Energy and empire
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http://www.thethresher.com/energy_empire.html
Review by Phil Leggiere
Nineteenth Century historian Brooks Adams is the most blatant
philosopher of global adventurismin US history. Adams was obsessed
with the concepts of energy and entropy, and their role in therise and
fall of empires. He believed that nations must either expand outward,
using up new sourcesof energy in the process, or dissipate spiritually
and morally-their "vigor" depleted. Soon-to-bePresident Theodore
Roosevelt was among the strongest believers. In brutal conquests of
thePhilippines, Cuba, Hawaii and elsewhere, Roosevelt and his
generation of romantic imperialiststranslated Adams' bookish
ruminations into practice, establishing the U.S. as a global
super-power.
For Adams, Roosevelt and company, energy was more of a literary symbol
of the Anglo-Saxon"martial spirit" than a material resource-though
ransack resources they surely did. In hisambitious, informative new
book Resource Wars, Hampshire College Professor of
InternationalRelations Michael Klare shows how the Adams' cult's
obsession with energy has proven more literallyprophetic than they'd
intended. As Klare argues, it's precisely the domination of rapidly
dwindlingenergy resources that is now the lynchpin of the foreign
policy being continued by their decidedlyless literary heirs; Cheney,
Powell, Rumsfeld, and Bush.
In exhaustive detail, based on closescrutiny of publicly available but
seldom publicized Departments of Defense, State and Energydocuments,
Klare provides a superb primer of the landscape of potential global
conflict over the next few decades, and America's likely role in it.
Mainstream media pundits present current U.S.foreign policy - in
piecemeal fashion - as a series of scattered, seemingly ad hoc
responses toindividual, isolated "hot spots." Klare argues that there
is a thematic thread running through U.S.strategy, whether in the
Caspian Sea, China or Columbia. It is focused on guaranteeing
U.S.-basedmultinational corporations steady, uninterrupted access to
the dwindling supply of non-renewableresources. With the end of the
cold war and the growth of worldwide energy-intensive consumermarkets,
the ideological blocs and conflicts (between U.S. capitalism and
Soviet communism) thatdefined, and gave a certain perverse stability
to foreign policy from the 1940s through the early 90s, have given way
to new "geo-econocentric" struggles.
Oil remains the most critical resourceto U.S. planners, with the
Persian Gulf being ground zero on the hot list of likely combat
zones.Acoording to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Gulf region
contains nearly two-thirds of the world's proven reserves of 1.03
trillion barrels.
According to Klare, U.S. planning in the Gulffocuses on three possible
scenarios: another Iraqi attempt to annex the oil fields of
Kuwait;Iranian efforts to close or block the Strait of Hormuz; and the
outbreak of internal civil war in Saudi Arabia. While U.S. activities
in Iraq are well known, the U.S. military views Iran as themajor
"threat after next." U.S. planners fear the buildup of the Iranian
Navy over the past decade,and believe the Iranian arsenal now includes
three submarines, twenty missile-armed patrol boats,anti-shipping
mines and shore-based missile batteries.
Klare quotes U.S. strategists as sayingthat this buildup may soon
position Iran to attempt to impede U.S., European and Japanese
commercialshipping access through the Strait, the world's most
important oil chokepoint. Fifteen millionbarrels of oil pass each day
through the Straight of Hormuz. U.S. plans in response to any Iranian
move in the Strait include "an immediate and crushing military
response, including tomahawk cruisemissiles and radar guided bombs."
The book claims that the most militarily dangerous scenariofeared by
the U.S is an internal revolt against the autocratic Saudi Arabian
monarchy. Ossima binLadenÕs underground organization is perhaps the
best known Saudi dissident group, but several otherproto-revolutionary
groups have emerged. Ironically, many participating mujahideen rebels
weretrained by the U.S. for the Afghan war against the Soviet Union.
To prevent these scattered effortsfrom coalescing into a more serious
threat against the Saudi regime, the U.S. plans to increase
itstraining and advisory relationships with the Saudi Arabian National
Guard (SANG), a domesticsecurity apparatus. Equipping and training
SANG has already blossomed into a $5 billion a yearbusiness for U.S.
military contractors.
Additionally, the U.S. maintains extensive intelligenceactivities
tracking leaders of Saudi dissident groups. Though direct U.S.
involvement in an actualSaudi Arabian civil war is the last thing
Washington wants, Klare contends that the U.S. iscommitted to
intervening with military ground forces if necessary - unilaterally -
should the Saudiroyalty become seriously endangered by internal
insurgents.
While the Persian Gulf dominatesmedia attention, the Caspian Sea
basin, (composed of Russia and Northern Iran, as well as severalformer
republics of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), is another major
lynchpin of U.S. military/energy policy. With one ofthe world's
largest proven reserves of natural gas (300 trillion cubic feet) and
an estimated 200 to300 billion barrels of oil reserves, the Caspian
Sea is shaping up to be a site of continuousindirect or direct
conflict between the U.S. and Russia.
The U.S., Klare reports, has two majorobjectives in the Caspian- to
develop the area as an alternative to Persian Gulf supplies, and
toensure that Caspian oil and gas doesnÕt need to pass through Russia
or Iran on its way to Westernmarkets. To accomplish this the U.S.
government is currently negotiating with major energy consortiato
build oil and gas pipelines running beneath the Caspian Sea from
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan toAzerbaijan outward through Georgia to
Turkey. Meanwhile, Russia looks to build up its depletedtreasury by
ensuring Caspian energy travels through its existing Black Sea
pipeline on its way toEuropean markets.
Though a direct military clash between the U.S. and Russia in the
Caspianappears unlikely, Klare sees a high potential for periodic
"proxy" wars between local powers in theregion armed and trained by
the U.S. or Russia. The U.S. began during the last few years of
theClinton administration to provide various forms of military
assistance to several Caspian states.They received about $200 million
of the total $1 billion in U.S. aid in 2000.
The principalrecipient of U.S. military aid is Georgia. In arming and
training the Schevardnadze governmentÕs military, America is trying to
ensure the safety of any U.S. built pipelines.
While U.S.-Chinahostilities have found their way to the front pages
thanks to the US bombing of the Chinese embassyin Yugoslavia and the
shooting down of a U.S. spy plane, Klare claims that a battle for
dominationof the energy-rich South China Sea is the subtext behind
both the rhetorical tensions and theescalating militarization of East
Asia.
The South China Sea is bordered by China, Vietnam,Malaysia, The
Philippines and Taiwan. With enormous, and largely untapped, undersea
reserves of oiland natural gas, each nation has competing claims to
the seaÕs resources. With Asian economic growthincreasing five-to-ten
times as rapidly as the rest of the world over the past decade, the
region'srate of energy consumption has skyrocketed from under 5
billion barrels per day in the late 1980s tonearly 20 billion barrels
today. Its overall consumption level is projected to jump to 33
billionbarrels a day by 2020. By 2020 Asia is expected to account for
34% of total world energyconsumption, as much as North America and
Europe combined.
Klare explores the escalation of bothNaval and Air war preparations by
all of the region's nations. The U.S. - viewing smooth oil trafficflow
in the Sea as crucial to its "national interests" - has pledged
military cooperation with thePhilippines, Taiwan and Japan. He
concludes that "The South China is the area of the world mostlikely to
witness large scale warfare in the next two decades."
U.S. military involvement inSouth America, particularly Colombia, has
been explained as a means of controlling drug trafficking.There is
another reason for U.S. intervention, Klare argues, not openly
discussed by U.S. officials. Oil production has expanded from just
100,000 barrels a day in 1985 to over one million barrels aday. U.S.
officials are concerned that the Colombian civil war will cut back oil
production. Klarewrites, "The Bush administrationÕs efforts to
reduce dependence on Gulf oil, combined with soaringU.S. demand, has
given Colombia and Venezuela in particular greatly increased
importance in U.S.strategic calculations. Almost all of the rhetoric
employed by the administration to rally supportfor the $1.3 billion
Plan Colombia is couched in terms of drug control. The fact is,
however, thatthe greatest threat to stability posed by the Colombian
guerillas is not involvement in the drugtrade, but rather their attack
on economic targets, particularly the oil industry. For the past
10years, the main rebel groups in Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia and the Army of National Liberation, have waged a
war of sabotage against Colombian oil operations especially
thoselinked to producers like British Petroleum and U.S.-based
Occidental Petroleum.
Other Resources
Klare also devotes lengthy discussions to water, mineral and
timbersupplies. Although the planet is brimming with salt water, less
than 3% of the planetÕs water supply(about 12,000 cubic kilometers per
year) is available as fresh water. As societies become
moreindustrially developed, they consume ever larger portions of the
global supply for things likeindoor plumbing, dishwashers and meat
consumption (which requires increased production of grain). While the
world population doubled between 1950 and 2000, Klare writes, global
water use more thantripled. Currently about 50% - 52% of available
fresh water is consumed by humans each year. Atcurrent usage growth
rates, in 30 years that figure will exceed 80%. This will cause
severeshortages in many parts of the world, though efficient
technologies for reclamation of urban wastewater would significantly
augment that supply.
Klare dissects four regions where water resourceconflicts are likely
to lead to war over the next decade. These include the Nile Basin,
where Egypt,Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda have competing claims, and the
Jordan River basin, which includes Israel,Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and
the Palestinians territories. Also a site of contention is the
Tigris-Euphrates region, where water claims pit key U.S. ally Turkey
against Syria, Iran and Iraq.Finally, the Indus river, shared by
Afghanistan, China, India, Pakistan and Kashmir is also viewedas a
potential powder keg.
Klare closes with accounts of conflicts over high-demand,
increasinglyscarce minerals likely to lead to regionally disruptive
wars over the next decade. He views currentarmed conflicts in such
areas as Bougainville, Sierra Leone and Borneo as harbingers of
near-futureresource politics.
Nearly unknown to most Westerners, Bougainville is a mountainous,
tropicalformer British colony currently claimed by the state of Papua
New Guinea. For decades Papua NewGuinea granted copper mining
concessions to the Panguna mine in central Bougainville, one of
theworld's largest open-pit copper mines. By the mid-1980s opposition
by native Bougainvillians to thedevastating ecological effect of the
mines on local water supplies sparked an independence movement.In 1988
an insurgent group, the Bougainville Liberation Army, seized control
of the mine and shut itdown, initiating a 13 year civil war which
continues to this day. The Papua New Guinea governmenthas used tens of
millions of dollars of money earmarked for "development" by the World
Bank to hire private mercenary armies to invade and reassert control
over Panguna. These include theBritish-based Sandline International
and South African-based Executive Outcomes.
Control of thelucrative Kono diamond mines has been at the heart of a
decade long civil war in Sierra Leone between the Revolutionary United
Front, an insurgent force of Sierra Leonean dissidents and
renegadeLiberian army forces, and a Sierra Leonean government force
also using Executive Outcomes.
InSarawak, a Malaysian controlled portion of Borneo, the indigenous
Dayak forest peoples have waged a14-year civil war against a
government tied to multinational timber and logging interests that
haveopened up vast areas of traditional Dayak territory to commercial
interests. Between 1970 and 1987,when the war began, approximately 1/3
of Sarawak's forests had been logged over.
Other currentresource-related civil wars discussed in Resource Wars
include conflicts in Angola, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, the Congo,
Indonesia, Liberia and the Philippines. Ostensibly local in character,
thesewars all involve resources crucial to the strategic plans of
multinational corporations - includingbauxite, chromium, cobalt,
copper, gold, manganese, phosphate rock, titanium and uranium.
Klarebelieves all these conflicts are likely to take on a wider
character. In particular, sub-SaharanAfrica will gain strategic
importance for U.S. policy over the next decade.
New World Disorder
Klare's vivid accounts of these conflicts make it clear that we arefar
from entering into a stable "New World Order." The near future is
certain to see constant smallresource-driven skirmishes, both between
nations and within nations. Any one of these conflicts canhave
far-reaching global-economic reverberations.
Budding global analysts and theoreticians mayquestion Klare's
single-minded emphasis on natural resources as the master key to
understandingforeign policy. The end of the cold war may have made
obsolete one peculiar model of ideologicalconflict, Marxism-Leninism
vs. Western-style capitalist democracy, but Francis Fukuyama
notwithstanding, thereÕs no reason to believe we've reached the end of
history. The likelihood ofserious challenges to the status quo could
have been addressed more forcefully in Klare's analyses.Contrary to
the prevailing global ideology, alternative strategies of "economic
development" arelikely to become increasingly relevant as the
ecological crises of the 21st century unfolds. Klarecould also be
taken to task for underestimating the continuing importance of
traditional national,ethnic and religious conflicts. And students of
history will doubtless point out that the strugglefor material
resources is nothing new, and have played a crucial (if not dominant)
role in foreignpolicy throughout the cold war era, and for centuries,
if not millennia before it.
Despite thesecaveats, Resource Wars makes a persuasive case that the
emerging global geo-politics of energy andresources are different, not
merely in degree but in kind, from anything seen before. The reason
forthis, Klare shows, is that the explosive growth of a global mass
consumer market over the past threeto four decades now makes the
prospect of permanent depletion of key natural resources imminent on
aglobal scale. By doggedly showing how this dynamic is at the heart of
dozens of seemingly isolatedconflicts worldwide, Klare allows us to
glimpse a larger pattern at work in a foreign policyuniverse usually
presented by mainstream political analysts as a collection of random
crises.
RMJon23
RAW champions R. Buckminster Fuller's _Critical Path_ for these reasons. Well,
among these reasons...(See RAW's "Bucky Fuller: Aborting the Self-Destruct
Mechanism", pp.105-115 of _Right Where You Are Sitting Now_.)
Oil=energy=wealth=national strength and vigor. Aye, but it's the short view and
quick fix and it's beginning to meld imperceptibly with the Killing Machine.
Bush, Cheney, etc.are strung out on oil and blood.
Also, the above is wrong, in my view. Knowledge is the basis for wealth. And
money ain't wealth, either. Fuller says, "Wealth is the accomplished
technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accomodate all growful
needs of life. Money is only an expediency-adopted means of interexchanging
disparately sized, nonequatable items of real wealth." (Critical Path, p.xxvi)
Guys like Bush and Cheney pay geologists, metallurgists, computer scientists,
etc. - any discipline that is based in mathematical knowledge combined with
people getting their hands dirty and "seeing for themselves" - fees to make
themselves rich. They're Pirates, Business Criminals. They're in cahoots with
Banking Schemers (They all went to school together and their daddies know each
others' daddies, and they marry the little girls of their friends' daddies...)
As Bucky says, "Those who make money with money deliberately keep it scarce."
But I digress...
Btw, Fuller also says that, if you look into it closely, "Those who own oil
also own the atomic energy and have long ago assumed that, if humanity exhausts
or abandons oil, it will automatically switch over to atomic energy." (Critical
Path, p.112) A lovely thought...
On pondering and writing about the human misery and constant, low-level panic
of not having ENOUGH and what it does and has done to domesticated apes
throughout history:
"There is some kind of masochistic pleasure in continuing the analysis of a
painful subject into every byway and intricacy of its labyrinthine torments.
There is something of this beneath the 'objectivity' of Marx, Veblen, Freud,
Brooks Adams. 'As bad as it is, we can at least look at it without screaming,'
such writers seem to be assuring us, and themselves."
-Robert Anton Wilson, _The Illuminati Papers_, p.30
And perhaps this passage applies to Michael Klare's concerns? Klare (as told by
Leggiere) SEEMS "dispassionate", but one wonders. Me? When I read this sorta
stuff I seethe a little, even if I've read similar analyses many times before.
Same old greed game from here to eternity. Then I remind myself that we live on
the Planet of the Apes, and I detach a bit from the gravity...
Re: Brooks Adams:
RAW gives Brooks the credit for being the first to articulate fully how Real
Knowledge (which Fuller has called "metaphysical know-how", a phrase I love)
produces Real Capital, which produces Real Wealth, and Adams said historically
Real Capital had moved "steadily westward." _The Law of Civilization and
Decay_(1892).
In RAW's wonderful extrapolations and syntheses from Fuller and Korzybski and
(it seems) hundreds others, Brooks Adams plays a significant role. (q.v. "The
Neurogeography of Conspiracy", pp.90-98 of _Right Where You Are Sitting Now_.)
Re: Oil:
I love Fuller's vivid picture of oil as "impounded solar energy." Get this:
"The Earth [...] is a celestial center where energies from stars are being
collected and photosynthetically combined in an orderly molecular assembly as
hydrocarbons, which are consumed by orderly designed species, and then
self-multiply to make these biological species grow, undergo transformations,
and eventually be buried deep beneath the Earth's surface." (Critical Path,
p.28)
Cheney: You see, George, that's why we're going to have to blow the torsos of
very many men, women, children, and other animals to shreds. Their intestines
will end up yards away from what's left of their bodies. I don't like it
anymore than you do, but I'm willing to stand tall and make the tough
decisions, from our bunker 8,000 miles away. We gotta stay Number One, right? I
know you understand THAT, doncha, George?...George?
Bush: Huh??? Oh, yea, of course. For freedom. We must extend freedom!
-rmjon23 da Los Angeles
"Mathematics constitutes human mind's most cosmically powerful faculty."
-Buckminster Fuller