Expert
Commentary
The opinions of the authors expressed herein do not necessarily
state or reflect those of Senator Lugar and shall not be used
for advertising or product endorsement purposes.
Energy Security: A New
Mission for NATO
David L. Goldwyn
President, Goldwyn International Strategies
NATO’s’ North Atlantic Council should
adopt energy security as an alliance mission at its November 28-29
Summit in Riga, Latvia. For Europe and the United States, energy
security is more than an economic and environmental concern. It
is a real, present and urgent national security challenge. Russia
has laid this challenge at Europe’s door in the plainest
terms, but the European Union has not mustered a response, and
Germany, Italy and potentially the UK are conceding more and more
leverage to the Russian energy leviathan in the interim. It is
time for defense ministers to join this debate and integrate the
concerns about national security vulnerability into NATO planning
and decisions about Russia’s access to European and US energy
infrastructure. By placing energy security on NATO’s table,
and at the center of the NATO-Russian dialogue, NATO can deter
the Russia’s use of energy as a weapon and enhance alliance,
and indeed, global energy security. If the debate remains in the
hands of economic ministers alone, the political unity of NATO
itself is destined to erode as Europe’s dependence on Russian
gas expands.
Energy security has long been fundamental to Europe’s
national security. From the days of the Soviet Union the US has
pressed Europe to limit its dependence in Eurasian gas. The commitment
to the development of Norway’s Troll field in 1982 was all
that restrained the US from demanding that Europe cap its imports
from the Soviet Union at 30%. Europe’s increasing demand
for gas, the lack of development of LNG infrastructure or sufficient
multiple gas pipelines is driving up Europe’s dependence
on Russia – already nearly 25% of gas supply -- and driving
down its political leverage with Russia. Europe’s near silence
in the face of President Putin’s repression of the media,
monopolization of the energy sector, and dismantlement of Yukos
and coercion of its neighbor is testament to this eroding political
leverage.
The Russian strategy – and its threat to NATO’s
values – could not be more transparent. Russia has sought
to control energy production and transportation in Russia and
in as many of the distribution systems of its neighbors and customers
as it can. This way it controls both energy supply and price.
Russia denies access to its own transportation system to Central
Asian producers as well as non Russian producers of oil and gas
in Russia. Russia has abandoned long term energy subsidies to
neighboring Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus on short notice or called
long term debt obligations to force them to concede their pipelines
systems. This is not price liberalization, it is extortion. When
energy is used as a weapon, to coerce a less friendly political
leader in a country to cede power to a friendlier one, the threat
falls squarely in NATO’s domain. At its most extreme, a
non commercial disruption of gas supply to a neighbor in the middle
of winter is as much as act of war as a blockade.
Russia has used energy as a weapon of political
coercion for decades: in 1990 it interrupted gas supplies to the
Baltic States to weaken the independence movement and again in1992
in retaliation for their demand that Russia remove its remaining
military forces from the region. From 1998 to 2000, Russia’s
state owned monopoly Transneft stopped the flow of crude oil to
Lithuania nine times an attempt to stop the sale of Lithuania’s
refinery, port facility, and pipeline to the Williams Company
of Tulsa, Oklahoma. As recently as this month Gazprom warned Georgia
that it would cut off gas supplies by Jan. 1, 2007 unless Tbilisi
agreed to pay more than double the price it currently pays for
gas or hand over to Russia the main pipeline that delivers gas
from Georgia to Armenia.
Europe has been supine in the face of this challenge.
There is no demand for reciprocity as Gazprom is permitted to
take stakes in Ruhrgas, to partner with ENI and potentially with
Centrica as well. The European Union blessed a gas pipeline from
Russia to Germany, bypassing the vulnerable states like Poland.
The U.S. has likewise failed to demand reciprocal investment in
Russia’s energy sector in WTO or bilateral negotiations
with Russia.
Given the strategic importance of energy supply
to NATO nations and the clear potential for Russia to use energy
as an instrument of coercion again in the future, NATO should
work within the alliance to establish energy vulnerability as
a security threat and seek to delineate rules of the road with
Russia to end the use of energy as a weapon and deter a potential
conflict over Russia’s coercion of a current or potential
NATO ally.
Core Alliance tasks could include defense of sea
lanes, training European, Caspian and Gulf of Guinea militaries
how to secure energy infrastructure and transportation routes,
integrating responses to supply disruptions into its defense planning
and considering fuel efficiency as a factor in NATO defense procurement.
NATO should work with the European Union on an EU energy security
plan, to integrate energy and national security planning.
Within their respective countries, NATO members
should establish energy security as a national security concern.
Defense ministers should be empowered to intervene in national
debates concerning energy pipeline construction, infrastructure
development and international access to downstream assets.
Multilaterally the Alliance should engage alliance
members and Russia in its political committee by convening an
energy security table which also welcomes China, Russia and India.
The agenda should be the reduction of conflict over energy access
by fostering a climate that promotes development of resources,
open access and the absence of political intervention in energy
markets.
In the end, what holds NATO members together as an alliance is
shared values. These values of free societies, free markets, and
freedom from coercion are under challenge by Russia. The challenge
goes to the core of NATO’s purpose and deterring this threat
can be a major accomplishment of NATO- Russia cooperation. But
this challenge is no longer the dominion of trade ministers. NATO
should acknowledge this in Riga by making it a priority concern
for the NATO alliance.
*David L. Goldwyn is a former US Assistant Secretary
of Energy for International Affairs and co-editor of Energy &
Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy (Johns Hopkins
University Press 2005).
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