Geopolitics of Energy in Central Asia

India's Position and Policy

Ramakrushna Pradhan

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000335576
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book focuses on the geopolitics of Central Asia which has emerged as the new fertile ground for oil and energy resources. It analyses the scramble for energy and control over the region by many nations and their diplomatic manoeuvrings to ensure energy sufficiency and economic growth.

The book provides a quantitative analysis of the Central Asian energy potential and offers an understanding of the unique position that each country occupies in the geopolitics of oil and energy in the region. It looks at aggressive foreign policies by countries like the US, China, the European Union, Japan, Israel, Iran and Pakistan, focusing primarily on India's position and strategies in the region within the new great game. The book further examines the dynamics between Central Asia and India and India's policies for geopolitical engagement and diversification of energy sources.

This volume will be of interest to researchers and students of political studies, international relations, economics, sociology, and Asian studies. It will also be useful for policymakers and professionals working in the field of energy security and geo-economics.

1

Geopolitics of energy and energy security

The politics of the state is in its geography.

– Napoleon (Kaplan 2012)

Geopolitics is a complex concept and earns a variety of definitions depending upon the nature of the subject under analysis. The study of geopolitics like any other subject of inquiry deals with geographical variables like location, size, resources, population, technological development and so on. It plays an important role in national political decision making and strategy building. While performing its role, generally geopolitics delves into analysing the link between geography and politics. In a nutshell, it affirms that every political decision of the state is influenced by its spatial conditions. It means national policies and political decisions are intricately influenced by the geographical elements that a state possesses. As thus, it establishes a well-knit connection between national interest, power politics, strategic thinking, and decision making with geographic space. It is therefore vital to understand that the very essence of geopolitics is revolving around power and space. It means geography and national political interests are the central parameters to understand the meaning of geopolitics. It thus implies that geography does play an important role in both national and foreign policymaking process and it cannot be ignored while analysing a country’s international relations.

Similarly, another key concept, energy security, is the driver of growth and tool for social change as an important element in the geography of a state undoubtedly influences its decision-making abilities. Since energy resources have been the propeller of the world economy and the key to national and global security and stability, it has assumed the role of a decisive public, economic, social and environmental issue of high importance. Given its centrality, a constant flow of energy, therefore, has remained at the heart of maintaining this order. Referring to the seminal importance of energy for the individual and society at large, Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley (2005) prioritized ten problems in the context of the world’s quest for sustainability. “These precedence problems are energy, water, food, environment, poverty, terrorism and war, disease, education, democracy and population. He accorded the highest priority to energy among all the chronic problems the world has been facing in contemporary times” (Randolph and Masters 2008: 4).

Energy from the above understanding is certainly the keystone of nature and society. Besides Smalley’s observation, revelations of history reflect the resultant use of energy in the advancement of human society and civilization. Energy has freed people from slave and animal labour, from an agrarian society and the constraints of space. Energy is fundamental to economic development. Without energy resources,

business would not be able to light their stores; people and goods would not be able to reach markets on the other side of the world; homes and schools would be more difficult to heat, and manufacturing sector would not be able to produce any products used daily.

(Ibid)

In short, the world economy depends on energy and the largest economies of the world rely on cheap and abundant supplies of energy. Historically speaking, each phase of development of civilization was triggered by changes in patterns of energy use for the growth of human populations and economic systems. In fact, since the mid-19th-century, use of diverse sources of energy has enabled unprecedented fourfold growth of the human population and a forty-fold increase in the global economy. Its rate is even higher in the 21st century. In global terms, the US Geological Survey in its study has shown that “compared with 60 years ago, the planet is consuming today, in percentage terms, 618 times more oil, 1000 times more gas, 756 times more nickel, 1500 times more bauxite” (Klare 2012).

Faced with the growing increase of global demand for energy, imbalances in energy supply and monopoly in the world energy market, claims by the Club of Rome thesis and Peak Oil theory regarding the drying up of world oil coupled with the unequal distribution of energy resources, the energy consuming countries of the world have developed protective economic policies to ensure their energy security through domestic means and diversify their sources of supply to meet the demands. This sudden rise in demand for fossil fuels and the monopoly of supply has led to increasing geopolitical tensions and international competition among the world’s countries to acquire, control and administer these scarce resources. Further, the threats to energy supply, instability in the producing countries, vulnerability of supply routes, piracy, terrorism and even the fear of climate change have drawn the attention of states and world governments to develop short- and long-term strategies to address the concerns leading to the formulation of energy policies. This is how the spatial resource (energy) remained critically linked to the political decisions (foreign policy) of nations worldwide which has opened up a genuine debate to understand the anatomy of the geopolitics of energy and energy security.

Geopolitics: a conceptual understanding

Geopolitics is a word as well as a set of associated ideas. A much-debated term among scholars and in popular writings, geopolitics is etymological, a combination of geography and politics. In this capacity, it refers to “the relation of international political power to the geographical setting” (Cohen 1964). It is a philosophy which “seeks to understand, explain and predict international political behaviour, primarily in terms of geographical variables, such as location, size, climate, topography, demography, natural resources and technological development and potential” (Penguin Dictionary 1998; Leigh 2014).

It denotes the impact of geography on politics, particularly as it pertains to relations between states. In this sense, it would be quite accurate to denote geopolitics as a combination of geography and foreign policy. Thus, geopolitics is a scientific way to understand the relationship between states, their history and politics and their geographical settings. It is also said to be a combination of geography and politics, which views a state’s political position in the world based on its geographical resources. It is a philosophy launched as a scientific approach to the understanding of global relationships. No two states have identical geographical conditions nor identical geopolitics. Each state must develop its geopolitics based on its knowledge of geography and political conditions to give direction to its relationships with other nation-states of the world.

Geopolitics did not begin as objective science, although it was promoted as a scientific approach to the analysis of the space, location, size and resources of nation-states. The term geopolitics is more than hundred years old and was first coined in 1899 by the Swedish Political Scientist, Rudolf J. Kjellen as “science of the state” in his book Foundations for a System of Politics (Muir 1997). He has described geopolitics as “the theory of the state as a geographical organism or phenomenon in Space” (Cohen 2003). Kjellen was interested in the geographical attributes of states and in the implications those features related to their spatial location had for political power.

Towards the end of the 19th century, “classical geopolitical theories were developed when the supremacy of the British Empire was challenged by other countries to expand their colonial presence across the globe” (Flint 2017). Geographers such as Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Nicholas J. Spykman and Giulio Douhet have developed geopolitical theories based on land, maritime and air power respectively (Campos and Fernandes 2017). As a subfield of political science and geography, geopolitics focuses on the relationship between territory and power, particularly the influence of geography on state behaviour (Sullivan 1986: 7; Stogiannos 2019). The fundamental concern of geopolitics, at the height of the imperial age, was the struggle between sea and land power. It was exemplified by the raging confrontations between Britain and Germany, and Britain and Russia. US Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan believed in the superiority of sea power over land power, while the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder saw land power as crucial in determining the outcome of the struggle (Mahan 1897: 29). Mackinder’s geopolitical thought is particularly relevant to the Caspian/Central Asian region, which constituted an integral part of his “Heartland” theory. He defines “the Heartland” as the core of the Eurasian landmass, inaccessible by sea, and considered it the “pivot” area of world politics. Around the Heartland, there is an “inner crescent”, consisting of China, India, Turkey and Germany, which is circumscribed by the ‘outer crescent’ of Britain, Japan and Southern Africa (Mackinder 1962: 150).

Mackinder’s hypothesis gained considerable relevance in the Second World War and the Cold War in the context of the German–Soviet struggle to control the Heartland, followed by the US containment policy towards the USSR. In a later revision of his theory, Mackinder saw the Atlantic Alliance as capable of countering Soviet land power. In a reformulation of Mackinder’s theory, Nicholas Spykman (1893–1943) proposed a geopolitical model centred on the “World Island”. It comprised the core of the Heartland and the inner crescent, surrounded by a “rimland” which coincided with Mackinder’s outer crescent. As a realist thinker, Spykman viewed international politics as a struggle for power in which American and British security necessitated control of the rimland as a means of blocking the expansion of the World Island (Spykman 1944: 39–44). A century after the acme of the Great Game between Russia and Britain, which centred on Mackinder’s Heartland and inner crescent, a new contest was triggered in the far more complex milieu of the 1990s. Yet, in contrast to the territorial imperative of nineteenth-century imperial rivalries, the new Great Game is ostensibly a power struggle for the Heartland’s energy resources. This situation, in reality, constitutes the signposts and stepping-stones of clashing hegemonic interests (Dekmejian and Simonain 2001: 6).

However, it was only in Germany that geopolitics was widely used to promote German nationalism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. German Geopolitik (replaced by geopolitics after the Second World War), a loose translation of geopolitics, necessarily meant the exploitation of knowledge to serve the purpose of a national state or regime. The introduction of geopolitics as a deterministic field of study and a recipe for statecraft was first offered as a set of geographically determined laws governing a state’s strategic destinies and evolved as the geographical underpinning of realpolitik. This identifi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Geopolitics of energy and energy security
• 2 Geopolitics of energy in Central Asia
• 3 India–Central Asia Relations: Looking back and looking ahead
• 4 India’s energy trajectory
• 5 India–Central Asia and the energy quest
• 6 New Great Game and Silk Road diplomacy
• 7 Transit routes between India and Central Asia
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index