The BBC offers today an interesting look at Gazprom, Russia’s gas giant. There’s some world-class hyperbole in the piece, including this: Russia is a huge, almost limitless, supplier of gas, and this makes it probably more powerful now than it was during the Cold War.” The premise of the article is that Russia’s oil and ...
By David Bosco, a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
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The BBC offers today an interesting look at Gazprom, Russia's gas giant. There's some world-class hyperbole in the piece, including this:
The BBC offers today an interesting look at Gazprom, Russia’s gas giant. There’s some world-class hyperbole in the piece, including this:
Russia is a huge, almost limitless, supplier of gas, and this makes it probably more powerful now than it was during the Cold War.”
The premise of the article is that Russia’s oil and gas reserves generate geopolitical clout. Perhaps in the short term. But it appears just as likely that the warping of the economy caused by reliance on oil and gas profits will undermine Russia’s economic and political transition and ultimately diminish its international profile. Tom Friedman made the case in FP recently that high energy prices hurt freedom. Other prominent Putin critics go much further: they contend that Russia’s economic growth is a fraction of what it should be and that energy windfalls are masking economic stagnation.
Under oil windfall profits, Russia’s GDP should have grown by 15% to 16% in 2005. Once you dismiss the windfall profits, you see a poor quality of the economic policy that has proven negative to the tune of losing some 9% to 10% of the GDP growth.”
When energy prices slide, we’ll get a truer sense of where Russia stands.
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WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 24: U.S. President Joe Biden (R) and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi participate in a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on September 24, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden is hosting a Quad Leaders Summit later today with Prime Minister Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide. (Photo by Sarahbeth Maney-Pool/Getty Images)
For decades, the U.S. foreign-policy establishment has made the assumption that India could serve as a partner as the United States jostles with China for power in the Indo-Pacific region. B...Show moreut Ashley J. Tellis, a longtime watcher of U.S.-India relations, says that Washington’s expectations of New Delhi are misplaced.
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Over the course of the three-day summit, which I attended, Li and Austin didn’t speak with each other; they spoke at each other. In dueling speeches, Austin summoned the usual Washington buzzwords—a “free and open Indo-Pacific”—and made the point that talks with China were necessary, not a bargaining chip. When Li’s turn came, he responded with familiar Beijing-speak, criticizing Western hypocrisy and Washington’s growing security partnerships in Asia.
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