Political attention in Europe and the US to the problem of energy security has significantly diminished, and there is more to this shift that just the impact of financial crisis in the EU and the effect of the ‘shale gas revolution’. In the middle of the past decade, some fundamental decisions were made in the European Commission regarding the liberalization and diversification of the energy supplies, but the economic underpinning of these decisions has vastly changed. The whole set of energy directive is now pointing in the wrong direction, but rethinking of past mistakes is lagging, so the energy policy is left in its bureaucratic ‘box’. Russia is set to remain locked in the European gas market but is very slow in adapting to the changes in it. Both Russia and the EU remain in denial that the time for their energy-geopolitical games is over as the nexus of energy flows is fast shifting to Asia-Pacific.
The spectacular and unexpected explosion of revolutionary energy in the Arab world since the start of 2011 makes it more relevant to re-examine the chain of attempts to depose the quasi-democratic regimes in the states that emerged from the break-up of the USSR. Often called “color revolutions”, these attempts brought some remarkable results in the mid-2000s, but—against common perceptions—continue. The analysis shows that the rate of success in the collection of 13 cases is close to 50%, but the track record of post-revolutionary development is rather disappointing. Nothing in the processed data suggests a decline in the dynamics of the revolutionary processes in the former Soviet space, but the diminishing attention from the West and the ageing of autocracies (particularly in Central Asia) could make the forthcoming revolutions uglier as they drive state failure stronger than democratic change. The most complex situation matures in Russia, which has assumed the leadership role in suppressing the wave of revolutions but is experiencing a crisis of its corrupt and un-modernizable authoritarian regime.
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