Abstract

This chapter examines a sector that has long been vital to the progress of human society, but has only recently come to prominence as a significant foreign policy factor. Energy represents a source of control for those capable of accessing and selling it, a security issue for both suppliers and buyers, and a foreign policy area that challenges virtually all international actors. While energy security has the capacity to maintain stability and generate interdependence between exporting and importing states, the January 2006 ‘gas spat’ between Russia and Ukraine demonstrates energy’s ability to generate deep insecurities between sovereign and commercial actors, and in the process reshape the geopolitical terrain of Europe and key actors on its peripheries. As will be explored, much of the current tensions afflicting Europe and Russia are driven by an inability to manage energy security as a potent area of foreign policy.