Their invocation of energy impacts is a byproduct of a securitized statist theory of internal politics

When, in 2005, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) made a bid to acquire US energy company Unocal, it resulted in widespread political opposition on grounds of ‘national security’, causing CNOOC to withdraw the bid. The incident offered, some said, ‘the first window into the global fear of resource scarcity and the new geopolitics of energy that will likely accompany it’ 1 . The growing importance of energy to state survival and continued economic development has in practice put energy policy into the ‘high’ politics arena of national security2 , making the phrase ‘energy security’ commonplace. The prevailing understanding of energy security is inherently state-centric and linked to a national security paradigm3 , focusing on securing state energy supplies at stable prices. This understanding of energy both impedes cooperation and encourages strategic and/or economic competition between states over energy supplies by tying energy to a national security ‘us vs them’ scenario, as illustrated by the Unocal affair, which is here considered the first case of energy being successfully securitised in US-China relations4 . Limiting security to national security in practice also limits the energy security debate, overlooking insecurities caused by state pursuit of secure energy supplies on the local and the international levels, including human and environmental security5 . This paper suggests desecuritisation as a possible solution to this problem. Moving energy out of the ‘high’ politics of national security would both make cooperation more likely as energy ‘security’ would no longer be framed in us/them terms, and open up the debate on policy alternatives.

This paper uses US-China relations as an empirical case study to illustrate this argument. Not only are they the dominant powers in the current international system and the two largest consumers of energy globally, they are also key importers of energy6 . Consequently, energy is particularly important in their respective foreign policies, and often causes tension in bilateral relations. This has made them the focus of much of the current academic literature on energy security, and a useful case study for this paper. Overall, both states view energy largely in national security terms, though full securitisation of energy has not been successful before 2005. While broadly equated with national security, full and successful securitisation requires both a particular rhetorical structure and a sense of urgency, combined with a suitable external and discursive context to ensure audience acceptance of the designation of the security threat7 . While the relationship has seen many securitising moves before, full successful securitisation has not occurred in energy relations between the US and China before Unocal. As a result, this paper uses CNOOCs 2005 bid for Unocal as a case study to illustrate the problems of securitising energy in US-China relations, and to put forward an argument for desecuritising energy.

The paper begins with a selective review of the existing energy security literature focused on the relationship between the US and China, dividing it into two theoretical camps viewing energy security either in strategic or market terms. It then presents an ontological and normative critique of this literature, outlining how de/securitisation theory can make a significant contribution to the energy debate. The main body of the paper applies the theory empirically via the case study of the Unocal affair, setting out the political and academic context of what occurred and examining official and non-official documents relevant to the process of securitisation. It then considers the policy implications of securitisation in the Unocal affair. Lastly, it makes a case for desecuritising energy, illustrating this with several examples, including US-China cooperation on shale gas, showing the possibility of dealing with energy supply issues in bilateral relations outside of the ‘security’ realm.

Limits of the current energy security literature and the relevance of securitization

There are two dominant approaches in the current energy security literature; one analyses the causes of and solutions to energy (in)security issues from a strategic/realist perspective; the other adopts a liberal, market-based approach. Both discourses can be seen in academic and political circles in the US and China8 . Overall, the conventional literature on energy security is ‘state-centric’ and ‘supply-side biased ... [equating] security with self-sufficiency’9 , making it limited in some important respects.

The competition, or strategic, approach to energy security views the ‘international struggle for energy security as a zero-sum game’10, emphasising competition, national security, state survival and conflict1112. This school sees energy security as ‘inherently geopolitical’13, and competition is seen as the natural result of scarce resources and increasing demand. Possibilities for energy cooperation are often explicitly dismissed as ‘rather remote’, as in Lee’s observation that ‘it is likely that oil wars…are in the pipeline’14. The cooperation, or market, approach emphasises integration, interdependence and liberalisation of the global energy market15. Here energy security is ‘not a zero-sum effort’ 16. In China ‘cooperation’ is emphasised in academic discourse17 and frequently cited as a key foreign policy goal18 . Liberal views within the United States are neatly summarised in the statement of the Center for American Progress that: ‘Collaboration - not confrontation - on energy...would not only benefit both countries, but also the rest of the world’19 . Some authors have sought to synthesise the realist and liberal discourses in an attempt to provide a more nuanced analysis, and, like realist and liberal authors, provide some interesting and valuable empirical insights20. Nevertheless, the language used by these scholars continues to fall back on a binary understanding of energy security as defined by either national cooperation or competition, retaining a state-centric understanding of security and taking scant interest in the role discourse itself plays in making particular policy possible.

This debate over national competition versus cooperation, which dominates the literature, provides too narrow an analytical basis for understanding this important issue fully. The critique presented here is twofold, ontological and normative. Firstly, I posit that energy security is constituted and contingent, rather than an objectively identifiable goal21. In the existing literature, ‘threats’ to energy security are defined in a way that implies objectivity in the designation, with negligible analysis given over to the process by which threats are socially constructed22, and particular policy courses are made possible by means of the legitimacy created through the use of securititised discourse. Both competition and cooperation, whether economic or strategic, are presented as ‘natural’23, thus excluding from the outset any genuine possibility of change. This paper argues that, on the contrary, such static conception of our social environment is problematic, and to the extent that it provides an accurate account of behaviour, this is less the result of its accurate representation of natural order than it is the triumph of self-fulfilling prophecy24. This leads onto the normative critique. Both sides of the debate implicitly present a conventional view of security whereby something is a security issue because it threatens the economic or political survival of the state. However, while energy ‘security’ may be a threat to the wellbeing of the state, actions which flow from the state’s pursuit of its energy security can themselves present serious threats both to human security and the survival of the ecosystem. The presently prevailing definition of energy security is fundamentally incompatible with climate security25, and thus the argument presented here is that that definition needs to be re-examined. Moreover, limiting the conception of security to national security perpetuates an ‘us’/‘them’ understanding of security, in practice encouraging competition over energy in strategic and/or economic terms.

This paper broadly follows a critical geopolitical approach, problematising ‘invocations of dangers in political discourse’26, on the basis of the conviction that (in)security and threats are ‘discursive constructions rather than natural facts’27. Analysing energy security using securitisation theory helps highlight this, and allows this paper to address the ontological and normative critiques presented in the previous section. Securitisation is the discursive process by which ‘an issue is dramatized and presented as an issue of supreme priority; thus…an agent claims a need for and a right to treat it by extraordinary means’28 . It requires ‘a process of articulations’, known as security ‘speech-acts’29 . It is distinguished by a particular rhetorical structure, emphasising survival, urgency and ‘priority of action’30. The reverse process is desecuritisation. Because of the connotations and history of ‘security’ securitising an issue inevitably ‘evokes an image of threat-defense, allocating to the state an important role in addressing it’31. Securitisation theory has been applied to a wide range of topics, though there has been a lack of empirical securitisation analyses of energy32. This may be partly because of the difficulty in applying securitisation theory to a field which has gradually become considered an accepted part of the security agenda in both the US and China33, with rising importance to state survival. For example, the US has had an international energy advisor on the National Security Council since 2003. This is why the Unocal affair makes a particularly good case study, as it allows a clear empirical analysis of a successful securitisation, with policy implications in both the US and China. While there has been much conceptual revisionism of securitisation theory, this cannot be dealt with in detail here34 . However, it is worth noting the importance of the external context and the role of the audience as key factors for securitisation to be successful35, which is of particular relevance to the case of energy because of the looming reality of ‘peak oil’ and gradual inclusion of energy in the security agenda.