Oil, the State and War

Emma Ashford is a Senior Fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. She works on a variety of issues related to the future of U.S foreign policy, international security, and the politics of global energy markets. She has expertise in the politics of Russia, Europe, and the Middle East. Ashford is also a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Her book “Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates” was published by Georgetown University Press in 2022, and explors the international security ramifications of oil production and export in states such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela. Prior to joining the Stimson Center, Ashford was a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s New American Engagement Initiative, which focused on challenging the prevailing assumptions governing US foreign policy. She was also a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, where she worked on a variety of issues including the US-Saudi relationship, sanctions policy, and US policy towards Russia, and US foreign policy and grand strategy more broadly. She holds a PhD in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Marco Siddi is Leading Researcher at FIIA, where he coordinates the project The Global Politics of the Energy Transition. He is Adjunct Professor in World Politics at the University of Helsinki and in International Relations at Tampere University. He is also a Board Member of the Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA), a Steering Committee Member of the ECPR Research Network on Energy Politics, Policy, and Governance, and a member of the European Leadership Network/Younger Generation Leaders Network on Euro-Atlantic Security. He received his PhD at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cologne, in the framework of the Marie Curie Training Network ‘Exact’ concerning the external action of the European Union.