This book provides an alternative approach to analyzing Western Europe's much-debated dependence on Russian natural gas. The actual and potential consequences of this dependence have in recent years become a growing concern both in individual importing countries and at the level of the European Union. Russian gas exports have come to decisively influence EU-Russia relations and there is nowadays hardly any aspect of these relations that can be discussed without, directly or indirectly, taking into account natural gas. But despite the central importance of Russian natural gas exports in present-day European and Russian affairs, little attention has been paid to the political and economic decisions that - starting in the late 1960s - paved the way for large-scale imports of Russian gas. Applying a systems and risk perspective on international energy relations, author Per Hogselius investigates how and why governments, businesses, engineers and other actors sought to promote - and oppose- the establishment of an extensive East-West natural gas regime that seemed to overthrow the fundamental logic of the Cold War.