Russian energy now 'lever for blackmail'

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.

Kremlin

Russia is expected to increase the use of its vast energy resources to realize its national security objectives, an effort some analysts believe will become more of a "lever for blackmail," according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The plan to use its energy resources to leverage its national security and foreign policy ambitions comes in a report just issued by the Russian Security Council titled "National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation up to 2020."

Russia reportedly has the largest proven natural gas reserves and the seventh-largest proven oil reserves in the world.

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The 7,300-word document admitted publicly what has been known generally among analysts for years: that Russia not only has been using its energy to accomplish its foreign policy goals but will become more brazen in its use, especially toward European countries, which now import some 50 percent of their needed natural gas and 30 percent of their needed oil from Russia.

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"Some (European Union) member states such as Germany and Italy have apparently reconciled themselves to the possibility of long-term Russian control over their economic well-being, and are turning a blind eye to any and all of Russia's opaque energy and pipeline deals in order to remain on good terms with the Kremlin and maintain access to its gas pipelines," according to Roman Kupchinsky, a partner in the risk analysis firm AZEast Group.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attempted to sugarcoat the impact of using energy resources as a tool of conducting Russian foreign policy.

"Russia enjoys vast energy and mineral resources which serve as a base to develop its economy as an instrument to implement domestic and foreign policy," Putin said in February. "The role of the country on international energy markets determines, in many ways, its geopolitical influence."

Putin's comments then were incorporated in the security doctrine in a rather blunt fashion: "The change from bloc confrontation to the principles of multi-vector diplomacy and the (natural) resources potential of Russia, along with the pragmatic policies of using them has expanded the possibilities of the Russian Federation to strengthen its influence on the world arena."

The report's linkage of energy and Russian national security also reflected its importance in terms of the sources of national security as coming from such factors as the "crisis of world and regional financial banking systems, the intensification of the battle over natural resources, among them energy, water and consumer goods."

To a number of security analysts, such wording constitutes a blunt statement on the use of its energy resources to accomplish its foreign policy and national security objectives and control events in other countries in meeting those objectives.

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