Oil. Geopolitics Reborn: Oil, Natural Gas, and Other Vital Resources

Competition over vital resources is a potent source of international friction among nations and within states. The result is the increasing interplay of international and internal struggles and the growing militarization of the global energy resource quest

From Scarcity to Abundance: The Changing Dynamics of Energy Conflict

Energy security and geopolitics have played a pivotal role in international affairs for a very long time, ever since the development of oil-powered vehicles and weapons of war. Until recently, the geopolitics of energy have largely been governed by perceptions of scarcity—the assumption that oil and other energy reserves were relatively limited, and that competition over their exploitation would lead to recurring crisis and conflict. However, the recent utilization of advanced extractive technologies—including deep-sea drilling and hydraulic fracturing—have resulted in unexpected production gains and fostered a sense that abundance, rather than scarcity, will govern the future energy picture. This perception, in turn, has led to expectations that conflict over energy will diminish. But the deployment of the new technologies has engendered new conflicts of its own, as in the disputes over offshore oil and natural gas deposits in the Arctic Ocean and the East and South China Seas. Also, many nations view energy as a critical source of wealth and power, and so they continue to spar over the ownership and exploitation of valuable reserves. Accordingly, the prospects for relative abundance are not likely to eliminate the risk of conflict over critical energy supplies

From Scarcity to Abundance: The Changing Dynamics of Energy Conflict

Energy security and geopolitics have played a pivotal role in international affairs for a very long time, ever since the development of oil-powered vehicles and weapons of war. Until recently, the geopolitics of energy have largely been governed by perceptions of scarcity—the assumption that oil and other energy reserves were relatively limited, and that competition over their exploitation would lead to recurring crisis and conflict. However, the recent utilization of advanced extractive technologies—including deep-sea drilling and hydraulic fracturing—have resulted in unexpected production gains and fostered a sense that abundance, rather than scarcity, will govern the future energy picture. This perception, in turn, has led to expectations that conflict over energy will diminish. But the deployment of the new technologies has engendered new conflicts of its own, as in the disputes over offshore oil and natural gas deposits in the Arctic Ocean and the East and South China Seas. Also, many nations view energy as a critical source of wealth and power, and so they continue to spar over the ownership and exploitation of valuable reserves. Accordingly, the prospects for relative abundance are not likely to eliminate the risk of conflict over critical energy supplies

Light Weapons and Civil Violence: Policy Options for the International Community

Looks at the correlation between conflict and poverty in relation to inter-communal conflict within states and calls for policy initiatives to reduce the global diffusion of small arms and light weapons

Amine-Linked Single Molecule Circuits: Systematic Trends Across Molecular Families

A comprehensive review is presented of single molecule junction conductance measurements across families of molecules measured while breaking a gold point contact in a solution of molecules with amine end groups. A theoretical framework unifies the picture for the amine-gold link bonding and the tunnel coupling through the junction using Density Functional Theory based calculations. The reproducible electrical characteristics and utility for many molecules is shown to result from the selective binding between the gold electrodes and amine link groups through a donor-acceptor bond to undercoordinated gold atoms. While the bond energy is modest, the maximum force sustained by the junction is comparable to, but less than, that required to break gold point contacts. The calculated tunnel coupling provides conductance trends for all 41 molecule measurements presented here, as well as insight into the variability of conductance due to the conformational changes within molecules with torsional degrees of freedom. The calculated trends agree to within a factor of two of the measured values for conductance ranging from 10-7 G0 to 10-2 G0, where G0 is the quantum of conductance (2e2/h).Comment: Invited paper for forthcoming special issue of Journal of Physics: Condensed Matte