It has not been an easy task to wean neither the American vehicle fleet nor the US Department of Defense off of petroleum. However, a smarter use of jet fuel may actually contribute to a better balance of high and low-end forces, leaving the military with greater flexibility in system use and deployment, argues Fred C. Beach at the University of Texas at Austin. The US Federal Government consumes some 2% of all US petroleum, and the DoD is by far the most dominant consumer of these products. Can the DoD reduce the amount of petroleum it consumes without compromising US military operations and effectiveness? Dr. Beach thinks so.

Many in the international community, not the least of which the UN Security Council, have been actively lobbying for years to reign in Iran's nuclear program due to the danger it presents to both regional and international security. The spillover effects of these efforts are impacting on the development potential of Central Asian/Middle Eastern pipeline projects. The US has championed the TAPI (Turkmen-Afghan-Pakistan-India) pipeline while Iran seeks to see an Iran-Pakistan (IP) pipeline built which would provide it increased access to global capital. However, both projects are beleaguered with numerous barriers, and the stakes are high for China, which has invested heavily in Iranian upstream oil and gas development. Hooman Peimani picks apart the politicking behind both of these projects and in doing so deciphers what is at stake for all parties involved.

It sounds like a paradox: In order to make the grid more secure we’re making it less secure. That is, we’re adding new information technology, massively interconnecting many new systems with older systems, and encouraging customers to interact with their utilities via web portals that connect with Smart Grid systems. But for those in the trenches of this massive modernization effort, it makes sense. The electrical industry is working hard to bring itself up to speed on enterprise cyber security best practices. And capabilities that make the grid smarter are also making it more self-aware and resilient, and better able to identify vulnerabilities ahead of time, to detect attacks in their early stages, and to rapidly reconfigure systems to ensure the reliability essential to the health of our economy and our nation.

Corruption, kidnappings, theft and intimidation are the hallmarks of Mexico's drug lords. All of these onerous activities are now gnawing at the legs of Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company. In 2008 Pemex reportedly lost some $2 billion due to illegal tapping, siphoning, and hijacking of crude oil and fuel to criminal elements, some of whose interests are more closely aligned to exporting illegal drugs to satisfy the voracious appetite for these products north of the Mexican-US border. But this isn't Mexico's problem alone. US energy security, predicated on the important Mexican-US trade in oil and oil products, may now be threatened. This is a US national security issue.

Nigeria is quickly moving towards its April 2011 elections with a projected short-term slowdown in the frequency of Nigerian maritime piracy. This would mirror similar slowdowns in piracy activities during other Nigerian electoral periods in 2002 and 2006 only to spike after the period expires. The dynamics between pirates, electoral politics and violence in Nigeria's offshore domains are explored in detail by Danish contributors Thomas Horn Hansen and Dirk Steffen. It appears that Nigerian off-shore pirates are becoming increasingly more organized and violent, having learned from their Niger Delta mentors. We are compelled to ask ourselves whether this short window before April is simply a lull before a pending storm.

The idea of a nuclear fuel bank goes back to US President Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program which sought to both provide access to nuclear materials for peaceful application and dissuade countries from developing their own nuclear weapons programs through uranium enrichment. The question here is whether this mechanism is sufficient to dissuade those countries with nuclear ambitions that go beyond peaceful purposes.

On 28 January 2011, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich used the World Economic Forum in Davos as a platform to publicly attack Russian gas pipeline policy. This speech was only the most recent sign of growing tensions between the two countries over the continuing gas dispute that many hoped would decrease following Ukraine’s 2010 election of the seemingly pro-Russian president Yanukovich. Specifically at issue is Russian investment in the Nord and South stream pipelines that will reduce Russia and Europe’s dependence on Ukraine as a gas transit country. Heading off future gas disputes between these two countries is an imperative for European supply security, but the EU needs to sit down at the bargaining table and begin playing a larger role.

The issue of rare earths, and their treatment by the Chinese, has become a global political football kicked about by import-dependent consumers. While 'rare earths' cannot be discounted for their strategic input into various products ranging from i-pods, radars, and wind turbines, their treatment by China, the world's largest producer of these elements, is nuanced. Contributor Cindy Hurst dispels some of the broad misconceptions regarding rare earths on the eve of the IAGS TREM Center's second annual "Strategic Metals for National Security and Clean Energy" conference to be held in March in Washington D.C.