Resource Wars Part 1

RESOURCE WARS

THE NEW LANDSCAPE OF GLOBAL CONFLICT

MICHAEL T. KLARE

A METROPOLITAN/OWL BOOK                       2001

PART I

 

Introduction

Conflict over valuable resources – and the power and wealth they confer – has become an increasingly prominent feature of the global landscape. Often intermixed with ethnic, religious, and tribal antagonisms, such conflict has posed a significant and growing threat to peace and stability in many areas of the world. With the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States, too, became the victim of resource related conflict. Motivated though they may have been by religious zeal, the September 11 highjackers were part of a global network whose ultimate objective – the overthrow of the pro-Western Saudi monarchy and the installation of a doctrinaire Islamic regime – would give it control over one-fourth of the world’s remaining supply of petroleum. Success in this campaign would also deprive the United States of a major source of wealth and power – and it is precisely to avert this peril that Washington has long endeavoured to protect the Saudi regime against it various enemies, including Osama bin Laden. In this and other ways, U.S. efforts to secure the flow of oil have led to ever increasing involvement in the region’s ongoing power struggles.

These struggles were underway, of course, long before oil was discovered in the region. For centuries, local tribes and kingdoms fought over the rivers, ports, and oases of the greater Gulf area. But the discovery of oil in the late 19^th century added a new dimension to the violent panorama: from that point on, major outside powers acquired interests of their own in the region and periodically employed military force to protect these new interests. First to spar were Great Britain and czarist Russia, later joined by France, Germany, and the United States. By the end of the 20^th century, safeguarding the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf had become one of the most important functions of the U.S. military establishment.

Osama bin Laden and his associates were not directly engaged in the pursuit of oil when they launched a jihad against the United States and the Saudi government, but oil was central to their strategic calculations. As chapter 3 details, the Saudi royal family has for decades permitted U.S. companies to extract vast quantities of petroleum from the kingdom, thus helping to sustain the long economic growth spurt of the second half of the 20^th century. The close relationship between the United States and the royal family was forged in the final months of World War II, when U.S. leaders sought to ensure favored access to Saudi petroleum. In one of the most extraordinary episodes in modern American history, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abdel-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi dynasty, while returning from the Allied summit conference in Yalta. Although details of the meeting have never been made public, it is widely believed that Abdel-Aziz offered Roosevelt unlimited access to Saudi oil in return for a U.S. pledge to protect the royal family against internal and external attack. And whatever the exact nature of this agreement, the United States has served as Saudi Arabia’s principal defender ever since.

• The United States has become embroiled in a series of what can best be termed ‘resource wars’ in the Greater Gulf area. Struggles over access to energy sources are likely to break out in other parts of the globe as well.
• As noted in chapters 4 and 5, the United Sates has become enmeshed in local power dynamics in the Caspian Sea basin and the South China Sea – both of which are believed to possess significant reserves of oil and natural gas.

·         Oil is not the only critical material that could provoke major conflict in the years ahead. As chapters 6 and 7 demonstrate, water is also likely to trigger contention in areas of scarce and disputed supplies.   

·         While water, oil and natural gas have sparked the most intense competition, trouble is also brewing over access to minerals, gems, and timber, particularly in developing nations that harbor few domestic sources of wealth.

·         With the demand for such resources increasing, and many poor countries sliding deeper into debt, conflict over disputed zones will only grow more intense.

Clearly, the attacks of September 11, 2001, will have a far-reaching impact on world affairs, affecting many aspects of international behavior. Relations among the great powers, for example, are likely to be shaped by their degree of participation in the coalition formed by the Bush administration to combat terrorism in the Middle East. America’s ties with moderate Muslim states are also sure to be transformed in this manner. But so long as global competition for access to vital materials continues unabated, conflict over resources will remain a conspicuous feature of the international security environment.

Chapter 1: Wealth, Resources, and Power: The Changing Parameters of Global Security

• For Western oil companies, the opening of the Caspian basin to foreign investment has proved an extraordinary bonanza.
• The strategic nature of American interest in the Caspian region was firs articulated by the Department of State in an April 1997 report to Congress.

The belief that Caspian Sea oil represents a strategic as well as an economic interest of the United States was expressed publicly for the first time by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. In a speech at Johns Hopkins University on July 21, 1997, Talbott spoke of America’s growing stake in the independence and stability of the Central Asian republics. “It would matter profoundly to the United States,” he declared, if U.S. oil companies were denied access to “an area that sits on as much as 200 billion barrels of oil.”

• Ten days later, on August 1, 1997, President Clinton elaborated on these themes during a meeting at the White House with Heydar Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan.
• “In a world of growing energy demand, our nation cannot afford to rely on any single region for our energy supplies.”
• By working closely with Azerbaijan to tap the Caspian’s resources, “we not only help Azerbaijan to prosper, we also help diversify our energy supply and strengthen our nation’s security.”
• American officials do not use such language idly. When a president suggests that the nation’s security is at stake in a particular region or issue, it usually means that Washington is prepared to use military force to protect that interest.

 

The transformation of American security policy

·         The extension of American military power into the Caspian Sea region is, by itself, a momentous geopolitical development.

·         It will require Washington to build and sustain military relationships with the Central Asian republics, as well as to construct a globe-spanning logistical capability.

·         They also signal a dramatic shift in the basic orientation of American military policy.

·         For over forty years, from the late 1940s until 1990, the over-arching goal of U.S. strategy was to create and maintain a global system of alliances capable of containing and, if necessary, defeating the Soviet Union.

·         Since the end of the Cold War, the requirement for far-flung alliances has appeared less urgent, while the need to promote America’s own security interests has seemed more pressing.

·         The maintenance of NATO and other alliance systems remains an important priority, but other objectives – of a more self-interested, tangible character – have come to dominate the American strategic agenda.

·         Among these objectives, none has so profoundly influenced American military policy as the determination to ensure U.S. access to overseas supplies of vital resources.

·         As the American economy grows and U.S. industries come to rely more on imported supplies of critical materials, the protection of global resource flows is becoming an increasingly prominent feature of American security policy.

·         Whereas weapons technology and alliance politics once dominated the discourse on military affairs, American strategy now focuses on oil-field protection, the defense of maritime trade routes, and other aspects of resource security.

·         At he heart of this shift in policy is a belief that the defining parameters of power and influence have changed since the Cold War’s demise; it is now associated with economic dynamism and the cultivation of technological innovation.

·         To exercise leadership in the current epoch, states are expected to possess a vigorous domestic economy and to outperform other states in the development and export of high-tech goods.

·         “National security depends on successful engagement in the global economy,” the Institute for national Security Studies observed in a recent Pentagon study.

·         This “econocentric” approach to national security became official American policy when the Clinton administration took office in early 1993.

·         Clinton made the expansion of international trade and investment the top foreign policy goal of his administration.

·         Clinton never tired of expressing his belief that “our economic and security interests are inextricably linked.”

·         Without a steady and reliable flow of essential materials, the American economy cannot expand and generate the products needed to ensure continued U.S. competitiveness in global markets.

·         The uninterrupted flow of energy supplies is especially critical: as the world’s leading consumer of oil and gas, the United States must retain access to overseas supplies or its entire economy will face collapse.

·         For the American military establishment, this concern has particular resonance: while the military can do little to promote trade or enhance financial stability, it can play a key role in protecting resource supplies.

·         Resource concerns have decisively moved to center stage in international security affairs. As we proceed further into the 21^st century, these issues are destined to play an increasingly significant role in the shaping of American military policy.

 

Parallel developments elsewhere