Weaponised interdependence and European energy security: Infrastructure, systemic vulnerability, and the post-2022 transformation

Abstract

This article extends a concept developed by Farrell and Newman (2019) beyond its original financial and digital domains to physical energy infrastructure, examining how the Russia–Ukraine war has transformed European energy security from a market-based relationship into a condition of systemic vulnerability. The analysis employs qualitative document analysis of publicly available European Union’s policy instruments, International Energy Agency’s market reports, and European Union Agency for Cybersecurity’s threat assessments, structured around a three-domain framework encompassing physical infrastructure, digital systems, and governance arrangements. Diversification strategies implemented after 2022 reduced dependence on Russian energy but simultaneously reconfigured systemic vulnerability across all three domains: liquified natural gas (LNG) import concentration and deployment of floating storage and regasification units created new physical chokepoints; supervisory control and data acquisition and digital vendor dependencies introduced persistent digital interdependencies; and governance fragmentation among member states amplified vulnerability by producing uneven resilience across interconnected systems. European energy security must be reconceptualised as the management of systemic interdependence across interconnected physical, digital, and institutional domains. The article introduces the concept of structural weaponisation potential—the proposition that networked energy systems generate vulnerability as an emergent property of their architecture, independent of any actor’s intention to exploit it.