It is a wish of almost
every statesman, particularly realist proponents, to have an autarky state
which it means sufficient and self-independent from external faceted factors
including political and non-political forces such as energy security. But that’s
a bit ideal since today’s borderless issues prove different. According to
Keohane and Nye, one is living under the interdependent world where one tiny
problem in one corner of the globe may affect states, groups and individuals
from the other part of the world. Not only political issues that owe importance
to states but non-military issues do have greater influence to human races,
too. Thus, such proponent of liberal as Keohane and Nye have strongly advocated
for greater cooperation and extending bigger agenda to not just talk about high
politics but also including other issues in the table.
The same thing does apply
to energy security. As Nivola and Carter have elaborated, energy is global
issue and needed to be dealt by global cooperation. A state, even though they
are powerful or powerless, they can hardly survive and without any impacts from
fluctuation of global energy price or unsafely transportation of energy supply.
A state may diversify their sources of energy supply for they can’t stay away
from buying or selling world’s oil or petroleum. Opting-out from depending on
global energy supply might not help to stabilize the price of energy supply.
Rather it may hurt both local and international business. The reason is because
of energy hunger countries are in the row to grasp those opportunity to buy;
one state opt-out from buying does not make any different change. Hence, from
liberal point of view autarky(ism) is not the solution. One is living in an
interconnected world or worldwide web. Most of the issues are transcendence of
states’ boundary and that they are required beyond states to solve them.
However, how can
cooperation between states regarding energy issue be achieved? It is pretty
good idea to tell states not to self-isolation and to begin a greater
integrated action internationally but it is quite utopian. The problems arise:
who to talk to: groups, states or IOs and in which format: bilateral or
trilateral or multilateral? What if the agreement is reached who to overlook
and take care this treaty? States will not have to comply for internationals
agreements and treaties that are accomplished with no enforcement power. Of
course, one can see that there are very interactive diplomatic relations
between states and between states and IOs. But does that translate that states
are cooperating for greater solution regarding issues such as energy security?
Or do they just intervene to keep their status-quo regardless other small
states’ interests? Very often, states, large and small, are adapting themselves
to the given reality of unequal power in the world rather than cooperating.
They know (and everybody knows) for sure that relying on external sources will
place themselves in high risk and that states most often prefer a
self-sufficient status, as realist always claimed. If states could find a way
to sustainably create and use energy without any interruption at home, they
will definitely do it although they may import some from outsiders because this
is the way to put them in secure place.
