Scare Me Once, Shame on You
// Scare Me Twice, Shame on Me: The West Won't Take Russia's Energy Blackmail for Much Longer
The tacit return in international relations of the doctrine of containment, the mainstay of the Cold War years, is increasingly turning international relations into a search for so-called adequate responses. For the world's major powers, these searches are becoming the main point, if not an idee fixe. Containment is the state of affairs in which we fear you and you fear us. And that mutual fear makes us more accommodating of each other.
For the military, the Russian "adequate response" to the expansion of the American missile defense system in Europe is some kind of miracle weapon, the existence of which is only hinted at by those at the very top. Who knows whether this or any other "adequate response" actually exists. But in any case, the psychological effect of these hints is obvious: American generals are nervous, the Pentagon is asking Congress for more money, they're beginning to fear us but, according to the logic of containment, also to respect us more.
In an economic sense, the "adequate response" to the West is apparently supposed to be the gas OPEC. Such an organization does not yet exist, but the US and Europe are already in a panic: this is the economic miracle weapon of Moscow and its partners. The vision of the strong hands of Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez steadily and in concert turning the gas valve, which here represents the steering wheel of the global vessel, strikes terror into the hearts of Western strategists. As a psychological weapon, the gas OPEC has already been worth its weight in gold: the West has been given a real fright. And now only two questions remain: why did we scare them, and what happens next?
Part of what's next is the eventual obviousness not only of the tempting appearance of the gas OPEC but also of the overall poverty of the idea. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that for a whole host of reasons – political, economic, and, finally, technical – a gas OPEC cannot become the oil OPEC, part II. Moreover, the gas OPEC may not even become a reality. The issue is not only that gas just isn't sold the way oil is, meaning that manipulating gas prices in the same manner as oil prices will be extremely difficult. But even if some mechanism of doing so is thought up, it will still be difficult to imagine that the different interests and ambitions of the countries participating in a gas OPEC will allow them to work together without fighting amongst themselves.
In sum, the gas OPEC is a phantom, a bogeyman meant to frighten the West. It is more like a trade in air than in gas. Does that mean that the idea of a gas OPEC is useless? No. For Moscow, the gas OPEC is a means of a sending a clear signal to Europe: quit being fussy, or else Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez will show up and give you something to complain about, and then you'll be sorry that you didn't make a deal with Vladimir Putin. But it also presents the West with the opportunity to send a message to Russia: in response to your implicit blackmail, we're going to begin to build more nuclear power plants and to make use of more alternative sources of energy in order to wean ourselves off dependence on you. And one day you'll regret being so pigheaded.
Sergei Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 19, 2007
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