A hotter cold war.

• Author: Oliveira, Eloy H.S.

A Review of The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America's Grasp

By Marin Katusa

(Somerset, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2014), 269 pages.

In The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America's Grasp, energy expert Marin Katusa explains how and why the U.S. is losing its hegemony in the energy market to Russia, and what can be done about it.

Connecting the dots, as any good one-time math teacher would, Katusa outlines how "The Great Game" played between the British and the Russian empires evolved over time, and how the U.S. emerged to take the UK's role. The author talks about the rise of U.S. petrodollars after Bretton Woods, and gold parity. After that he shifts his focus from west to east--to Vladimir Putin. He sketches Putin's biography with attention to his poor childhood, early work with the KGB, and his first steps into politics. According to the author, Putin quickly realized that Russia's biggest strength was its vast natural resources, which needed to remain under Russian control--to include keeping the domestic private owners under the state's thumb. (1)

Katusa then turns his attention to Ukraine, a nation that plays a very important role in Vladimir Putin's plans, as a vital channel for gas sales from Russia to Europe. Fifty percent of Russia's gas exports to the European Union pass through Ukraine. (2) Not by chance, Ukraine has been tempted to leave Russia and join the EU. Keeping Ukraine under its sphere of influence is both "business and politics" for Putin, as he does not want to lose this portal for significant revenue, nor does he want to lose his leverage to shut down the gas that warms Europe during the winter. (3)

Katusa raises an important, oft-overlooked point about Mr. Putin: While his passion for martial arts wins headlines, his scholarly work on energy and the economy have raised far fewer eyebrows. (4) In 1997, Vladimir Putin wrote a dissertation in economics entitled "Mineral and Raw Materials Resources and the Development Strategy for the Russian Economy". Putin gives a sense of his current strategy to improve the country's economy within the document. The strategy it sketches was put into practice the moment Putin sat on the presidential chair. Katusa divides the strategy into three parts: the Putinization of Oil, the Putinization of Gas, and the Putinization of Uranium. (5)

The first part of the strategy consists of dominating the global oil and gas markets. Following massive investment...