5 - Beyond the National Borders: NATO and Energy Security in Azerbaijan

Summary

The oil and gas industry is one of the most globalized sectors in the world. Its processes of extraction, production and trade cannot prescind from the collaboration of national governments, international organizations, local firms and multinational corporations. Foreign actors and their interests coexist and interact with their national counterparts; the global energy markets make the non-national a prime interlocutor of domestic energy politics. The internationalization of energy has progressively bent the space of its security and created multiple opportunities for foreign and international security interventions. Due to the growth of the energy industry, resources, infrastructure and markets flow and are not restrained by borders, stretching the spatiality of energy security outward. This has important consequences for energy security, which are both material and ideational: energy security threats are dealt with, perceived, understood and even imagined as global concerns. When Heydar Aliyev liberalized Azerbaijan's oil and gas sector in 1994, he not only opened the industry up to foreign money, but also facilitated the presence and participation of a wide variety of foreign actors in the local energy sector. To accelerate and intensify extraction and production and to develop an international transport network, Azerbaijan partnered with several overseas companies; neighbouring countries, particularly Turkey and Georgia; regional and non-regional states, such as the US and most European consumer states; intergovernmental organizations, such as the European Union and NATO; and several stakeholders that had an interest in the country's energy potential and related lucrative opportunities. By collaborating in the energy projects, all these actors have developed a direct interest in Azerbaijan's energy industry and its security, creating a space for themselves to influence the decision-making process of the country's energy and security politics. The stakes they have in Azerbaijan's oil and gas affect how these actors perceive and feel about energy security; notably they tend to deal with Azerbaijan's oil and gas as one of their own security concerns. Increased salience and attention to energy security by international organizations and third states have intensified the political focus on the international dimension of energy (in)security.

These preliminary remarks serve to introduce the main question that drives this chapter: what happens when energy security is embedded in discourses and practices of global security?