Europe-Asia Studies
ISSN: 0966-8136 (Print) 1465-3427 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceas20
Russian Energy Strategy in the European Union, the Former Soviet Union Region, and China Inna Chuvychkina To cite this article: Inna Chuvychkina (2016) Russian Energy Strategy in the European Union, the Former Soviet Union Region, and China, Europe-Asia Studies, 68:5, 941-943, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2016.1187938 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2016.1187938
Published online: 26 Jul 2016.
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Date: 20 August 2016, At: 10:52
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worried that her family would be affected by the Western evils she had learned about in school, including criminality, unemployment and drugs. The biography which sticks out due to its dramatic development is the one of Mario. When state security asked him to deliver information about his West German boyfriend, Mario tried to escape, was caught, and imprisoned at the Stasi-prison Hohenschönhausen. There followed a time of humiliation, mistreatment and harsh interrogations until Mario was redeemed by the West German authorities. In the reunified Germany, Mario ran accidentally into one of his former tormentors: he suffered a nervous breakdown, lost his job, attempted suicide and from then on depended on psychiatric treatment. As Vaizey emphasises several times in the book, her ambition is to go beyond the polarised characterisation of the GDR as either Stasiland or the benign paternalistic state. By presenting eight former GDR citizens who experienced their youth in the GDR, the time of transition, and their East German heritage in the reunified Germany in many different ways, Vaizey has succeeded in showing that many experiences of former GDR citizens are to be placed somewhere in between these two ideal typical poles. Vaizey, however, fails to explain in what way this result is in any way surprising. The most recent years saw the publication of numerous scientific studies presenting a more complex picture of GDR society than the ones drawn by the nostalgic 2003 GDR comedy Good Bye, Lenin! or the gloomy 2006 drama Das Leben der Anderen. With regard to GDR remembrance, Vaizey mentions the phenomenon of Ostalgie, the nostalgic remembrance of daily life in the GDR, but fails to give any references to the research field of memory studies. Instead, the author comes to the rather banal conclusion that ‘there is more than one historical truth’ (p. 21). The questions about how electoral behaviour and attitudes to immigration might be imprinted by a biographical GDR background—topics that are, incidentally, discussed with great intensity in the current German public discourse—are simply ignored. Instead, the book retells many facts about GDR society that are well-known even beyond the circle of contemporary historians. Although the book’s main source material consists of eight in-depth interviews, direct quotes are hardly ever given. This confronts the reader with the unsatisfying situation of reading Vaizey’s interpretation of each interviewee’s interpretation of his or her memories, questioning whether a commented edition of those interviews would not have been a better editorial (and perhaps methodological) choice. Vaizey fails to contextualise and problematise the most central concept of the entire book, namely the term die Wende. This might be seen as a major analytical shortcoming, as the colloquial name for the events in autumn 1989 (coined by GDR state minister Egon Krenz) features a specific political connotation, while representing a questionable term, at least analytically. As a consequence, Born in the GDR will be of interest mainly to English-speaking readers who do not read German and are denied access to well-known and easily available scientific studies and autobiographical writings of German authors. ANN-JUDITH RABENSCHLAG, Department of Historical and Contemporary Studies, Room F930, Södertörn University, 14189 Huddinge, Sweden. Email:
[email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2016.1187946
ANN-JUDITH RABENSCHLAG © 2016
Stylianos A. Sotiriou, Russian Energy Strategy in the European Union, the Former Soviet Union Region, and China. Lanham, MD & London: Lexington Books, 2015, xxvi + 261pp., £59.95/$95.00 h/b. THE HIGH DEGREE OF POLITICISATION OF THE RUSSIAN ENERGY SECTOR questions the rationale that lies behind the formation of Russia’s energy politics. In this book, Stylianos Sotiriou develops a framework that views energy-related issues as an essential part of Russian foreign policy. The book’s focus is on energy policy in the Eurasian geopolitical space, an issue that is analysed here through an
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essentially Russian lens. The author provides valuable theoretical considerations and offers substantive empirical data on Russia’s energy strategy and spectrum of tactics. By focusing on natural resources management during the 2000s, the book does actually succeed in providing an insight into Russia’s profit maximisation strategy. Sotiriou starts with a discussion that identifies Russia as one of the main resource-rich actors involved in competition for oil and gas supplies. Detailed illustration of geopolitical connectivity in the ‘energyland’— a term that the author frames in reference to Mackinder’s theory of the ‘heartland’—and a successive in-depth analysis of cooperation patterns between suppliers/consumers/transit countries shows us the formation of a Eurasian energy triangle that connects Russia with the former Soviet Union, the European Union and China (Chapter 1). The book is constructed around a key theoretical debate between neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism about ‘power politics’ and ‘relative versus absolute gains’. An institutional balancing approach is presented in the book as an addendum, in order to uncover Russia’s set of strategies vis-à-vis three cooperation sets, which Sotiriou labels asymmetric, symmetric and balanced (Chapter 2). The author argues that success or limited progress in defending national interests and securing relative gains ultimately depends on these types of energy cooperation. This conceptual framework is then explored in relation to three case studies, which investigate the bipolar relationships illustrated above. Sotiriou gives an extensive overview of the Russian energy complex with detailed reference to the notion of a ‘rentier state’ and ‘Dutch disease’ (Chapter 3). He points out that proper management of foreign exchange rates represented the main instrument used to deal with the negative impacts of the resource curse. In particular, ‘sovereign wealth funds, boosting the competitiveness via a market-rational national income policy, and restrictive fiscal policy’ in connection with ‘targeted and insightful investment in a key sector of the economy’ could provide a solid base for improving economic performance (p. 70). Active steps have been taken by Russia in this direction throughout the 2000s, creating considerable challenges for the Eurasian energy partners. The discussion around case studies is thereby concentrated on how and to what extent a powerful and resource-rich actor can claim its interests within various cooperation patterns. The view on the Russia–FSU region, and on Russia’s energy relationships with Ukraine and Belarus more specifically, serves as a good example for asymmetric cooperation with weaker neighbouring actors (Chapter 4). The author paints a comprehensive picture of interlinked post-Soviet economies, while profiling a set of conflicts over gas supplies: on this basis, he concludes that Russia succeeded in guarding its own energy interests by undermining the bargaining power of neighbouring states and making political–strategic concessions at its partners’ expense. In the case of EU–Russian energy links, guaranteeing relative gains presented a limited scope (Chapter 5). Sotiriou has provided an insightful analysis of Russia’s interdependent interactions with both European supranational institutions and member states. As the author argues, the energy relationship between Russia and the European Union has remained profoundly symmetric throughout the 2000s. On the one hand, the EU managed to institutionalise its energy partnership with Russia within the framework of the Energy Charter Treaty and Energy Dialogue. On the other, Russia levelled European efforts by using an institutional balancing strategy that resulted in the absence of a legally binding basis for cooperation, while using the established institutions as ‘empty shells’. Gazprom’s penetration of the EU market and China's balancing role in EU– Russian energy relations created ‘diplomatic leverage against [the EU] in order to seize the maximum out of the negotiations’ (p. xxiii). In this context, deliberate focus on the Russo–Chinese energy partnership as a third pillar of the energy triangle represents a very sound analytical choice (Chapter 6), as balanced cooperation with China allowed Russia to enter energy trading under the conditions of non-dependency. Sotiriou builds up a vivid picture of the development of the Russian eastern energy vector, by discussing the growing demand for imported natural gas and oil in China and the case of construction of the East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. In addition, the author successfully describes how China came to diversify its energy supply by expanding to Central Asia through pipeline projects with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.
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Dealing with supplier–consumer and supplier–transit state/consumer energy cooperation, this book would perhaps have benefited from incorporating a focus on relations between energy suppliers through the lens of a theoretical debate between neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. Although the author makes casual mention of energy foreign policy of the Central Asian states within the framework of Chinese penetration in this region, there is a general lack of theoretical speculations of gain maximisation in supplier–supplier cooperation patterns. A few more examples of Russia’s competition over energy supplies with other producers (e.g. Azerbaijan) would have helped to demonstrate more explicitly the possibilities and limitations of securing relative gains. Despite these minor shortcomings, the book’s contribution to the rationale of Russian energy policy deepens our understanding of energy relations in the Eurasian region. The book is well grounded on a huge number of primary and secondary sources and a dataset consisting of official publications and documents, statistics from energy firms as well as policy papers. The book is recommended to anyone with an interest in Russia’s energy-related issues. INNA CHUVYCHKINA, Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen, Germany. Email:
[email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2016.1187938INNA CHUVYCHKINA © 2016
Fiona Hill & Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr Putin. Operative in the Kremlin. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015, x + 533pp. £22.50/$32.00 p/b. WHEN THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN ASSUMED OFFICE in 2000, the question of ‘Who are you, Mr Putin?’ occupied many minds. Fifteen years on, a definitive answer continues to escape us. Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy’s book, now in its second expanded edition, attempts a plausible answer. Acknowledging that in Vladimir Putin one deals with ‘a master at manipulating information, suppressing information, and creating pseudo-information’ (p. 7) to cultivate an image of himself as ‘unknowable and unpredictable and therefore even dangerous’ (p. 13), Hill and Gaddy proceed to create a ‘contextual portrait’ of the Russian president. Because the authors use publicly available information, much of their data, such as press interviews of Putin’s ex-advisor or journalistic accounts of Putin’s regime and his personality, are not new. Neither is their approach to explain Putin in light of his past experiences. Yet, the resulting presentation of ‘Mr Putin’s mental outlook’ (p. 20) is quite intriguing. Briefly stated, Hill and Gaddy uncover not one, but many Putins, each a distinctive identity that emerged from critical conditions. Six such identities are discussed in detail: the Statist with a goal of rebuilding the Russian state out of perestroika’s shambles; the History Man inspired by the Russian past; the Survivalist whose childhood lessons in perseverance lie at the core of his approach to crises; the Outsider brought to Moscow by Yel’tsin’s circles of liberal reformers; the Free Marketeer who supports pro-market economic policies yet deploys unmarket-like measures when ‘dealing’ with the business community; and the Case Officer who ‘works with people’ in face-to-face, individual meetings, personally attending to their case and eliciting compliance. These identities are not consecutive stages in the development of Putin’s public persona; rather, they are parallel and not mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, in their description, the professional identity of a Case Officer dominates the entire amalgam for, as one of Hill and Gaddy’s sources quipped, there are no former KGB officers. Hill and Gaddy deduce the six personas from the formative episodes in Putin’s biography, when routine responses to the situation at hand are inadequate and an individual reaches for guidance to his or her sense of propriety, of good and bad, of negotiable and non-negotiable matters, and similar fundamental
