Left Flank

Michael T. Klare first warned about "conflict over valuable resources" in Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict in 2001, and he has now updated that geo-economic argument.

The great risk is that this struggle will someday breach the boundaries of economic and diplomatic competition and enter the military realm. This will not be because any of the states involved make a deliberate decision to provoke a conflict with a competitor--the leaders of all these countries know that the price of violence is far too high to pay for any conceivable return. The problem, instead, is that all are engaging in behaviors that make the outbreak of inadvertent escalation ever more likely. These include, for example, the deployment of growing numbers of American, Russian and Chinese military instructors and advisers in areas of instability where there is every risk that these outsiders will someday be caught up in local conflicts on opposite sides.

This risk is made all the greater because intensified production of oil, natural gas, uranium and minerals is itself a source of instability, acting as a magnet for arms deliveries and outside intervention. The nations involved are largely poor, so whoever controls the resources controls the one sure source of abundant wealth. This is an invitation for the monopolization of power by greedy elites who use control over military and police to suppress rivals. The result, more often than not, is a wealthy strata of crony capitalists kept in power by brutal security forces and surrounded by disaffected and impoverished masses, often belonging to a different ethnic group--a recipe for unrest and insurgency. This is the situation today in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, in Darfur and southern Sudan, in the uranium-producing areas of Niger, in Zimbabwe, in the Cabinda province of Angola (where most of that country's oil lies) and in numerous other areas suffering from what's been called the "resource curse."

The danger, of course, is that the great powers will be sucked into these internal conflicts. This is not a far-fetched scenario; the United States, Russia and China are already providing arms and military-support services to factions in many of these disputes. The United States is arming government forces in Nigeria and Angola, China is aiding government forces in Sudan and Zimbabwe, and so on. An even more dangerous situation prevails in Georgia, where the United States is backing the pro-Western government of President Mikhail Saakashvili with arms and military support while Russia is backing the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia plays an important strategic role for both countries because it harbors the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a US-backed conduit carrying Caspian Sea oil to markets in the West. There are US and Russian military advisers/instructors in both areas, in some cases within visual range of each other. It is not difficult, therefore, to conjure up scenarios in which a future blow-up between Georgian and separatist forces could lead, willy-nilly, to a clash between American and Russian soldiers, sparking a much greater crisis.

What makes the 2008 version "new", though is, that Klare has dropped his 2001 call for a "global authority", an extension of the International Energy Agency, to coordinate research on alternative fuels and protect current resources. Instead, Klare tepidly advocates "...rather than engage in militarized competition with China, we should cooperate with Beijing in developing alternative energy sources and more efficient transportation systems." Klare reprises Alfred Thayer Mahan, to underscore the US Navy's redeployment from its Cold War Rimland strategy to routes near Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the Malacca Strait, and bases in Iraq. Finally, Klare raises the issue of the military industrial complex: military spending to compete with PRC and Russia will dry up funds for research into alternative sources of energy. But, that funding also perversely ensures the US will seek conflict.

I'm uneasy about Klare's retreat. Certainly, PRC is a formidable competitor—CIA Director Michael Hayden's comment is encouraging—for resources and diplomatic influence, and the Washington should engage it. However, bilateral relationships can degenerate into animosity. In the wake of Iraq, the US needs to simplify its relationship with the world to facilitate better ties with the rest of the states it has marginalized in the last eight years. In other words, it needs a policy, not a monkey on its back. Global cooperation on energy spurring global growth, backed by American naval power, is as good as any power point presentation could offer. The monster of military procurement needs to be shoved into a cave where it can scare pirates and dictators but not impede commerce. Klare can only follow the last eight years' nightmare of nationalism with a stronger dose of responsible internationalism.

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In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith experiences an epiphany during a war rally when he realizes, that «…the speaker had switched from one line to the other actually in midsentence, not only without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax…. Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete.»i During the commotion, Smith receives a copy of an illegal, secret tome, «The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism«, written by a member of the Brotherhood, Emmanuel Goldstein. Nestled in an armchair, Smith reads about the geopolitical reality underlying the continuous wars in a chapter entitled, «War is Peace». Three super-states, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia are locked in a cycle of warfare for control of cheap labor in a western Asian and African shatter zone and to mobilize their respective citizens in perpetual mobilization.

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What if Islam never existed?

It's an intriguing question. But Graham E. Fuller spares no praise for a world where art was inspired by the Qur'an, or where God-intoxicated men devote themselves to study or ecstatic activity, like the Sufis. Still, the bare geopolitical outlines of a world without Islam is not unrecognizable:

This, then, is the portrait of a putative «world without Islam.» It is a Middle East dominated by Eastern Orthodox Christianity—a church historically and psychologically suspicious of, even hostile to, the West. Still riven by major ethnic and even sectarian differences, it possesses a fierce sense of historical consciousness and grievance against the West. It has been invaded repeatedly by Western imperialist armies; its resources commandeered; borders redrawn by Western fiat in conformity with its various interests; and regimes established that are compliant with Western dictates. Palestine would still burn. Iran would still be intensely nationalistic. We would still see Palestinians resist Jews, Chechens resist Russians, Iranians resist the British and Americans, Kashmiris resist Indians, Tamils resist the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, and Uighurs and Tibetans resist the Chinese. The Middle East would still have a glorious historical model—the great Byzantine Empire of more than 2,000 years' standing—with which to identify as a cultural and religious symbol. It would, in many respects, perpetuate an East-West divide.

Fuller asserts that "ethnicity, nationalism, ambition, greed, resources, local leaders, turf, financial gain, power, interventions, and hatred of outsiders, invaders, and imperialists" are more bedrock causes for the tensions in the region. "In the face of these tensions between East and West, Islam unquestionably adds yet one more emotive element, one more layer of complications to finding solutions. Islam is not the cause of such problems." Indeed, Islam might be a saving grace.

Fuller's argument is pertinent especially when conservative commentators like William F. Buckley (5:25) talk about the "Christian alternative". I wouldn't dispute the existence of religious support for political concepts, like freedom, but the Church history contradicts its own scriptural support. If scrolls imbued with false divinity can cause Christian practitioners to pause, then, if Fuller is correct, so might Muslims seek a reason not to quarrel over those deeper human truths.