Towards a liberal Leviathan : strategizing the European Union’s energy diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

Facing an energy security crisis prompted by the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict, in June 2022 the EU, Egypt, and Israel signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation related to trade, transport, and export of natural gas to the EU. The research uses critical theory from the Copenhagen school to evaluate the most prominent influences on the EU’s energy diplomacy strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean. A Hobbesian energy trap following Russia’s use of the ‘energy weapon’ is the most immediate and commonly cited external factor, especially in shifting the commodity focus from pipeline to LNG gas. But Moscow is far from being the deepest motivation for Europe’s changing energy diplomacy strategy. Benign at first glance, a closer examination of the MOU’s provisions and intentions found significant implications for the region’s emerging balance of power. Europe’s typical global energy governance approach is explicit in the strategy, notably in basing the energy network off the East Mediterranean Gas Forum. However, global energy governance is overlayed by realist geopolitical and geoeconomic approaches outside of the MOU – most often deployed by superpowers, which the EU is not. Thus, a contrast exists between geopolitical operations ensuring the EastMed energy network will not be developed by ‘unfriendly’ states, and neoliberal economic and institutional policies which perpetuate the Union’s asymmetric North-South relationships. Copenhagen school identifies the hybridity of neoliberal ‘means’ and a neorealist ‘core’ as the ‘Liberal Leviathan’ – the American model of unipolar hegemony that emerged out of the Cold War, and under which the EU takes a subordinate role. Ultimately, the research finds that downward pressure on Brussels by the Liberal Leviathan is the most significant motivating factor in the EU’s EastMed energy diplomacy strategy.