ORIGINAL ARTICLE Energy as an issue area in the European Union and the United States foreign policy-making: oscillating between independence and interdependence Michael Charokopos 1 © Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Energy is an increasingly politicised commodity which, however, retains its particular technical and economic characteristics, thus complicating the work of foreign policy-makers. The article draws on the contribution of the cognitive approach to the analysis of foreign policy-making and investigates the energy– foreign policy nexus in the EU and the US through the lens of the different cognitive structures used by actors to understand the world energy scenery. In this conceptual framework, it examines how the energy–foreign policy linkage has evolved in the EU and the US, to what extent energy is still perceived as a useful instrument serving foreign policy objectives, and in reverse, how far energy policy objectives are integrated in foreign policy-making. Through this comparative exercise, it concludes by identifying differences and potential patterns of convergence between the EU and the US. Keywords Energy independence · Energy security · EU energy policy · Foreign policy analysis · Issue area analysis · US energy policy Introduction In his review essay on energy and security in the 1980s, Joseph Nye emphasises the geopolitical dimension of ‘the energy security problem of the 1980s’, arguing that ‘policy solutions that imply perfect markets across international boundaries miss the point’ (Nye 1982, p. 133). More than three decades later, Nye’s insightful analysis is more topical than ever. After the interlude of the market-oriented 1990s, the energy sector has been gradually re-politicised and re-securitised. & Michael Charokopos mchar78@gmail.com 1 University of Piraeus, 126 Gr. Lampraki Str, 185 32 Piraeus, Greece J Int Relat Dev https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0132-6