'From this perspective, the NATO position on Georgia’s and Ukraine’s accession really didn’t matter much to Russia’s aggressive stance on the two countries, except for serving as a useful pretext to its rising ambitions.'<blockquote>'..The mechanism is simple: High oil revenues lower leaders’ domestic political accountability and responsibility for policy decisions while increasing risks of international adventurism. Oil revenues also increase states’ military capability by providing them with larger and more fungible pools of funding for military expenditures.
From this perspective, Russia is not so much an insecure superpower as it is a typical petrostate with a short-term horizon that gets aggressive and ambitious once it accumulates substantive oil revenues. Back in the early 2000s when the price of oil was $25 a barrel, Putin was a friend of the United States and didn’t mind NATO enlargement in 2004. According to Hendrix’s research, this is exactly how petrostates behave when the oil prices are low: In fact, at oil prices below $33 a barrel, oil exporters become much more peaceful than even non-petrostates. Back in 2002 when the Urals price was around $20, in his Address to the Federal Assembly Putin enumerated multiple steps to European integration and active collaboration aimed at creating a single economic space with the European Union among Russia’s top priorities. In 2014 – with the price of oil price around $110 – Putin invaded Ukraine to punish it for the attempts to create that same single economic space with the E.U.
In 2007, soon after oil prices hit their first peak at $75 a barrel (near the threshold of $77 a barrel in constant 2008 dollars that Hendrix underlined), Putin gave his famous Munich speech where he first challenged the U.S. hegemony but was still hopeful about prospects of a meaningful partnership with the United States and Europe. By 2014 – with oil priced above $100 – Putin in his Valdai speech completely rejected prospects of any meaningful cooperation with the U.S.
When the Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the oil price was at that period’s peak of $101 a barrel. Russia’s recent adventures in Georgia in 2008 took place when the price of oil hit its highest point since 1980 ($105), and in Ukraine in 2014 when oil prices overcame even their 2008 levels, just as the theory of aggressive petrostate’s behavior would predict. From this perspective, the NATO position on Georgia’s and Ukraine’s accession really didn’t matter much to Russia’s aggressive stance on the two countries, except for serving as a useful pretext to its rising ambitions.'
- Maria Snegovaya,
Think of Russia as an ordinary petrostate, not an extraordinary superpower, March 9, 2015</blockquote>
Context (Germany's Green Energy Revolution) - Wind- und Solaranlagen produzieren erstmals Strom mit über 30.000 MW Leistung<blockquote>
'..a "virtual mafia state"..' - '..Russia has become an outright dictatorship..'(Green Energy Mix) - '..Totally Clean-Powered in [20]35.'(Green Energy Mix) - Biofuel: '..a 10,000 acre Joule plant will produce a reserve value of 50 million barrels, equaling a medium-sized oil field.'(The Electric Universe) - '..LPPFusion .. one of the leading companies in alternative fusion.' - Plans for 2015(The Electric Universe) - '..With the model for the Electric Sun..'(The Electric Universe) - 'Electric currents create magnetic fields..'</blockquote>