Attempts to theoretically define the concept of energy security as a factor in the determination of the international political and security system

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, a matter of achieving the energy security, as an essentially important element of the global security system, has become one of the priorities of global politics. This has caused it to become more topical and increased its importance in international relations. The possession of energy reserves provides nations with a number of comparative advantages in contemporary international politics, and with a place among the leading centers of power on a planetary level. This fact gives a special meaning to energy security, because energy resources are an important lever by which nations project their power and influence. The correlation between energy resources and the strengthening of positions and roles of nations in international politics is undeniable and easily verifiable. The paper analyzes and partly explains various attempts to theoretically define the concept of energy security in the context of its growing importance in international relations and the impact on the strengthening of the projected positions of nations as subjects of international order. Nominal definition of the concept of “energy security” has been made more difficult by the fact that there is no universally acceptable definition of the concept of “security”, as well as that there coexist various theoretical approaches to its definition. In the scientific and technical literature, the prevalent concept is that the content and scope of the concept of security today have been substantially expanded due to the continued widening of the limits of its problem framework. The basic characteristics of most of these definitions are non-equivalence – disproportionality and inadequacy. Namely, they are either too narrow and do not include all the contents and essential factors of the security, or they are too wide, and the concept is lost in the range of phenomena. Therefore, in the conceptual sense this term is so debatable that it is not even closely possible to reach an agreement on its meaning. The attempt to define the syntagm of “energy security” reveals the same tendencies as in determining the meaning of the term “security”. Namely, there is a proliferation of different theoretical approaches, as well as differences in the definition of this syntagm, which are substantially determined by, among other things, the status that individual nations have in the global energy system.

Keywords

• global security
• energy security
• international relations
• energy diplomacy