‘Russian diesel won’t help US, it shows double standards on India’: Margarita M. Balmaceda, Professor at Seton Hall University

Margarita M. Balmaceda is Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University. As Washington DC demands diesel from Moscow now, she speaks with Srijana Mitra Das in ET Evoke about 'technopolitics', Russia's 'Trojan horse' — and the hidden ways energy shapes power in our world:

Q. What is the core of your research?

A. I work on energy. The core of my research is the question: What is hidden when we speak about energy? What is not obvious, and how do those invisible links play a key role in the long term?


In my earlier work, I looked in detail at the ‘black box’ of energy-making in countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Russia. I researched what was happening domestically there and how all kinds of interactions and governance issues play a role in defining real energy policy.

In the book I’m finishing now, I look at what I call ‘hidden’ fossil fuels — these are not used directly as gasoline or electricity but are embedded in feedstock, fertilisers, steel production or plastics.

This is another hidden aspect of energy — I’m bringing that up to the surface, along with how essential the issue of transformation is, as in the chemical transformation from methane in natural gas to nitrogen fertiliser.

I’m studying how that transformation plays a role technologically and in value chains, in rent-seeking and geopolitics.

Q. Why do you describe Russia’s hold on energy as a ‘Trojan horse’?

A. I started to use that phrase when I was analysing the energy dependencies between former Soviet states and Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s also completely applicable to the energy relationship between Russia and Western Europe up to 2022 — in the form of heat and fertilisers, it’s still applicable today.

It is about how relatively low prices make a country dependent on supplies, let’s say, from Russia, and later, those dependencies create much deeper vulnerabilities than people imagined.

Consider individual states which make their own energy policy in the European Union. Between 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time, and 2022, the full-scale invasion, the degree of dependency of Germany, Italy and other EU member-states on Russian oil, natural gas and coal increased significantly.

This provided benefits for different groups in those countries. In Germany, it benefitted investors in Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. It provided relatively low-price feedstock for the chemical industry and a ‘safe’ bridge fuel that would supposedly allow Germany to transition nicely from high CO2 coal to a green future.

So, it was apparently perfect — except that, by the end of 2021, Russia started to reduce supplies. It later tried to use that dependency to get the EU to not react to Russia’s full-scale invasion. So, in that sense, we could speak of a gas-based ‘Trojan horse’.

Q. Will President Trump’s diesel deal with Russia help Americans facing high energy prices — and heading into midterm polls?

A. No — it will not help Americans in the short term. Obviously, the midterms are in Trump’s thinking, as the issue of how expensive it is to fill up your tank has been front and centre in almost every political ad. In the United States, this doesn’t even mean filling up your car; it means filling your truck.

Trump knows this is a vulnerability — but the amount of diesel Russia could supply is small right now, even with Moscow promising to lift export restrictions. Further, Russia’s refining capacity is severely threatened by Ukrainian attacks. So, this is not going to lead to a real respite for the American consumer.

Q. What is the larger geopolitical significance of the US diesel deal for Russia?

A. The larger meaning is linked to how Russia has been trying to weaken the impact of sanctions since 2022. Also, there are evidently actors in the United States ready to reengage economically with Russia — we have seen some trial balloons, such as discussions over oil prospecting possibilities in Alaska.

A few weeks ago, we’ve seen this in discussions of possible US purchases of Belarusian potash fertiliser. Belarus is a close ally of Russia — the US doesn’t want to buy potash fertiliser from Canada, so it’s playing with the idea of buying it from Belarus.

The problem is, to transport that fertiliser from Belarus, it has to go through European Union ports, but the EU has specifically put sanctions on those exports from Belarus — the US wants the EU to weaken or lift those restrictions.

These are trial balloons to poke holes in the sanctions — and Russia is very interested in that. We are seeing a confluence of interests between some US actors, or friends of US actors, like in the Middle East, and players in Russia who see prospects of a good deal the day after sanctions are lifted.

Q. How will the US-Russia diesel deal impact Ukraine?

A. It will impact it negatively — even if Russia’s capacity to actually provide diesel is limited, there will be additional income going to Moscow. The possibility of that income will also affect the valuation of Russian companies. More income for the Russian state will basically give Moscow the ability to carry out attacks on Ukraine, including on Ukraine’s residential-use energy infrastructure. So, this deal with the US is not good news for Ukraine at all.

Moreover, this comes with US demands that Ukraine stops attacking Russian refineries plus unconfirmed reports that the US at some point stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine to pressure Kyiv to not target Russian refineries.

Q. You use the term ‘technopolitics’ in your writing on Russian energy chains — what does this mean?

A. ‘Technopolitics’ refers to the ways technology is used for political pressure — but it also refers to how certain narratives about technology can be used to support particular political projects. This is what we’ve seen, for instance, domestically in Russia with the state’s near-monopoly on natural gas production, functioning under the idea that technologically, centrally-controlled natural gas production and distribution is the only possibility. It’s a way in which technology and political goals coincide — or come into tension.

Q. How has technopolitics shaped Russian power domestically?

A. This happens mainly through rent distribution. It’s funny because normally, when we talk about rents and corruption, we used to discuss countries like Ukraine — but that kind of rent distribution takes place in Russia as well, with corruption in energy continuing. We may not envision it in the same way because we don’t think about energy oligarchs today in Russia as we did before. But those actors benefiting from energy rents are there, some even very close to the entourage of President Putin.

There is another important element in the interface between technopolitics and domestic politics in Russia — it has to do with the way different technologies allow the sharing of rents between diverse regions of the Federation. In my book ‘Russian Energy Chains’, I wrote about how different technologies for transporting oil of diverse grades allowed for certain types of rent distribution between central oil companies and key ethnic republics of the Russian Federation — particularly Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.

These two republics are in the news very often because many refineries Ukraine is hitting are there. Now, the oil produced in these two republics is heavier, usually getting a lower valuation — however, a decision was made to mix this with oil coming from other parts of Russia, so the profits from all these oils were standardised and these republics got access to more profits. This is just one example of how technopolitics happens in Russia through rent distribution, partly through regional deals or deals with ethnic republics, partly through deals with specific individuals linked to different companies.

Q. You’ve outlined ‘nexus thinking’ in the context of fertilisers and decarbonisation — is the global economy decarbonising at an ideal pace?

A. No, this is not going at the pace wanted. Part of it has to do with signals sent from top leaderships, in particular, in the US, while part of it is linked to the fact that key energy companies that had tried to make public relations capital out of decarbonisation initiatives are scaling back investments in that area. There is a lot of greenwashing in supposed decarbonisation.

For example, I discuss in my forthcoming book on hidden fossil fuels how a lot of the discussions about ‘green chemicals’ or ‘green fertilisers’ mask how these products are not truly carbon-free but are anointed that through mass balancing. If, say, 4% of your feedstock is carbon-free, then you notionally say 4% of your fertilisers or products are carbon-free — but they are not. So, there is considerable manipulation. With hydrogen as well, we are giving brownie points to each company that deals with it while we forget that 98% of the hydrogen produced today is fully fossil fuel-based. So, there is a lot of instrumentalisation of green goals to actually maintain the system as it is — or support very slow progress forward.

Q. Finally, several Western nations, including the US now, are getting or negotiating energy supplies from Russia but India is threatened with sanctions if we do so — how do you analyse this?

A. This is a double standard that has been difficult to justify before October 9 — now that the US is speaking directly about purchases of diesel from Russia, it is much harder to maintain. It’s very problematic to think of how some energy imports should be allowed but not others. It seems the current US administration has not been very worried about the inconsistencies in its approach — but, objectively, this is a real double standard.

Views expressed are personal.