Lecture 10: Resource Wars? Incentives, Opportunities, and Challenges The first two essays in this week s session will, we hope, provoke a firestorm of debate. Manning s article suggest that there are direct economic consequences and impacts in how developed (and emerging nations that want to mirror the development of more prosperous states). Such practices, including the abusive use of agriculture, can have devastating eventual economic impact. Finnegan s essay, which is now a PBS Frontline video as well, suggests economic roots in the struggle for resources, and that water not just in Bolivia will become a crucial basis for competition. As you will recognize from the essay you read in Week 9, Finnegan pulls no punches in his critique. But this essay both powerfully and tragically brings out how governments in dire economic straits often have few choices to make for often desperate citizens who are economically deprived. This essay illustrates a concept that first appeared in the 1994 United Nations Human Development Report, called human security. Although the definition is being constantly redefined in a special UN Commission on Human Security, the original concept of the term posed in 1994 meant: The concept of security has for too long been interpreted narrowly: as security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in foreign policy or as global security from the threat of nuclear holocaust. It has been related to nation-states more than people. . . . Forgotten were the legitimate concerns of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives. For many of them, security symbolized protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime [or terrorism], social conflict, political repression and environmental hazards. With the dark shadows of the Cold War receding, one can see that many conflicts are within nations rather than between nations.1 The scholar Michael Klare (referenced in optional readings and in recommended supplementary texts for the course) contends in his recent work that economic and security competition over resources will provide a guide to the likely zones of conflict rather than political, ideological, or cultural fault lines. This geopolitical faultlines we must emphasize are defined more by economic needs and wants than by ideology or politics. In other words, what Klare is writing about is economic geography, a map of the future that will be driven more by geo conomics than anything else. This reality is only further emphasized in how the conflict between the United States and terrorists is not simply a contest between Western liberalism and Eastern fanaticism, or a struggle to defend Islam, or a predictable backlash against American hegemony. Rather, the war in the Greater Near East derives from a powerful geopolitical contest the struggle for resources. Klare presents both the challenges that lie ahead and a useful historical background to the U.S-Saudi relationship that began in the final years of the Second World War. Even as the U.S. and Saudi Arabia agreed to withdraw 5,000 combat forces from the kingdom by the end of the summer of 2003, it was clearly evident that the troops would not leave the region Development Programme (UNDP). UN Human Development Report (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 1UN and that geo conomics would continue to be both a driving force and a critical uncertainty in the Greater Near East for some time to come. Against this regional dynamic, we must also consider geo conomic competition. In 2002, Russia displaced Saudi Arabia as the world s largest petroleum producer (although Saudi Arabia clearly still maintains the world s largest reserve of oil), and became a key energy supplier to the West. But the Saudi kingdom has most definitely not welcomed Russia s rising dominance. The emerging contest for oil dominance between Russia and Saudi Arabia may profoundly affect U.S. energy security, Russia s global role, Saudi power, the function of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) of which Russia is not a member as well as the global economy. Equally, as the two Victors pointed out in the Axis of Oil essay, there is an economic, diplomatic, and security need for U.S.-Russian cooperation on water and nuclear issues that may be even more pressing than petroleum concerns. Beyond the borders of the Russian Federation (but within the boundaries of what was once the Soviet Union) the Caspian basin (located both in the Transcaucasians and Central Asia) is a tempting future energy source. With huge potential reserves of oil (with some value estimates as high as $4 trillion) and the among the world s largest natural gas deposits, the region is an acknowledged resource-rich environment. Yet the region is torn by ethnic and civil unrest; further, standards of living for individual citizens have plummeted in the region since the end of the Soviet empire. Each of these states faces difficult choices in the next five to ten years, and even the most optimistic estimates suggest that economic benefits from oil and gas resources will not be realized until 2010. Olcott details how the region has come to prominence yet faces immense peril. Equally, just as there are military forces in the Gulf region to the south, we begin to see the emergence of both Russian and U.S. military forces in Central Asia, forces that are partially there at staging bases for the war on terrorism and partially as guarantors of stability and security in a region of emerging geo conomic significance. Remember that in 1999, Haidar Alieyev, then president of Azerbaijan, offered the United States an air force base in the capital city of Baku, situated at the edge of the western Caspian Sea. At the time, the United States was reluctant to accept the offer, partially out of geopolitical concerns and sensitivities to a perceived new Great Game that characterized the British and Russian empires struggling over much of Afghanistan and Central Asia in the nineteenth century. But, while the following graphic ( Christian Science Monitor) does not show the presence of Russian troops in Central Asia, we do begin to see the stationing of soldiers and airmen in critical locales in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Further, a brief illustration ( National Geographic Magazine) of pipeline routs from the Caspian region shows why the area is both economically viable and strategically a competition zone. In the reading by Paul Collier, director of the World Bank s development group, we see a return to classic economic geography concepts to suggest that declining economies, dwindling infrastructures, and areas geographically challenged with mountainous terrain, can be catalysts for violent intrastate war far more than supposed ethnic tensions igniting. Collier draws ammunition from a groundbreaking study of civil conflict over the last forty years, which reveals that economic forces such as chronic poverty and the destabilizing effects of the trade in natural resources such as <a href="/keyword/conflict-diamonds/" >conflict diamonds</a> are more directly responsible for civil wars than ethnic tensions and old political feuds. Moreover, according to Collier, democracy does not necessarily reduce the risk of civil war, especially in low-income countries; a one percent increase in gross domestic product growth, by contrast, in many contexts would have a far more significant long-term impact. Do you agree? Can you think of any examples to the contrary? Can the international community do anything to stabilize the process of...