ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of possible dimensions of Western interventions, that is interests in the field of access to strategic resources and energy security. The driving force behind interventions conducted by Western states after the Cold War have been factors of a political, strategic, military, economic, humanitarian and psychological nature. Ensuring energy security – an availability and affordability of energy in its various forms — is one of the priorities of the national security strategies of Western states. Western, in particular European, states, however, depends on external suppliers of a vast majority of such resources. Western states intervened in a country which provided support to Al-Qaeda terrorists and Osama bin Laden himself. All post-Cold War interventions of Western states carried out in strategically important regions abundant in energy resources or, as in the case of Afghanistan, precious minerals, took place under drastically different market and geopolitical conditions.
