Politics of international energy crises and resentment

Abstract Since World War II, energy producers have deliberately triggered two major international energy crises. The first was the energy crisis of the 1970s that was linked to economic and political turbulence in the Middle East. The second was the energy crisis in the 2020s that was generated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Understanding the underlying sources of these exceptional producer-led forms of energy coercion is the focus of the article. This involves asking why, in both these crises, energy producers took actions that involved a high risk that they would damage long-term economic interests and undermine the trust of the customers that they had cultivated for a long time. We argue that a key causal factor in these two cases of energy coercion is the role of emotions and, specifically, that of resentment. The legacies of colonialism also provide a key context for both these energy crises, though in different ways. The article is original in highlighting the role of resentment in International Relations theory and in energy studies and in comparing the energy crises of the 1970s and those of the 2020s.