David Bernell – författare

This book analyzes the energy security of the United States – its ability to obtain reliable, affordable, and sufficient supplies of energy while meeting the goals of achieving environmental sustainability and protecting national security. The economic and national security of the United States is largely dependent upon fossil fuels, especially oil. Without significant changes to current practices and patterns of energy production and use, the domestic and global impacts – security, economic, and environmental – are expected to become worse over the coming decades. Growing US and global energy demands need to be met and the anticipated impacts of climate change must be avoided – all at an affordable price, while avoiding conflict with other nations that have similar goals.

Bernell and Simon examine the current and prospective landscape of American energy policy, from tax incentives and mandates at the federal and state level to promote wind and solar power, to support for fracking in the oil and natural gas industries, to foreign policies designed to ensure that markets and cooperative agreements — not armies, navies and rival governments — control the supply and price of energy resources. They look at the variety of energy related challenges facing the United States and argue that public policies designed to enhance energy security have at the same time produced greater insecurity in terms of fostering rising (and potentially unmet) energy needs, national security threats, economic vulnerability, and environmental dangers.

This book analyzes the energy security of the United States – its ability to obtain reliable, affordable, and sufficient supplies of energy while meeting the goals of achieving environmental sustainability and protecting national security. The economic and national security of the United States is largely dependent upon fossil fuels, especially oil. Without significant changes to current practices and patterns of energy production and use, the domestic and global impacts – security, economic, and environmental – are expected to become worse over the coming decades. Growing US and global energy demands need to be met and the anticipated impacts of climate change must be avoided – all at an affordable price, while avoiding conflict with other nations that have similar goals.

Bernell and Simon examine the current and prospective landscape of American energy policy, from tax incentives and mandates at the federal and state level to promote wind and solar power, to support for fracking in the oil and natural gas industries, to foreign policies designed to ensure that markets and cooperative agreements — not armies, navies and rival governments — control the supply and price of energy resources. They look at the variety of energy related challenges facing the United States and argue that public policies designed to enhance energy security have at the same time produced greater insecurity in terms of fostering rising (and potentially unmet) energy needs, national security threats, economic vulnerability, and environmental dangers.

This book seeks to address the roots of the hostility that has characterized the United States’ relationship with Cuba and has persisted for decades, long after the Cold War. It answers the question of why America’s Cold War era policy toward Cuba has not substantially changed, despite a radically changed international environment, going beyond the common explanation that American electoral politics and the Cuban lobby drive US policy toward Cuba.

Bernell argues that US foreign policy towards Cuba cannot be viewed as an objective response to a set of challenges to US interests and principles, and is better understood as a policy that is rooted in and informed by historical understandings of American and Cuban identities, which are themselves historically contingent. Examining a wide range of sources including government documentation and official speeches, this work explores the origins and perpetuation of a policy perspective that emphasizes Cuban difference, illegitimacy, and inferiority juxtaposed against American virtue, legitimacy, and superiority.

This work will be of great interest to all scholars of US foreign policy, International Relations, and Latin American politics.