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Energy security is one of the major global challenges of the 21st century. Many of the richest energy-producing regions of the world, such as the Middle East, Russia and Central Asia, are unstable and torn with conflict. New fast-growing energy consumers, such as China, are significantly changing the geopolitics of energy resources. Billions of the world's poorest suffer the insecurity of energy poverty or fail to benefit from the abundant energy resources that enrich political elites and companies. And our planet is increasingly under pressure because of our continued dependence on fossil fuels. It is easy to see why energy security has risen to the top of the political agenda and looks set to stay there. In this book, Roland Dannreuther offers a new and comprehensive approach to understanding energy security. Drawing on the latest research in security studies, he treats energy security as a value that is continually in dynamic conflict with other core values, such as economic prosperity and sustainability. The different physical properties of the key energy resources - coal, oil, gas, nuclear and renewables - are of course critical for the differing manifestations of energy insecurity. But it is the social, economic and political contexts, developed over time and place, which are essential for a fuller appreciation of contemporary energy challenges. In highlighting the history and politics of energy security and the critical role played by power and justice in framing these debates, this incisive and cutting-edge analysis is a go-to introduction for students grappling with the complexities of energy security today

International Security is a cutting-edge analysis of the key security challenges and developments in the post-Cold War world. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary examples, from the Iraq war to the rise of China, it is an essential guide for students and policy makers seeking to understand the theoretical and empirical debates over the fast-changing nature of international security today.The book is organized into four main parts. Part 1 provides an analytical framework for the book, identifying the most significant post-Cold War shifts in international security and recent theoretical devel

This book examines the degree to which the European Union has responded as a coherent and strategic actor towards the developmental and security needs of its immediate neighbourhood in the post-Cold War era.

Oil is a major topic in International Relations (IR). However, the discipline has tended to focus primarily on the effects and impacts of oil, particularly in relation to conflict, war and empire, and on the international political economy of oil, such as the role of the large oil companies and the oil-rich producer states. This article offers a more holistic approach by adopting a new materialisms framework. This framework has the physical materiality of oil, and its agentic capacity to produce social and political relations over time and space, at its centre. This offers new perspectives along the material journey of oil from exploration, production to transportation, processing and consumption. This, in turn, provides a more differentiated history of oil as a material force that shapes human and political interaction. The benefit of this approach is that it requires IR to be in a more substantive dialogue with other disciplines, most notably with human geography which has a strong tradition of research on energy and spatiality, but also with other disciplines in the social sciences and with the growing body of work in energy humanities. In addition, adopting a new materialisms approach to the study of oil acts as a potential template for the study of other energy resources and products, such as gas and coal as well as renewables such as wind and solar energy.

Russia's response to the Arab Spring ranged from apprehension to deep anxiety and diverged significantly from the US and the EU responses. While initially welcoming the popular demands for political reform in North Africa, the Russian reaction rapidly became more critical as a result of Western military intervention into Libya and the threat of the spread of Islamist extremism. It was these twin fears which prompted the Russian leadership to adopt an uncompromizing stance towards Syria. While geopolitical factors certainly played a role in driving Russian strategy, domestic political factors were also more significant. As the Russian leadership felt internally threatened by the growing opposition within the country, conflict in the Middle East highlighted the perceived flaws of the imposition of Western liberal democracy and the virtues of Russia's own model of state-managed political order. There was, as such, a significant ideational and ideological dimension to the Russian response to the Arab Spring. Adapted from the source document.