IN A WORLD OF AMERICAN preponderance, European integration, and Asian ascent, it is sometimes hard to take Russia seriously as a great power. In many respects, the country has been in steady decline since the end of the Cold War. Its population is shrinking. Life expectancy is falling. It cannot adequately safeguard its nuclear weapons stockpiles. Its military is in an advanced state of collapse.

Russia faces a threat from Islamist terror in its southern regions. Parts of Siberia contain more Chinese immigrants than Russians. Moscow's attempts to retain a Eurasian sphere of influence have been set back by democratic revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. Russia risks being eclipsed by the rise of Asia in the east and the vibrancy of Atlanticist democracies in the west.

But Russia has a secret weapon in what would otherwise be a modest arsenal of national power. Like many Third World states and Arab autocracies--and quite unlike either the rich West or a globalizing Asia--Russia relies on oil and gas revenues for nearly half its government budget. Moreover, it is transforming this typical indicator of economic backwardness into a hidden strength, making it the vehicle for its aspiration to reemerge as a global leader.

Unlike corrupt politicians who view their country's oil wealth as a means of elite enrichment, President Vladimir Putin is methodically consolidating state control over Russia's energy resources and deploying them as a tool of international statecraft. Russia's energy exports have replaced both nuclear arms and the Communist International as the principal agent of

Russian officials are constructing a grand strategy that more closely resembles the mercantilism of 17th-century European empires--in which managed trade was a strategic tool for building up state power in a global contest for primacy--than the policies of market capitalism seen in Asia and the West. Rather than liberalizing its economy, as China has done to such explosive effect, Moscow is reasserting state control, in a concerted strategy to make Russia a great power once again.

A closer look at the way Russia has wielded energy supplies to support its allies and bludgeon its rivals in Eurasia suggests that major economies increasingly dependent on Russian gas and oil exports--including great powers in Europe and Asia, and even the United States--are rendering themselves vulnerable to the ambitions of an autocratic, imperial state that has not refrained from using energy as a geopolitical weapon and has been ruthless in its treatment of both internal political opponents and neighboring states.

THE CIA FORECASTS that "growing demands for energy" will have "substantial impacts on geopolitical relations" in coming years. The need for energy increasingly will be "a major factor" shaping the foreign policies of key states. Total energy consumed globally will rise by 50 percent over the coming two decades, most of it in the form of oil and natural gas. To maintain growth, rising powers like China and India will need to double or triple their energy consumption. The European Commission estimates that Europe's requirements for imported energy will rise from 50 percent of total demand in 2000 to nearly 70 percent in 2020, with gas imports increasing most rapidly.