Summary
In a world so dependent on the need for oil and gas, it's no wonder why oil rich nations like Russia hold such power on the global stage. The power these Petrostates have influence foreign policy and conflicts around the globe. But why does oil play such a key role in global geo-politics? And what does the development of clean energy mean for those dependent on oil?
In this episode, James is joined by author Emma Ashford to help explore the potential links between oil production and possession in influencing foreign policy, as well as how global conflict can be exasperated by oil's very presence.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In a world where oil-rich nations, like Russia, are more likely to start wars than oil-dependent nations. |
| 0:10.0 | It's surprising how little attention is paid to the so-called aggressive petrostates. |
| 0:15.0 | After all, the oil and gas wealth of these nations is said to prop up the global arms trade. |
| 0:20.0 | It provides diplomatic leverage in tricky political situations and it allows |
| 0:25.6 | them to support violent and nonviolent proxies all around the world. In essence, the |
| 0:30.4 | profits of oil and gas could be said to drive global conflict and global |
| 0:35.2 | defense spending. I'm your host James Rogers. This is the Warfare Podcast and in |
| 0:40.3 | order to dig deeper into the history of oil and war, I've invited Emma Ashford onto the pod. |
| 0:46.7 | Emma is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point in the US. |
| 0:53.7 | She's also the author of a new book, Oil, the State and War, published by Georgetown University |
| 0:59.2 | Press. |
| 1:00.2 | As a result, Emma helps us to explore the many potential links between oil production |
| 1:04.1 | and foreign policy and how oil production influences global conflict. |
| 1:09.4 | Enjoy. And the Hi Emma, welcome to the Warfare Podcast. How you doing today? |
| 1:28.0 | Doing great, thanks so much for having me. |
| 1:30.0 | Well, not a problem at all. We had to get you on the podcast Emma you've released a book called Oil the State and War and I can't think of a more important time in recent history to be discussing this topic. Did you release it at this moment in time where Russia, |
| 1:46.5 | arguably a state that is underpinned by natural resources, by oil and natural gases is driving offensive warfare |
| 1:56.4 | within Europe was it released to coincide with this or is this something you've been |
| 2:00.0 | working on for a long time? No it was was not released to coincide with this, you know, you write books a long time before they're released. |
| 2:06.5 | So it's very relevant to what's happening, but I don't talk about it at all in the book. |
| 2:10.6 | In fact, this was once my dissertation many many years ago and is an entirely different |
| 2:16.0 | book now, but the topic is similar and I've always been really interested in this interplay between energy, energy security, and what Petrostates, that's like |
... |
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