Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press) [Paperback]

Jan H. Kalicki (Editor), David L. Goldwyn (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0801882796 | ISBN-13: 978-0801882791 | Publication Date: July 21, 2005

For more than a century, energy and its procurement have been central to the U.S. position as a world power. How can U.S. relations with established producer nations ensure the stability of energy supplies? How can non-OPEC resources best be brought to the international marketplace? And what are the risks to international security of growing global reliance on imported oil?

In Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy, Jan H. Kalicki and David L. Goldwyn bring together the topmost foreign policy and energy experts and leaders to examine these issues, as well as how the U.S. can mitigate the risks and dangers of continued energy dependence through a new strategic approach to foreign policy that integrates both U.S. energy and national security interests. Contributors include Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, Kevin A. Baumert, Michelle Billig, Loyola de Palacio, Jonathan Elkind, Michelle Michot Foss, Leon Fuerth, Lee H. Hamilton, Evan M. Harrje, John P. Holdren, Paul F. Hueper, Amy Myers Jaffe, J. Bennett Johnston, Donald A. Juckett, Viktor I. Kalyuzhny, Melanie A. Kenderdine, William F. Martin, Charles McPherson, Kenneth B. Medlock III, Ernest J. Moniz, Edward L. Morse, Julia Nanay, Shirley Neff, Willy H. Olsen, Bill Richardson, John Ryan, James R. Schlesinger, Gordon Shearer, Adam E. Sieminski, Alvaro Silva-Calderón, Luis Téllez Kuenzler, J. Robinson (Robin) West, Daniel Yergin, and Keiichi Yokobori.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Surveys the prospective world of oil and gas... [and] argues that the United States needs a coherent energy policy that is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy.

(Richard N. Cooper Foreign Affairs 2005)

A balanced overview of the energy debate.

(Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba Political Studies Review 2007)

The authors do an excellent job of describing the issues as seen in Washington, including analysis of the debates about what should be government policies. That is a welcome contrast to the shrill tone and extreme positions staked out by many authors addressing these matters.

(Middle East Quarterly 2006)

An essential reference for years to come.

(Stuart E. Eizenstat, Former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Under Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs and US Ambassador to the European Union )

Essential reading for all who care about the most serious global challenges that will shape our nation.

(Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean, Yale School of Management and former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade )

This book, with chapters by some of the most distinguished energy and foreign policy experts in the world, is a tour de force when it comes to the kind of fresh and rigorous thinking that ought to be applied to America's foreign policy.

(Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean, Yale School of Management, former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade )

The most comprehensive book I have seen examining all the implications of our country's dependence on foreign oil... an essential reference for years to come.

(Stuart E. Eizenstat, former Under Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury )

Essential reading for policymakers in both energy consuming and energy producing countries.

(Claude Mandil, Executive Director, International Energy Agency )

Call for a fundamental change in the way the United States treats energy policy by combining it with foreign policy

(Bill Loveless, Chief Editor, Platts Inside Energy )

A valuable and timely contribution on an urgent subject.

(Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution and former Deputy Secretary of State )

I applaud this timely and thoughtful new book on energy security, written by some of the sharpest thinkers on the matter.

(Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, author of Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution will Transform an Industry, Change our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet )

From the Publisher

This book, with chapters by some of the most distinguished energy and foreign policy experts in the world, is a tour de force when it comes to the kind of fresh and rigorous thinking that ought to be applied to America's foreign policy. Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean, Yale School of Management, former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (July 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801882796
• ISBN-13: 978-0801882791
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #447,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Definitive Account of the Washington Consensus on the Energy-Security Nexus, January 27, 2007

By 

Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press) (Paperback)

Patrick Clawson's statements ring true, Energy and Security provides a definitive account of the Washington consensus on the energy-security nexus. It argues that energy policy of the last half century has produced excessive dependence on unstable and repressive governments, has failed to redress the environmental consequences of energy consumption, and has failed to invest adequately in technology that would reduce strategic vulnerability and environmental degradation.

It sounds convincing--until one asks the question of cost. The last fifty years have also been a period of unprecedented global prosperity, and low-cost energy was no small part of the reason. In that time, energy consumption has exploded, as electricity has been brought to billions, and transporting goods and people across vast distances has become commonplace. Those who would change direction on energy policy should acknowledge that thirty years ago, in response to the oil crisis of the 1970s, the best and brightest made many of the same recommendations repeated here, and the result was a waste of tens of billions of dollars on inappropriate technologies and complicated regulatory schemes. It is disheartening to see such prominent experts so quick to skip over the errors of the past and so little interested in the dollars-and-cents implications of their recommendations.

That said, the twenty-two essays have much useful information and many important insights. The globe is covered in twelve essays grouped in four regions with a commentary section for each: Russia, the Caspian, and European gas; the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa; China, Japan, and southeast Asia; and North America, South America, and the North Atlantic (i.e., North Sea). A major theme is that energy resources are abundant--few serious experts have much patience for resource pessimism so often trotted out by certain engineers and environmentalists--but that there are serious questions about the framework of government policies for making use of those resources.

Another set of essays paints the global framework, such as the role of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the International Energy Agency, and commodity exchanges. The essays in the final section look at public policy issues such as climate protection, environmental sustainability, technology development, and strategic reserves. The authors do an excellent job of describing the issues as seen in Washington, including analysis of the debates about what should be government policies. That is a welcome contrast to the shrill tone and extreme positions staked out by many authors addressing these matters.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensible and comprehensive, November 14, 2005

By 

N. Tsafos (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press) (Paperback)

It is the fate of any topic that as its importance rises in the public domain, the quality of the debate on it decreases almost proportionally. Energy security has not escaped this rule. As the intuitive grasp on energy security becomes more complicated, the prescriptions to solve it become simpler and sillier. The purpose of this volume is to navigate through the complicated subject of energy security with solemnity and seriousness.

In doing so, it begins, sensibly, from refuting the more obscene and far-fetched ideas out there on how to deal with America's energy security. It then outlines the various features of economy, technology, and geopolitics that make up America's energy security map and proceeds to explain how they can be integrated in a larger foreign and domestic policy framework.

What emerges from this volume is a double sense: the first is that a topic as complex as energy security can be reasonably broken down to its individual components (in fact, it is obvious in the text why it is necessary to do so). The second is that enhancing America's energy security involves serious tradeoffs in domestic and foreign policy-tradeoffs that politicians seem unwilling to accept as necessary much less adopt as policy.

To contrast the hoopla out there on energy security, this tome offers both a good start and a reasonable advancement on the field. Anyone who wants to think about energy security in a sensible, systematic and comprehensive sense has to become acquainted with this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well documented discussion, October 14, 2007

By 

James Scott (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press) (Paperback)

This is a wide ranging and well thought out discussion on contemporary issues in US energy security, comnprehensively covering many aspects of hydrocarbon politics. The book puts into perspective that prices at the petrol pump are more than simply politicians in Washington who should be 'doing something' about oil prices, but rather that the problem is a whole raft of interconnected global political issues. This discussion clearly highlights the current heavy reliance that the US has on many, unstable third world nations. This fact in itself is quite worring.

One area where I felt that the book could have been a little more in-depth was around solutions to the energy security issue, and in particular the use and development of alternative energy supplies or other strategies for reducing the reliance upon hydrocarbons. There are short chapters on both alternative energy and on the environmental problems of oil, both of which likely to become much bigger over the next decade or so. As the book rightly points out, however, there is going to be no short term solution and much of the US foreign policy for the next decade or so is going to be driven by protecting its foreign oil supplies.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in current global issues in energy security.