CIAO DATE: 04/2012
January 2012
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
It should not come as a surprise that energy has been steadily gaining importance within security circles in recent years due to the military and security dimensions of this mainly economic issue. As globalization has blurred the lines between traditional security and economic interchange (and especially energy flows), new challenges have arisen. This process has fanned the debate surrounding the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with regard to energy questions and their evolution. NATO’s political-security agenda in a rapidly changing economic environment therefore offers significant scope for influence. But over the longer term, technological and economic changes, and especially concerted government policy choices in terms of investment, could lead to different energy scenarios with very different implications for NATO. The potential role which NATO can play in this domain is multi-faceted, ranging from the direct protection of critical infrastructure for energy production and transport to training, crisis reaction, and facilitating political dialogue among consumers and suppliers. Thinking more broadly, NATO’s possible roles can quickly become controversial, especially given the fact that those policies which would have the greatest impact are often decidedly outside NATO’s purview. This study attempts to offer background insights into the regional energy security issues that are of particular importance to NATO, taking into account the struggle that global oil suppliers have experienced over the past decade in meeting significant rises in global demand driven by an expanding middle class and emerging markets. To a limited extent, those difficulties have resulted from instability in the Middle East, strikes in Venezuela, internal unrest in Nigeria, and other security problems. As many European states seek to promote diversification of supply (particularly for oil and gas), the political relationships between Europe and alternative suppliers remain at the forefront, affecting the nature of NATO’s interests in regions such as Russia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. However, concurrent and longer term tectonic shifts in the global economy, with huge boosts in fossil fuel imports from developing Asia off-setting flat or declining energy demand in the developed economies, will have major implications for long-standing security relationships as the producers in these regions untangle themselves from historic dependencies. Ultimately NATO will be forced to decide how it will evolve to embrace a Pacific century – and energy concerns will only accelerate this trend.
Resource link: Regional and International Energy Security Dynamics: Consequences for NATO's Search for an Energy Security Role [PDF] - 336K