The Global Energy Race and Its
Consequences (Part 1)
by Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch
www.zmag.org, Janaury 14, 2007
It has once again become fashionable for
the dwindling supporters of President Bush's futile war in Iraq
to stress the danger of "Islamo-fascism" and the supposed
drive by followers of Osama bin Laden to establish a monolithic,
Taliban-like regime -- a "Caliphate" -- stretching from
Gibraltar to Indonesia. The President himself has employed this
term on occasion over the years, using it to describe efforts
by Muslim extremists to create "a totalitarian empire that
denies all political and religious freedom." While there
may indeed be hundreds, even thousands, of disturbed and suicidal
individuals who share this delusional vision, the world actually
faces a far more substantial and universal threat, which might
be dubbed: Energo-fascism, or the militarization of the global
struggle over ever-diminishing supplies of energy.
Unlike Islamo-fascism, Energo-fascism
will, in time, affect nearly every person on the planet. Either
we will be compelled to participate in or finance foreign wars
to secure vital supplies of energy, such as the current conflict
in Iraq; or we will be at the mercy of those who control the energy
spigot, like the customers of the Russian energy juggernaut Gazprom
in Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; or sooner or later we may find
ourselves under constant state surveillance, lest we consume more
than our allotted share of fuel or engage in illicit energy transactions.
This is not simply some future dystopian nightmare, but a potentially
all-encompassing reality whose basic features, largely unnoticed,
are developing today.
These include:
* The transformation of the U.S. military
into a global oil protection service whose primary mission is
to defend America's overseas sources of oil and natural gas, while
patrolling the world's major pipelines and supply routes.
* The transformation of Russia into an
energy superpower with control over Eurasia's largest supplies
of oil and natural gas and the resolve to convert these assets
into ever increasing political influence over neighboring states.
* A ruthless scramble among the great
powers for the remaining oil, natural gas, and uranium reserves
of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, accompanied
by recurring military interventions, the constant installation
and replacement of client regimes, systemic corruption and repression,
and the continued impoverishment of the great majority of those
who have the misfortune to inhabit such energy-rich regions.
* Increased state intrusion into, and
surveillance of, public and private life as reliance on nuclear
power grows, bringing with it an increased threat of sabotage,
accident, and the diversion of fissionable materials into the
hands of illicit nuclear proliferators.
Together, these and related phenomena
constitute the basic characteristics of an emerging global Energo-fascism.
Disparate as they may seem, they all share a common feature: increasing
state involvement in the procurement, transportation, and allocation
of energy supplies, accompanied by a greater inclination to employ
force against those who resist the state's priorities in these
areas. As in classical twentieth century fascism, the state will
assume ever greater control over all aspects of public and private
life in pursuit of what is said to be an essential national interest:
the acquisition of sufficient energy to keep the economy functioning
and public services (including the military) running.
The Demand/Supply Conundrum
Powerful, potentially planet-altering trends like this do not
occur in a vacuum. The rise of Energo-fascism can be traced to
two overarching phenomena: an imminent collision between energy
demand and energy supplies, and the historic migration of the
center of gravity of planetary energy output from the global north
to the global south.
For the past 60 years, the international energy industry has largely
succeeded in satisfying the world's ever-growing thirst for energy
in all its forms. When it comes to oil alone, global demand jumped
from 15 to 82 million barrels per day between 1955 and 2005, an
increase of 450%. Global output rose by a like amount in those
years. Worldwide demand is expected to keep growing at this rate,
if not faster, for years to come -- propelled in large part by
rising affluence in China, India, and other developing nations.
There is, however, no expectation that global output can continue
to keep pace.
Quite the opposite: A growing number of energy experts believe
that the global output of "conventional" (liquid) crude
oil will soon reach a peak -- perhaps as early as 2010 or 2015
-- and then begin an irreversible decline. If this proves to be
the case, no amount of inputs from Canadian tar sands, shale oil,
or other "unconventional" sources will prevent a catastrophic
liquid-fuel shortage in a decade or so, producing widespread economic
trauma. The global supply of other primary fuels, including natural
gas, coal, and uranium is not expected to contract as rapidly,
but all of these materials are finite, and will eventually become
scarce.
Coal is the most plentiful of the three; if consumed at current
rates, it can be expected to last for perhaps another century
and a half. If, however, it is used to replace oil (in various
coal-to-liquid schemes), it will disappear much more rapidly.
This does not, of course, address coal's disproportionate contribution
to global warming; if there is no change in the way it is burned
in power plants, the planet will become inhospitable long before
the last coal mine is exhausted.
Natural gas and uranium will outlast petroleum by a decade or
two, but they too will eventually reach peak output and begin
to decline. Natural gas will simply disappear, just like oil;
any future scarcity of uranium can to some degree be overcome
through the greater utilization of "breeder reactors,"
which produce plutonium as a byproduct; this substance can, in
turn, be used as a reactor fuel in its own right. But any increased
use of plutonium will also vastly increase the risk of nuclear-weapons
proliferation, producing a far more dangerous world and a corresponding
requirement for greater government oversight of all aspects of
nuclear power and commerce.
Such future possibilities are generating great anxiety among officials
of the major energy-consuming nations, especially the United States,
China, Japan, and the European powers. All of these countries
have undertaken major reviews of energy policy in recent years,
and all have come to the same conclusion: Market forces alone
can no longer be relied upon to satisfy essential national energy
requirements, and so the state must assume ever-increasing responsibility
for performing this role. This was, for example, the fundamental
conclusion of the National Energy Policy adopted by the Bush administration
on May 17, 2001 and followed slavishly ever since, just as it
is the official stance of China's Communist regime. When resistance
to such efforts is encountered, moreover, government officials
only wield the power of the state more regularly and with a heavier
hand to achieve their objectives, whether through trade sanctions,
embargoes, arrests and seizures, or the outright use of force.
This is part of the explanation for Energo-fascism's emergence.
Its rise is also being driven by the changing geography of energy
production. At one time, most of the world's major oil and natural
gas wells were located in North America, Europe, and the European
sectors of the Russian Empire. This was no accident. The major
energy companies much preferred to operate in hospitable countries
that were close at hand, relatively stable, and disinclined to
nationalize private energy deposits. But these deposits have now
largely been depleted and the only areas still capable of satisfying
rising world demand are located in Africa, Asia, Latin America,
and the Middle East.
The countries in these regions were nearly all subject to colonial
rule and still harbor deep distrust of foreign involvement; many
also house ethnic separatist groups, insurgencies, or extremist
movements that make them especially inhospitable to foreign oil
companies. Oil production in Nigeria, for example, has been sharply
curtailed in recent months by an insurgency in the impoverished
Niger Delta. Members of poor tribal groups that have suffered
terribly from the environmental devastation wrought by oil-company
operations in their midst, while receiving few tangible benefits
from the resulting oil revenues, have led it; most of the profits
that remain in-country are pilfered by ruling elites in Abuja,
the capital. Combine this sort of local resentment with lack of
security and often shaky ruling groups, and it's hardly surprising
that the leaders of the major consuming nations have increasingly
been taking matters into their own hands -- arranging preemptive
oil deals with compliant local officials and providing military
protection, where needed, to ensure the safe delivery of oil and
natural gas.
In many cases, this has resulted in the establishment of oil-driven,
patron-client relations between major consuming nations and their
leading suppliers, similar to the long-established U.S. protectorate
over Saudi Arabia and the more recent U.S. embrace of Ilham Aliyev,
the president of Azerbaijan. Already we have the beginnings of
the energy equivalent of a classic arms race, combined with many
of the elements of the "Great Game" as once played by
colonial powers in some of the same parts of the world. By militarizing
the energy policies of consuming nations and enhancing the repressive
capacities of client regimes, the foundations are being laid for
an Energo-fascist world.
The Pentagon: A Global Oil-Protection Service
The most significant expression of this trend has been the transformation
of the U.S. military into a global oil-protection service whose
primary function is the guarding of overseas energy supplies as
well as their global delivery systems (pipelines, tanker ships,
and supply routes). This overarching mission was first articulated
by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, when he described the
oil flow from the Persian Gulf as a "vital interest"
of the United States, and affirmed that this country would employ
"any means necessary, including military force" to overcome
an attempt by a hostile power to block that flow.
When President Carter issued this edict, quickly dubbed the Carter
Doctrine, the United States did not actually possess any forces
capable of performing this role in the Gulf. To fill this gap,
Carter created a new entity, the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force
(RDJTF), an ad hoc assortment of U.S-based forces designated for
possible employment in the Middle East. In 1983, President Reagan
transformed the RDJTF into the Central Command (Centcom), the
name it bears today. Centcom exercises command authority over
all U.S. combat forces deployed in the greater Persian Gulf area
including Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. At present, Centcom
is largely preoccupied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but it has never given up its original role of guarding the oil
flow from the Persian Gulf in accordance with the Carter Doctrine.
The greatest danger to the Persian Gulf oil flow is now said to
emanate from Iran, which has threatened to choke off all oil shipments
through the vital Strait of Hormuz (the narrow passageway at the
mouth of the Gulf) in the event of an American air assault on
its nuclear facilities. In possible anticipation of such a move,
the Pentagon recently ordered additional air and naval forces
into the Gulf and replaced General John Abizaid, the Centcom Commander,
who favored diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria, with Admiral
William Fallon, the Commander of the Pacific Command (Pacom) and
an expert in combined air and naval operations. Fallon arrived
at Centcom just as President Bush, in a nationally televised speech
on January 10, announced the deployment of an additional carrier
battle group to the Gulf and warned of harsh military action against
Iran if it failed to halt its support for insurgents in Iraq and
its pursuit of uranium-enrichment technology.
When first promulgated in 1980, the Carter Doctrine was aimed
principally at the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. In recent
years, however, American policymakers have concluded that the
United States must extend this kind of protection to every major
oil-producing region in the developing world. The logic for a
Carter Doctrine on a global scale was first spelled out in a bipartisan
task force report, "The Geopolitics of Energy," published
by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) in November 2000. Because the United States and
its allies are becoming increasingly dependent on energy supplies
from unstable overseas suppliers, the report concluded, "[T]he
geopolitical risks attendant to energy availability are not likely
to abate." Under these circumstances, "the United States,
as the world's only superpower, must accept its special responsibilities
for preserving access to worldwide energy supply."
This sort of thinking -- embraced by senior Democrats and Republicans
alike -- appears to have governed American strategic thinking
since the late 1990s. It was President Clinton who first put this
policy into effect, by extending the Carter Doctrine to the Caspian
Sea basin. It was Clinton who originally declared that the flow
of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to the West was an American
security priority, and who, on this basis, established military
ties with the governments of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. President Bush has substantially upgraded
these ties -- thereby laying the groundwork for a permanent U.S.
military presence in the region -- but it is important to view
this as a bipartisan effort in accordance with a shared belief
that protection of the global oil flow is increasingly not just
a vital function, but the vital function of the American military.
More recently, President Bush has extended the reach of the Carter
Doctrine to West Africa, now one of America's major sources of
oil. Particular emphasis is being place on Nigeria, where unrest
in the Delta (which holds most of the country's onshore petroleum
fields) has produced a substantial decline in oil output. "Nigeria
is the fifth largest source of U.S. oil imports," the State
Department's Fiscal Year 2007 Congressional Budget Justification
for Foreign Operations declares, "and disruption of supply
from Nigeria would represent a major blow to U.S. oil security
strategy." To prevent such a disruption, the Department of
Defense is providing Nigerian military and internal security forces
with substantial arms and equipment intended to quell unrest in
the Delta region; the Pentagon is also collaborating with Nigerian
forces in a number of regional patrol and surveillance efforts
aimed at improving security in the Gulf of Guinea, where most
of West Africa's offshore oil and gas fields are located.
Of course, senior officials and foreign policy elites are generally
loathe to acknowledge such crass motivations for the utilization
of military force -- they much prefer to talk about spreading
democracy and fighting terrorism. Every once in a while, however,
a hint of this deep energy-based conviction rises to the surface.
Especially revealing is a November 2006 task force report from
the Council on Foreign Relations on "National Security Consequences
of U.S. Oil Dependency." Co-chaired by former Secretary of
Defense James R. Schlesinger and former CIA Director John Deutsch,
and endorsed by a slew of elite policy wonks from both parties,
the report trumpeted the usual to-be-ignored calls for energy
efficiency and conservation at home, but then struck just the
militaristic note first voiced in the 2000 CSIS report (which
Schlesinger also co-chaired): "Several standard operations
of U.S. regionally deployed forces [presumably Centcom and Pacom]
have made important contributions to improving energy security,
and the continuation of such efforts will be necessary in the
future. U.S. naval protection of the sea-lanes that transport
oil is of paramount importance." The report also called for
stepped up U.S. naval engagement in the Gulf of Guinea off the
coast of Nigeria.
When expressing such views, U.S. policymakers often adopt an altruistic
stance, claiming that the United States is performing a "social
good" by protecting the global oil flow on behalf of the
world community. But this haughty, altruistic posture ignores
crucial aspects of the situation:
* First, the United States is the world's leading gas guzzler,
accounting for one out of every four barrels of oil consumed daily
around the world.
* Second, the pipelines and sea lanes being protected by American
soldiers and sailors at risk of life and limb are largely those
oriented toward the United States and close allies like Japan
and the NATO countries.
* Third, it is often specifically American-based corporations
whose overseas operations are being protected by U.S. forces in
turbulent areas abroad, again at significant risk to the military
personnel involved.
* Fourth, the Pentagon is itself one of the world's great oil
guzzlers, consuming 134 million barrels of oil in 2005, as much
as the entire nation of Sweden.
So while it is true that other countries may obtain some benefits
from the activities of the American military, the primary beneficiaries
are the American economy and giant U.S. corporations; the primary
losers are the American soldiers who risk their lives every day
to protect the pipelines and refineries, the poor of these countries
who see little or no benefit from the extraction of their natural
resources, and the global environment as a whole.
The cost of this immense undertaking, in both blood and treasure,
is enormous and it's still on the rise. There is, first of all,
the war in Iraq, which may have been sparked by a variety of motives,
but cannot in the end be separated from the historic mission first
laid out by President Carter of eliminating any potential threat
to the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. An assault on Iran
would also have a number of motives, but it, too, would be tied
to this mission in the final analysis -- even if it had the perverse
effect of closing off oil supplies, driving up energy prices,
and throwing the global economy into a tailspin. And there are
sure to be more wars over oil after these, with more American
casualties and more victims of American missiles and bullets.
The cost in dollars will also be great. Even if the war in Iraq
is excluded from the tally, the United States spends about one-fourth
of its defense budget, or some $100 billion per year, on Persian
Gulf-related expenses -- the approximate annual price-tag for
enforcement of the Carter Doctrine. One can argue about what percentage
of the approximately a $1 trillion cost of the war in Iraq should
be added to this tally, but surely we are minimally talking about
many hundreds of billions of dollars with no end in sight. Protection
of pipelines and tanker routes in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific,
the Gulf of Guinea, Colombia, and the Caspian Sea region adds
additional billions to this figure.
These costs will snowball in the future as the United States becomes
predictably more dependent on energy from the global south, as
resistance to Western exploitation of its oil fields grows, as
an energy race with newly ascendant China and India revs up, and
as American foreign-policy elites come to rely increasingly on
the U.S. military to overcome this resistance. Eventually, the
escalation of these costs will require higher domestic taxes or
diminished social benefits, or both; at some point, the growing
need for manpower to guard all these overseas oil fields, refineries,
pipelines, and tanker routes could entail resumption of the military
draft. This will generate widespread resistance to these policies
at home -- and this, in turn, may trigger the sorts of repressive
government crackdowns that would throw an ever darkening shadow
of Energo-fascism over our world.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies
at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers
and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum
(Owl Books).
[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the
Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources,
news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing,
co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End
of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the
Cold War, a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, and Mission Unaccomplished
(Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.]
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