The Geopolitics of Energy

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Energy plays a critical role in a country’s economic policies, domestic development and prosperity. Yet this course moves beyond a traditional understanding of energy security as a function of supply, demand and price to provide a highly topical scholarly exploration of the complex global environment where geopolitics and energy security intersect. In these terms, the primary objective of the course is to examine the ways that states across the international system – both energy producers and consumers – conceive of and use energy as a strategic instrument at home and abroad in the service of their national priorities. This is an important issue to address both because of GU-Q’s location in Qatar and because we live in an increasingly unstable geostrategic environment where the norms that have underpinned the post-1945 international systems are being eroded.