A new shift is currently underway in the global patterns of extraction, marketing and consumption of mineral oil resources. This shift has both deep roots in and serious implications for international politics and the distribution of power across the globe. Although today’s changes appear less dramatic than the developments of 1973 and 1980, their impact is fundamental for the emergence of a new truly global market for oil.
          The ongoing shift becomes manifest in its four major components. First, the influence of the OPEC states has declining over the last two decades. For example, the United States has been able to reduce its dependence on imported OPEC oil from over 50% in 1992 to 40% in 2005. Second, several major developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil, have become large consumers of oil. Developing countries have almost matched the level of oil consumption by North American states (each group around 25% of the world’s total). This has led to extended cooperation between China and the volatile regimes in many oil-exporting countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Third, the "traditional" large oil consumers, such as the US or the UK, have become more dependent on imported hydrocarbons. Fourth, as a consequence, competition on the world market of investment into energy resources has grown. The rapidly growing East Asian economies are flush with cash that can be directed towards acquisition of stakes in transnational oil companies and lucrative development projects.
          US-based oil corporations have embarked on ambitious projects in Africa and in Russia where until recently legal frameworks regulating the use of country’s natural resources have been evolving towards better protection of national interest in the face of occasionally "selfish" approaches by foreign investors.
          Predicting trends in oil prices requires that analysts distinguish between fundamental and transitory (subjective) factors affecting the oil market. While all of the above mentioned developments are of a fundamental nature and contribute to the upward pricing trend, it would be inaccurate to mourn a "depletion" of world’s oil deposits. Yet certain disregard to strategic investment into the upgrading of oil processing facilities by the largest consumers of oil along with the rising instability in the Middle East make any substantial drop in oil prices unlikely in the years to come.

Politics in Post-Industrial Warfare

         The changes in the nature of warfare, which have occurred by mid-2000s, are not limited to the technological aspects of revolution in military affairs. Technological advances and other means of warfare, such as information and psychological operations, are only useful to the extent that they can help achieve political goals which are usually defined more broadly than a "simple" military victory yet remain tightly connected to the prosecution of a military campaign. The concept of "effect-based operations", a brainchild of US military strategists, reflects this shift in thinking about the role of military force in attaining the goals set by the political leadership. Adversary’s behavior can be effectively modified by means short of military force, especially if the credibility of this force is elevated in adversary’s eyes through information or psychological operations.
          As long as a complete military victory may not be the desirable outcome in an armed conflict, which a stronger power may be tempted to launch, the defending party may find it sufficient to maintain relatively modest and inexpensive defense capabilities. These capabilities only need to be strong enough to defeat the attacker’s political objectives, but not its preponderant military force.

The Crisis of the
"Democratic Peace" Argument

         Since the mid-1990s, the theory of democratic peace ("democracies do not fight each other") has won popularity among students of international relations both in the West and in Russia. These ideas, which have become essentially contested in the Western scholarship, have been in many cases uncritically adopted by Russian scholars without due awareness of the cultural and historical limitations of any social theory.
          While the proponents of the democratic peace theory continue to discuss the relative power of cultural and institutional explanations in support of their argument, this theory has been criticized from both realist and constructivist perspectives. Realists maintain that the available empirical evidence does not substantiate the democratic peace hypothesis and that democratizing states are often more prone to violence than non-democratic regimes. Moreover, during the cold war, most of the East European authoritarian regimes were aptly containing the nationalist sentiment thereby ensuring peace and stability in the Communist bloc. The logic of the democratic peace argument is also subjected to doubt as democracies arguably have not been fighting because of the lack of strategic interest rather than because of their "inherent peacefulness". Some liberal theorists have been putting the democratic peace argument into question by normatively endowing democracies with an exceptional right to use force in affirming the universal liberal values across the globe.
          Social constructivism contributed to the critique of the democratic peace theory by invoking the cultural, historical and political conditionality of social action. Constructivists argue that a universal democracy simply does not exist. The same applies to the notions of war and peace as democracies can provoke wars by arms supplies without bearing formal responsibility. Finally, it is incorrect to use the modern definition of democracy in studying the history of the relationship between democracy and war.
          Given these still unresolved dilemmas, it would be unwise for Russian scholars to regard the democratic peace theory as a proven case. On the contrary, it is necessary to understand the implications of this theory in a whole variety of historical and cultural contexts.

The Strategy of "Imposed Disarmament" and the International Business

         The Bush Administration has been implementing a gradual shift from the traditional non-proliferation regime to a more "proactive" strategy of counter-proliferation. Apart from ideological motives, the United States may be driven by the realization that the international market of fissile materials has become almost impossible to control for both nation-states and non-proliferation agencies. This is due to the obscure role played in the international arena by private and, in many cases, transnational traders of nuclear fuel and technologies. These companies engage in the mining of uranium and offer their commodities to a wide range of customers, including states that harbor nuclear ambitions. Overall, private traders’ commercial interests can aggravate the proliferation risks that the legitimate nuclear states are concerned with. Analysts have suggested the international market of fissile materials is falling under the influence of "proliferation networks" – opaque ties between transnational companies and often unidentifiable buyers.
          Feeling that controls over transfers of nuclear materials and critical technologies are slipping out of the hands of international bodies and concerned states, the Bush Administration has switched to targeting potential (or actual) proliferators while trying to monitor transactions in fissile materials. The counter-proliferation approach has arguably yielded tangible results in the case of Libya (2004), but falls short of coping with the North Korean, Pakistani, and Iranian challenges.

The Networks Component in EU Governance

         The notion of policy networks has attracted attention of many students of European integration. Such networks engage state and non-state actors into a relatively stable yet decentralized and non-hierarchical relationship. Policy networks are effective in organizing interactions between governments and societies in highly complex transnational systems which do not lend themselves to direct "top-down" governance. Such networks play an important role in the governance of the EU which lacks a strong center of authority and essentially represents a case of "governance without government".
          European policy networks amount to more than the lobbying of bureaucracies by the private sector agents. Non-state actors are constantly bringing their expectations and goals in line with dominant trends and available information. Policy networks facilitate the sound functioning of EU’s consociational democratic system based on a carefully crafted institutionalized consensus among major groups of influence within the Union. This is done by involving grass-roots communities into decision making in the European Union through policy networks. To increase the quality of its policies, the European Commission "cultivates" expert networks which are also used to propagate Commission’s perspectives on the evolution of the EU.
          Policy networks also proved efficient in soothing the contradictions between employers and the organized labor. The networks "transnationalized" the bargaining process thereby increasing the clout of trade unions. Overall, policy networks aggregate interests across the spectrum of political and economic actors in the EU and often produce a new understanding of the common good.

Western Approaches to Economic Risks Assessment

The Asymmetry Paradox in International Conflict

The Strategy of "Double Prevention" in US Foreign Policy

Civilizations: Rissing and... Falling

The "Undetected Boom" of Foreign Investment in Russia

PERSONA GRATA

Images and Personalities

"Deterrence Turned Out to Be a General Theory of International Relations"

REVISITING EARLIER PUBLICATIONS

The Synergy of Doubts in the World Order

Debating current trends

Kazakhstan in International Politics

What Does Russia Need Kazakhstan For?

SCRIPTA MANENT

Reviews

Power and Wealth go to the East
Clyde Prestowitz. Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of We­alth and Power to the East. New York: Basic Books, 2005. 321 p.

Energy Supplies and Security
Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy / Jan H. Kalicki and David L. Goldwyn (eds.). Washington – Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 604 p.

Theorizing European Integration
European Integration Theory / Antje Wiener and Thomas Diez (eds.). Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

The Myths and Realities of Global Governance
Kemal Dervis (in cooperation with Ceren Ozer). A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Governance and Reform. Washington: Center for Global Development, 2005. 301 p.

International Law: The Limits of Power
Jack L. Goldsmith, Eric A. Posner. The Limits of International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 262 p.

Global Studies and Globalization
А.Н. Чумаков. Глобализация. Контуры целостного мира. М.: Проспект, 2005. 428 с.

What is World Politics?
Мировая политика: теория, методология, прикладной анализ / Под ред. А.А. Кокошина и А.Д. Богатурова. Москва: Комкнига / URSS, 2005 428 стр.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

The Systemic Factor in International Relations

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