The end of the Cold War and America’s later shale boom upended all that (see this). These days, the leader of the free world lauds Russia and picks fights with Canada.
“Energy dominance” is shorthand for President Donald Trump’s agenda to use fossil fuels as a tool of international leverage, with the energy transition a casualty along the way. Its unintended consequence will be to strengthen the foundations of that transition, outside of the US anyway. Because even if environmental, social and governance thinking is cancelled in Trump’s America, his blending of energy policy with a chaotic realignment of US foreign policy brings to the fore an ESG favourable to the transition: Economics, security and geopolitics.
Oil became the world’s biggest energy source during the post-1945 era of increasing globalisation backed by US military muscle. Countries that might have been otherwise reluctant to base their prosperity on a fuel produced in remote, often volatile neighbourhoods like the Middle East could draw comfort from the world’s biggest navy policing the oceans on everyone’s behalf. It helped that most of the big economies outside Moscow’s orbit were US allies and that Washington’s stake in this arrangement increased along with its own oil import dependency.
