From European to Eurasian energy security: Russia needs and energy Perestroika

Pavel K. Baev 한양대학교 아태지역연구센터 2012 Journal of Eurasian Studies Vol.3 No.2

Political attention in Europe and the US to the problem of energy security has significantly diminished, and there is more to this shift that just the impact of financial crisis in the EU and the effect of the ‘shale gas revolution’. In the middle of the past decade, some fundamental decisions were made in the European Commission regarding the liberalization and diversification of the energy supplies, but the economic underpinning of these decisions has vastly changed. The whole set of energy directive is now pointing in the wrong direction, but rethinking of past mistakes is lagging, so the energy policy is left in its bureaucratic ‘box’. Russia is set to remain locked in the European gas market but is very slow in adapting to the changes in it. Both Russia and the EU remain in denial that the time for their energy-geopolitical games is over as the nexus of energy flows is fast shifting to Asia-Pacific.

Russia as a Security Disaster Area: Possible Conflicts and Interventions in 2015

( Pavel K Baev ) 한국국방연구원 2002 The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis Vol.14 No.1

The fluid state of the system of international relations in the middle of the global war against terrorism increases the need to undertake risk analysis of the options that until recently could have been dismissed as improbable. This article takes a deliberately pessimistic view on Russia, which continues to be a source of major security challenges, and attempts to measure the scale of possible disasters in medium-long perspective. This country, despite its present-day semblance of stability, may see a chain of violent conflicts engulfing the most vulnerable parts of its vast periphery - and some of those may pose such risks to international peace and security that external interventions might become necessary. The analysis examines the elements of the basic scenario of gradual erosion of the central authority in Russia under the impact of centrifugal forces and identifies a number of possible flash-points in the North, South, West and Far East of the country. The requirements for, and formats of external armed interventions in these low-intensity but high-risk conflicts are evaluated, while the fundamental issue of whether the West would be politically willing and militarily capable of performing any of the described interventions is deliberately left out.

How Afghanistan was broken: The disaster of the Soviet intervention

Pavel K Baev 한국외국어대학교 국제지역연구센터 2012 International Area Studies Review Vol.15 No.3

The self-propelling dynamics of violence in Afghanistan, which appears set to outlast the as yet ongoing peace-making, is rooted in the impact of the Soviet intervention, in which fighting was only an element of the complex political drama of destruction of the Afghan state. The intervention was launched in response to the escalation of domestic crisis in Afghanistan, about which the Soviet leadership knew much but understood little. The Soviet Army showed the capacity for learning but the improved tactical skills and upgraded operations brought only greater destruction, which was counter-productive in the absence of a coherent strategy and turned out to be politically unsustainable. No retrospective analysis can establish with any certainty whether the war had a ‘military solution’ or not, but it is quite clear that the USSR in its autumnal decade had neither Stalinist determination nor Leninist ingenuity to find one. The Soviet military machine was not over-burdened by the peripheral war and could have absorbed the defeat, but the consequences of the Mujahedin victory for Afghanistan were truly devastating. The USA helped to mobilize the most aggressively radical forces and remained in denial on their anti-modernization agenda,assuming that the ‘black hole’ that would emerge after the Soviet withdrawal was an isolated problem of no global significance.

Matrix for Post-Soviet ‘Color Revolutions’: Exorcising the Devil from the Details

Pavel K. Baev 한국외국어대학교 국제지역연구센터 2011 International Area Studies Review Vol.14 No.2

The examined set of uprisings has turned out to be more diverse than often presumed, but both sub-sets – (the one fitting the model of ‘color revolution’ and the one edging towards state failure) – have features that distinguish them as post-Soviet. Even the exemplary ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine is significantly different from the ‘velvet revolutions’ in Central Europe – and from the ‘18 day Revolution’ in Egypt. The particular character of political turmoil in the selected area is coming not only from the common Soviet past that still underpins state-building in these 12 states (plus a few quasi-states) and from the common traumas of the early 1990s (particularly acute in the Caucasus), but is also shaped by the under-development of these state-projects. One common institutional deficiency is military weakness, so the top brass cannot play a key role in deciding the outcome of crises (as, in Egypt). Every political crisis in this area develops with the heavy involvement of Russia but there is also a strong pull of the EU, particularly in the Eastern Neighborhood area.

Can Russia keep its special ties with Vietnam while moving closer and closer to China?

Pavel K Baev,Stein Tønnesson 한국외국어대학교 국제지역연구센터 2015 International Area Studies Review Vol.18 No.3

While entering into a deep confrontation with the West in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia has sought to uphold its international profile by upgrading its strategic partnership with China and adding new economic content to it, first of all in energy deals. At the same time, Moscow is aware of the risks related to becoming a minor partner to powerful China and to diminishing its ability to make its own contributions to forming the global agenda. One way of avoiding too much dependence on Chinese patronage would be to retain and cultivate the traditional ties with Vietnam and perhaps even play a pacifying role in the oscillating Chinese- Vietnamese tensions. Russian energy companies are exploring opportunities for further advancing offshore oil and gas projects in the South China Sea, although the profitability of these projects remains rather low. Russia has delivered two out of six contracted Kilo class submarines to Vietnam, but its role as the main provider of weapons may now be challenged by the USA and Japan. The prospects for maintaining or expanding Russia’s security and energy connections with Vietnam is thus a demanding topic for analysis, which may throw light also on the all-important trilateral relationship between China, the USA and Japan.

Fabrication and Characterization of Gold−Polymer Nanocomposite Plasmonic Nanoarrays in a Porous Alumina Template

Shukla, Shobha,Kim, Kyoung-Tae,Baev, A.,Yoon, Y. K.,Litchinitser, N. M.,Prasad, P. N. American Chemical Society 2010 ACS NANO Vol.4 No.4

<P>A facile, cost-effective, and manufacturable method to produce gold−polymer nanocomposite plasmonic nanorod arrays in high-aspect-ratio nanoporous alumina templates is reported, where the formation of gold nanoparticles and the polymerization of a photosensitive polymer by ultraviolet light are simultaneously performed. Transverse mode coupling within a two-dimensional array of the nanocomposite rods results in a progression of resonant modes in the visible and infrared spectral regions when illuminated at normal incidence, a phenomenon previously observed in nanoarrays of solid gold rods in an alumina template. Finite element full-wave analysis in a three-dimensional computational domain confirms our hypothesis that nanoparticles, arranged in a columnar structure, will show a response similar to that of solid gold rods. These studies demonstrate a new simple method of plasmonic nanoarray fabrication, apparently obviating the need for a cumbersome electrochemical process to grow nanoarrays.</P><P><B>Graphic Abstract</B> <IMG SRC='http://pubs.acs.org/appl/literatum/publisher/achs/journals/content/ancac3/2010/ancac3.2010.4.issue-4/nn9018398/production/images/medium/nn-2009-018398_0002.gif'></P><P><A href='http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/nn9018398'>ACS Electronic Supporting Info</A></P>