Vestnik MGIMO-Universiteta | 2026
Authors: Viani G.F.; Guliev I.
DOI: 10.24833/2071-8160-2026-1-106-53-78
Journal: Vestnik MGIMO-Universiteta
Year: 2026
Publisher: MGIMO Universty Press
Document Type: Article
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
Cited by: 0
This article examines Argentina’s energy diplomacy with BRICS countries in 2013–2025 through the lens of asymmetric interdependence. Argentina combines ex-ceptional resource endowments – Vaca Muerta shale gas and globally significant lithium reserves – with chronic macroeconomic instability and recurring debt crises that constrain autonomous development and increase reliance on external partners. While existing scholarship discusses BRICS energy diplomacy and individual sectoral dynam-ics, fewer studies analyze how a middle-income resource exporter manages simulta-neous engagements with multiple emerging powers across several strategic energy domains. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative longitudinal design and integrates comparative case analysis, process tracing, and discourse analysis. The empirical base includes Argentina’s Energy Plan 2030, BRICS declarations, EIA and USGS datasets, IMF-related materials, publicly available corporate disclosures and contractual docu-mentation (including Atucha III), as well as expert interviews and triangulated media reporting. The analysis identifies a pattern of “triple dependency” generated by three sector-specific mechanisms. First, Chinese investment structures and downstream control in lithium constrain Argentina’s capacity to capture value added and upgrade domesti-cally. Second, cooperation in nuclear power–centered on Rosatom’s involvement in the Atucha III project–creates long-term technological path dependence through fuel-cycle and maintenance arrangements, despite Argentina’s residual domestic capabili-ties (CNEA/INVAP). Third, regional gas integration reinforces Brazil’s positional leverage as Argentina’s principal pipeline export destination, limiting Buenos Aires’ bargaining power over pricing and routing. These mechanisms operate cumulatively, producing what the article conceptualizes as sectoral dependency stacking, whereby overlapping dependencies across strategic sectors amplify structural constraints. Argentina has pursued “sovereignty hedging” strategies – diversifying partners, inviting Indian participation in lithium, and promoting local content rules–but their effectiveness remains limited under conditions of financial, technological, and infrastructural asymmetry. The article advances debates by adapting Keohane and Nye’s asymmetric interdependence framework to South–South relations and by linking it to dependent-development perspectives to explain how multipolar diversification can reconfigure rather than reduce dependence. The findings suggest that BRICS engagement offers Argentina tactical options and short-term relief from Western conditionalities, yet does not automatically translate into greater autonomy. Policy implications include the need for more enforceable value-chain and technology-transfer clauses, and for investment models that support industrial upgrading rather than reinforcing extractive specialization. © 2026, MGIMO Universty Press. All rights reserved.
asymmetric interdependence; BRICS; Energy diplomacy; energy sovereignty; lith-ium; resource nationalism; Structural dependence; supply chain dependencies