On June 1, Emma Ashford was featured on “Background Briefing with Ian Masters” regarding the EU oil embargo. Ashford discussed her recent op-ed published in Bloomberg and the Washington Post, “NATO should think twice before accepting Finland and Sweden.”
Ashford also shared some findings from her recently published book, Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates. “Petrostates like Russia are insulated from mistakes that they make, so they are typically very wealthy, they get a lot of income from oil and gas, and they can use that to do things like buy a lot of fancy military equipment. That doesn’t always mean their military is better, as we’ve seen over the last couple of months, but they can also use it in crises,” she explained.
“What we have seen with the Russian economy in the last couple of months is that Russia’s status as a major oil and gas exporter is to a large extent protecting it from the worst potential impacts of sanctions. That’s not to say that the Russian economy is in a good place, because it’s not, but it does appear that they are going to be able to take that oil income, particularly now that it has increased in price, and apply it to their domestic economy in a way that may help to keep the government secure and may help to keep the economy rolling.”
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