The energy weapon reloaded: Rethinking energy as a tool of economic statecraft in great power rivalry

The notion that energy can be ‘weaponized’ and used by exporting states to pressure their trade partners, is both intuitive and widespread, particularly in the media. However, attempts at clarifying and defining what an ‘energy weapon’ is and theorizing its implications have been less numerous and there is some visible skepticism among scholars towards the actual usability of energy as a weapon in world politics (van de Graaf and Colgan 2017). This paper seeks to revisit the idea of an ‘energy weapon’ considering the turbulence caused by the war in Ukraine. This recent geopolitical shock offers a prime opportunity for analyzing the role of energy resources as a means of statecraft. It is a critical case to study, as some of the gravest and least plausible threats in energy policy have emerged following the Russian invasion, Western sanctions, and Russian retaliatory measures. This allowed many proponents of Realpolitik or a "geopolitical" paradigm in energy studies to declare superiority over a more market-centered "liberal" approach to energy trade. On the other hand, Russia has visibly used its ‘energy weapon’s full potential, but the results were far from the doom-and-gloom prognoses. Meanwhile, the behavior of the US and China on the global energy market and the influence of their actions on energy relations and through these – on other states – has received less attention. One thing is certain though, if energy is indeed a ‘weapon’, it causes collateral damage. Zooming out from the relationship between Russia and the European Union, we can notice the broader implications of the war on great power relations. For instance, China’s role as the only viable alternative source of demand for Russian energy created an asymmetrical relationship visibly operating in Beijing’s favor, which boosts the notion that interdependence is an inherent part of ‘weaponized energy’, suggesting that the barrel of that metaphorical weapon indeed points both ways. Meanwhile, the role of the US in the European energy crisis is at best ambivalent, and the clear increase of power Washington wields over its European partners falls outside the scope of conventional ‘energy weapon’ perceptions – and yet it is a clear example of statecraft. The paper’s premise is that ‘energy weapon’ is a faulty concept due to the mismatch of its metaphorical meaning with energy trade realities. The conventional notion of an energy weapon as well as most popular conceptualizations, such as Smith Stegen (2011), imply high levels of control and deeply asymmetrical power relations in favor of the energy exporter. In fact, the very notion that importers/consumers also have power in this relationship is dismissed by the "geopolitical" school, and only acknowledged by "liberal" analysts.