from transition to hegemony - The Watson Institute for International ...

incoherent empire. But we should also pose the same questions around Russia, and rethink the
place of the European Union, in the middle of it all.
Of course we can’t speak about the European Union in singular terms, even though the
conventions of disciplines and of our language might enable us to speak of American and
Russian strategies without gasp. It is clear, however, that we should be considering the ways in
which different national leaderships are struggling to maneuver within the European Union to
shape its own response to recurring rival American and Russian use of military and energy
resources. We should also consider, therefore, how power relations within the European Union
shape national dispositions in those rivalries.
In the end, it’s not only a matter of geopolitical contest around oil and guns, even if that
has been my focus. I also find that we should be attending, as Zsuzsa Gille suggests, to those
deeper structures of power and change that lie beneath the surface, ones that interface not only
with the means of energy production and violence, but also with environmental capacities to
secure public health and sustain environmental well being. For that reason, we should not only
consider how the new transnational agenda might be explored within particular sectors, or even
how it might articulate with emerging imperialist contests. We should also explore, I believe,
those issues that endanger security even when publics and politicians have little room on their
immediate agendas for their address. A focus on energy, fortunately, allows that very
engagement, and invites us to consider the ways in which ideas and interests around
environmental security might inspire new visions of military alliances and energy needs. But it
won’t realize this vision by working within the terms of transition culture itself.
Even as we explore the articulation of increasingly complex transnational and national
levels of policy and practice, we might also inquire directly into the ways in which competing
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