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Abstract
Some studies have already been done on the energy factor in Russian foreign policy during the Ukrainian crisis of 2006 and 2009. Energy affairs at a global and regional level have changed. We examine how Russia has used energy as an instrument of foreign policy in the context of the US shale revolution, the new Ukrainian crisis, and low oil prices in Europe, Eurasia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The goal of this article is to examine how Russia is using energy as a foreign policy instrument in the context of the US shale revolution, the Ukrainian crisis and low oil prices in 2010-2015. Russia energy weapon resembles a Swiss army knife that simultaneously cuts in many directions, at home, in the CIS , and in Eastern and Central Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. This war holds lessons for the West who must wage its own contemporary economic wars. It is important to understand that while energy policy as a form of economic warfare can be and generally is deployed autonomously, Moscow often uses economic warfare in conjunction with military force, arms sales, or to achieve some strategic goals.
Key words: Russian Foreign Policy, Energy Affair, Economic Warfare, Strategic Goals
INTRODUCTION
Recently General Phillip Breedlove, Supreme Allied Commander Europe(SAC EUR ), cited Russia's military and economic coercion directed against its neighbors.1 Breedlove rightly singled out economic coercion because on a daily basis Russia's energy network is its most constantly operating factor of coercion or of leverage in Eurasia. Energy policies operate constantly as a major weapon in Russia's national security strategy and are often utilized together with the other elements of Russia's political warfare to consolidate the Putin regime's domestic power and authority, obtain a neo-imperial sphere of influence in the governments of the former Soviet borderlands and Eastern Europe, and fracture European cohesion and integration.
It is equally important to grasp that this form of warfare continues into the present and in tandem with military operations as in Ukraine.2 Upon invading Ukraine, Moscow immediately seized Ukrainian energy platforms in the Black Sea and Crimea and has continued to expropriate Ukrainian oil jacks and facilities there through 2015 to drill for oil and gas in Ukraine's marine economic zone.3 Moscow...