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.

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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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