The Militarization of Energy Security II

…The possibility that access to energy resources may become an object of large-scale armed struggle is one of the most alarming prospects facing the current world system. The political stability of advanced societies, and the continued prospects for economic and social improvement in developing countries, are both linked to the operation of international energy markets. The increasing scale and complexity of these markets since the end of the Second World War has been one of the primary drivers of global economic growth. Like all international markets, the market for energy is sensitive to war and upheaval, whatever the cause. Energy markets are efficient at discounting risk, and there is a long history of price spikes and shortages whenever large-scale violence, chiefly but not exclusively in oil-producing regions, threatens established patterns of production and consumption. Strategic planners in the United States and elsewhere are well aware of the degree to which the anticipated effect of military operations on the price and availability of oil and natural gas needs to be considered in their work.

My co-author and I asked the authors to analyze whether specific countries or regions of the world would “militarize” their energy security and, secondly, whether such a process would increase the likelihood of interstate armed conflict in response to energy issues. We assembled this group of experts