Strategising Energy: An Asian Perspective

Sreemati Ganguli

As energy has become one of the crucial factors in ensuring the economic growth and the sustainable development of people, nations, societies and, ultimately, human civilisation in the 21st century global scenario, there is a pressing need for treating energy as a strategic commodity and for analysing national, regional and global strategies concerning energy. This is an attempt to debate and discuss various facets -- economic, technological and political -- of such strategies, and at the same time, to encompass concepts, like energy security and energy diplomacy, that form significant components of such strategies. Strategising of energy is an issue that is inextricably linked with the domestic and foreign policies of a nation or a region, and it is characteristically futuristic, as strategies are supposed to be made with a long-term perspective.

Contemporary Asian realities serve as the perspective of such an analysis for several reasons. Asia is the home of two fast growing and energy-thirsty countries like China and India, as well as Japan and the ASEAN countries. There are at least three energy-producing regions in Asia that are crucial for global energy security, like West Asia, the traditional one, two upcoming regions of Central Asia and the area around South China Sea. The Indian Ocean is one of the most important energy transit routes for international energy transport. Even the smallest disruption in the production and transport-chain of energy within Asia has the potential of upsetting the global energy balance.

This volume attempts to focus on a number of significant issues concerning the theme of strategising of energy. Contributors analyse, debate and discuss the questions from different viewpoints and different angles. Thus, this volume represents a wide spectrum of views—from a scientist’s vision of a world with cleaner energy, to the strategist’s comments on solutions to national energy issues; from journalists’ views on the development of governmental policies on energy, to academicians’ analyses of regional energy strategies; and from historians’ analyses of the restructuring of the national energy infrastructure and the re-prioritising of national energy strategies, to debates on national, regional as well as maritime energy strategies by specialists on international relations.

Sreemati Ganguli Sreemati Ganguli is a Fellow, Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta. She is a former Fellow of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata. She has her Ph.D. in Indo-Russian relations. She has two books to her credit—Indo-Russian Relations: The Making of A Relationship 1992-2002 and Russia and the Central Asian Republics: Post-Soviet Engagements. Her research interests include Russian foreign as well as energy policies, Russia’s relations with the West, energy geopolitics in Eurasia, South Asia-Eurasia strategic linkages and Silk Road connectivity. This volume is the outcome of an international conference on the strategic energy scenario in contemporary Asian context, which she helped organize.