Strategising Energy: An Asian Perspective

As energy has become one of the crucial factors in ensuring the economic growth and the sustainable development of people nations societies and ultimately human civilisation in the 21st century global scenario there is a pressing need for treating energy as a strategic commodity and for analysing national regional and global strategies concerning energy. This is an attempt to debate and discuss various facets -- economic technological and political -- of such strategies and at the same time to encompass concepts like energy security and energy diplomacy that form significant components of such strategies. Strategising of energy is an issue that is inextricably linked with the domestic and foreign policies of a nation or a region and it is characteristically futuristic as strategies are supposed to be made with a long-term perspective. Contemporary Asian realities serve as the perspective of such an analysis for several reasons. Asia is the home of two fast growing and energy-thirsty countries like China and India as well as Japan and the ASEAN countries. There are at least three energy-producing regions in Asia that are crucial for global energy security like West Asia the traditional one two upcoming regions of Central Asia and the area around South China Sea. The Indian Ocean is one of the most important energy transit routes for international energy transport. Even the smallest disruption in the production and transport-chain of energy within Asia has the potential of upsetting the global energy balance. This volume attempts to focus on a number of significant issues concerning the theme of strategising of energy. Contributors analyse debate and discuss the questions from different viewpoints and different angles. Thus this volume represents a wide spectrum of views-from a scientists vision of a world with cleaner energy to the strategists comments on solutions to national energy issues; from journalists views on the development of governmental policies on energy to academicians analyses of regional energy strategies; and from historians analyses of the restructuring of the national energy infrastructure and the re-prioritising of national energy strategies to debates on national regional as well as maritime energy strategies by specialists on international relations.