Can Stephen Harper learn anything from Vladimir Putin?
To really understand what's going on in the world, it's essential to read the work of Michael Klare, the defence analyst for The Nation.
His new book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, should be required reading for anyone with concerns about the rising price of gasoline, and where this might lead.
I won't give away the entire book. But if you only have time to read one chapter, you might want to check out "An Energy Juggernaut".
It deals with how Vladimir Putin brought Russian oil and gas back under state control.
"In Russia's rise to energy superpowerdom, the decisive role of Vladimir Putin cannot be overestimated," Klare writes. "At every pivotal moment, he intervened directly (If often behind the scenes) to ensure the triumph of the state over powerful private interests -- most notably, the super-rich 'oligarchs' who gained control over Russia's most highly prized energy assets after the breakup of the Soviet Union."
Klare points out that Putin obtained a doctorate at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in the mid-1990s.
Klare also reports that Putin published a summary of his dissertation in 1999, which laid out how gaining control over natural resources could spur economic development and guarantee the country's international position.
Whereas Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is eager to allow the private sector to control this country's energy future, Putin went in the exact opposite direction.
Reading Klare's work, it's clear that Putin never would have allowed the Chinese and the Americans to engage in a bidding war for Russia's bountiful oil and gas reserves.
Harper, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have the same concerns.
Putin's no saint. The deaths of so many Russian journalists demonstrate there is something rotten going on in Putin's federation.
However, it would be helpful if Canadian journalists paid as much attention as Klare has to Putin's energy policies. Because there might be some lessons in there for Canada.
Comments
1 Comments
BWKing
May 18, 2008 at 2:49pm
Couple of points.... Let's give credit to whom it is due.
1. Putin's PhD Thesis was largely plagiarized from a tome on central planning, originally written by a professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
2. Putin's Godfather in the realm of re-taking state control of the energy industry was the late Nikolai Baibakov, Commissar and Oil Minister under Joseph Stalin. Baibakov spent decades (1965 to 1985) working at the top levels of GOSPLAN, the USSR central planning agency. He offered his advice to Putin back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Putin took it.
3. The Russian energy industry under Putin has been a disappointment (if not a latent disaster-in-the-making), despite the appearance of success and vast income. Putin's "success" in energy was to leverage the efforts of Russian "oligarchs" and Western oil firms dating from the bad old days of the 1990s. Then -- in the 1990s -- these people and firms un-did much of the bad work of the Soviets towards the end of the days of the USSR. Under Putin, the Russian state in essence re-nationalized most of the re-energized energy industry (Think Yukos, Shell, BP, etc.). But the central planning under Putin has not extended to successful exploration efforts in the Arctic and other frontiers. Russia has been living off the vast legacy of energy discoveries in the 1950s, 1960s & 1970s (under Baibakov). But Russia is not finding much in the way of "new" discoveries. Hence Russian oil production is in the process of peaking. It is the high world oil prices that have made Putin look smart in all of this.
4. I hope that Steve Harper keeps all of this in mind. Perhaps someone will be good enough to forward this note to him.