Oil, gas and imperialism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1677343,00.html
The Russia-Ukraine crisis is a reminder that politics, not the market,
is driving global energy policies
Daniel Litvin
Wednesday January 4, 2006
The Guardian
You may have thought the age of empires was over, that in today's
globalising world relations between states were governed by economics,
market forces and free trade, rather than battles for political
influence between the great powers. When it comes to the quest for, and
control of, energy supplies, however, we still live in a partly
19th-century world.
Compared with the situation earlier this week, Russia's attempt to more
than quadruple the price of the gas it charges to Ukraine is no longer
affecting other European countries as severely as it was. None the less
Russia continues to seek to withhold gas from Ukraine, exerting a
stranglehold on the nation that would appear to be motivated as much by
politics as economics. Smarting from Ukraine's recent turn to the west,
including Nato and the EU, Russia wishes to bring its once vassal state
back into its sphere of influence. Russia has long offered subsidised
energy to such states to help keep them within its fold. Threatening to
hike Ukrainian gas prices to free market levels is in this respect the
modern equivalent of a warning shot fired from the Russian imperial
gunboat.
Ukraine
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/d1a2c3606a6a0ed1
Putin
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/cf9db6bf05a04d90
Russia
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/cd3eb1840b43f444
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