Security & Conflicts

GLOBAL INVESTOR FOCUS Security & Conflicts — 34
Photo: Johannes Kroemer
Michael Klare is Professor of Peace
and World Security Studies at Hampshire
College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
He is the author of “Resource Wars:
The New Landscape of Global Conflict”
(2001) and “Blood and Oil: The Dangers
and Consequences of America’s
Growing Dependency on Imported
Petroleum” (2004). see full biography on page 70
them involving energy reserves in the Red Sea, the South China
Sea, and the Gulf of Guinea, could ignite significant armed conflict
in years to come. Conflict could also arise over efforts to transport
oil and gas supplies in the face of internal or regional conflict. In
Iraq, for example, American forces are deeply involved in efforts to
protect pipelines, pumping stations, and refineries against insurgent
and criminal violence. Recurring attacks on these facilities
have severely hampered the nascent Iraqi government’s efforts to
use oil exports to finance economic reconstruction – an absolute
necessity if the government is to attract any popular legitimacy –
and so US officials have made protection of oil installations a high
military priority.
Conflict could also arise in the case of threats to the safe passage
of oil tankers through key maritime “choke points,” such as the
Strait of Hormuz near the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Malacca
near the Indian Ocean. Every day millions of barrels of oil travel by
tanker through these narrow passageways, carrying Persian Gulf
oil to markets around the world.
For some considerable time the US has made it clear that it will
not tolerate any effort by a hostile power to close these corridors
and thus impede the global flow of oil. In the most famous expression
of this policy, then President Jimmy Carter declared in January
1980 that any move to block oil traffic in the Persian Gulf would
be regarded “as an assault on the vital interests of the United
States of America” to be repelled “by any means necessary, including
military force.”
Escorting oil around the world
More recently, American officials have expressed their determination
to prevent Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz, an action
that Tehran has threatened to take in retaliation for any US military
strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The United States has also
stepped up its naval patrols in waters off Nigeria, where ethnic
militias and criminal gangs have seized offshore oil facilities and
coastal oil tankers. These are by no means the only places or situations
in which the competitive pursuit of oil and natural gas could
lead to armed conflict between competing nations, factions and
groups. And while oil and gas are the commodities most likely to
spark resource conflict in the years ahead, they are not the only
materials that could trigger armed violence. The risk of such conflict
can only grow, moreover, as soaring worldwide demand encounters
ever-shrinking supply, and as more and more states (and
other actors) turn to armed combat to deal with the specter of
scarcity. Unless something meaningful is done to address this predicament,
we can expect an increasingly dangerous epidemic of
resource wars.
To reduce this danger, the international community must address
both sides of the equation: it must seek to reduce demand
through vigorous conservation, while increasing supply through
technological innovation and the development of substitutes for
scarce materials. At the same time, however, we must repudiate
the ideas put forward in the “Carter Doctrine” and other precepts
that legitimize the use of military force to address resourcescarcity
problems. In particular, the international community needs
to rise to the challenge of developing a more robust system of law
and adjudication for resolving territorial disputes such as those
described above. The greater the progress we make in these areas,
the smaller the risk that the 21st century will be a time of endless
resource wars.