What Drives the West in Its Energy Policy?

Abstract

In 2022, the countries united by the concept of “the West” imposed unprecedented energy sanctions on Russia, thereby reacting to Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine launched in February. This article presents a comprehensive study aimed at identifying the essential motives of the “collective West’s” energy policy. The first part of the paper gives an utilitarian vision of the problem in question. The author comes to the conclusion that, despite the U.S. shale revolution and the development of renewable energy sources, Western states, taken together, continue to depend heavily on oil and gas imports and, therefore, they are mostly driven in their energy policy by the need to neutralize the critical importance of hydrocarbons with a view to avoiding political and economic ramifications. The paper, in its second part, considers the Western energy policy at the tactical level where it can be either defensive or offensive as well as at the strategic level where the united West seeks mostly to effect energy transition. The article demonstrates that, from the perspective of international relations theory, the West’s energy policy in its tactical and strategic dimensions fits most into the realist concept. Basic liberal imperatives define it as a relatively feeble one whereas constructivism is not able to identify its objective patterns. Additional theoretical footholds in understanding the West’s motives in the field of energy supply are provided by the concepts of liberal interventionism and neoconservatism as well as by neo­Marxism. The latter sees the energy policy of the West through the prism of the struggle of states forming the "center", "periphery" and "semi­periphery" of the world.