court, is national spokesperson of the Congress party. Views are personal