Reply #29: excellent, Tinoire

[buddhamama]

thank you.

i didn't see this good summery article in your post

it's thorough

The US and Eurasia:
End Game for the Industrial Era?

With the dawn of the 21st century the world has entered a new stage of geopolitical struggle. The first half of the 20th century can be understood as one long war between Britain (and shifting allies) and Germany (and shifting allies) for European supremacy. The second half of the century was dominated by a Cold War between the US, which emerged as the world's foremost industrial-military power following World War II, and the Soviet Union and its bloc of protectorates. The US wars in Afghanistan (in 2001-2002) and Iraq (which, counting economic sanctions and periodic bombings, has continued from 1990 to the present) have ushered in the latest stage, which promises to be the final geopolitical struggle of the industrial period - a struggle for the control of Eurasia and its energy resources.

My purpose here is to sketch the general outlines of this culminating chapter of history as it is currently being played out.

First, it is necessary to discuss geopolitics in general, and from a historical perspective, in relation to resources, geography, military technology, national currencies, and the psychology of its practitioners.




The Ends and Means of Geopolitics
It is never enough to say that geopolitics is about "power," "control," or "hegemony" in the abstract. These words have usefulness only in relation to specific objectives and means: Power over what or whom, exerted by what methods? The answers will differ somewhat in each situation; however, most strategic objectives and means tend to have some characteristics in common.
Like other organisms, humans are subject to the perpetual ecological constraints of population pressure and resource depletion. While it may be simplistic to say that all conflicts between societies are motivated by the desire to overcome ecological constraints, most certainly are. Wars are typically fought over resources - land, forests, waterways, minerals, and (during the past century) oil. People do occasionally fight over ideologies and religions. But even then resource rivalries are seldom far from the surface. Thus attempts to explain geopolitics without reference to resources (a recent example is Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations) are either misguided or deliberately misleading.

The industrial era differs from previous periods of human history in the large-scale harnessing of energy resources (coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium) for the purposes of production and transportation - and for the deeper purpose of expanding the human carrying capacity of our terrestrial environment. All of the scientific achievements, the political consolidations, and the immense population increases of the past two centuries are predictable effects of the growing, coordinated use of energy resources. In the early decades of the 20th century, petroleum emerged as the most important energy resource because of its cheapness and convenience of use. The industrial world is now overwhelmingly dependent on oil for agriculture and transportation.

Modern global geopolitics, because it implies worldwide transportation and communication systems rooted in fossil energy resources, is therefore a phenomenon unique to the industrial era.

The control of resources is largely a matter of geography, and secondarily a matter of military technology and control over currencies of exchange. The US and Russia were both geographically blessed, being self-sufficient in energy resources during the first half of the century. Germany and Japan failed to attain regional hegemony largely because they lacked sufficient indigenous energy resources and because they failed to gain and keep access to resources elsewhere (via the USSR on one hand and the Dutch East Indies on the other).

Yet while both the US and Russia were well endowed by nature, both have passed their petroleum production peaks (which occurred in 1970 and 1987, respectively). Russia remains a net oil exporter because its consumption levels are low, but the US is increasingly dependent on imports of both oil and natural gas.

Both nations long ago began investing much of their energy-based wealth in the production of fuel-fed arms systems with which to expand and defend their resource interests globally. In other words, both decided decades ago to be geopolitical players, or contenders for global hegemony.

Roughly three-quarters of the world's crucial remaining petroleum reserves lie within the borders of predominantly Muslim nations of the Middle East and Central Asia - nations that, for historical, geographic, and political reasons, were unable to develop large-scale industrial-military economies of their own and that have, throughout the past century, mainly served as pawns of the Great Powers (Britain, the US, and the former USSR). In recent decades, these predominantly Muslim oil-rich nations have pooled their interests in a cartel, the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC).

While resources, geography, and military technology are essential to geopolitics, they are not sufficient without a financial means to dominate the terms of international trade. Hegemony has had a financial as well as a military component ever since the adoption of money by Bronze Age agricultural empires; money, after all, is a claim upon resources, and the ability to control the currency of exchange can effect a subtle ongoing transfer of real wealth. Whoever issues a currency - especially a fiat currency, i.e., one not backed by precious metals - has power over it: every transaction becomes a subsidy to the money coiner or printer.


During the colonial era, rivalries between the Spanish real, the French franc, and the British pound were as decisive as military battles in determining hegemonic power. For the past half-century, the US dollar has been the international currency of account for nearly all nations, and it is the currency with which all oil-importing nations must pay for their fuel. This is an arrangement that has worked to the advantage both of OPEC, which maintains a stable customer in the US (the world's largest petroleum consumer and a military power capable of defending the Arab oil kingdoms), and of the US itself, which receives a subtle financial tithe for every barrel of oil consumed by every other importing nation.

These are some of the essential facts to bear in mind when examining the current geopolitical landscape.


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