Oil 1 Peak Oil 21
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Nuclear War[Continues] This can replace or extend current EU-brokered action, led by Germany, UK and France, to force or persuade Iran to relinquish its nuclear weapons ambitions. In some ways the most exposed major importer countries – China and India – due to fast growth of their increasingly oil-dependent economies, small oil stocks, low or no military presence in the Mid East, undeveloped RDF-rapid deployment forces and absence from historical geopolitical rivalry in this region are the two powers with the lowest margin of choice. In other words, these two players are most likely to act fastest. Recent effort by both China and India to start work on SPRs (Strategic Petroleum Reserves) has faltered, in part due to costs and the certain impact of stockbuilding on world oil prices, leaving both with tiny forward coverage of national consumption. Their primal role of Asian superpowers, however, confers sure and certain ability to operate in any way, including militarily, in the Arab/Persian Gulf region and south central Asia. For the moment, neither India nor China are openly declared parties to any potential military action focusing Iran. Oil prices nearing 150 US dollars-per-barrel might be considered this clear sign of ‘structural undersupply’. Great Powers outside the main declared parties – USA, Israel, Germany, UK and France -will almost certainly accelerate their action to the present, if ‘pre-emptive war’ against Iran is decided by the present declared parties. This decision could be accelerated by Neoconservative warmongers close to the outgoing G W Bush power elite of the USA, or Israeli war hawks taking their last chance to find political support and shelter from the outgoing G W Bush regime. Presidential candidate Obama has already declared his intention to remove US troops from Iraq, but neither Obama nor McCain can be considered ‘soft’ on Iran. The potential for a McCain victory, if this outcome becomes credible in Q3 2008, may temper Israeli war hawks in the short-term, as they consider that a McCain White House will be supportive of military action against Iran later on in his presidence. The looming possibility, or near-certainty of open conflict for assuring a bigger share of smaller export supplies is, to be sure, a certain and constant cause of Middle Eastern tension, covering conflicts from the Mediterranean to the Arab or Persian Gulf. Defensive alliances with great powers is also a sure and certain reflex of the region’s oil exporters, for example Qatar’s hosting of US military command for the Gulf region – as well as Al Jazeera TV. Russia’s ambivalent relations with Iranian president Ahmedinejad’s regime has to date not prevented Russia from selling weapons to Iran, including hi-tech air defense systems around its main ‘targetable’ nuclear installations, notably Natanz. The atomic joker Iran’s population size and growing industrial capacities – plus its declining oil reserves – all led to its decision to develop nuclear electricity production. This decision, taken by the Chah of Iran in 1973-1975, was warmly approved by US, European and Japanese leaderships of the day, and has been simply continued by the Chah’s Chi’ite Islamist successors ever since. The constant, and now rising threat of great power invasion, for any reason but finally concerning oil, could logically be taken as the basic driver of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Atomic weapon possession is thought of as ensuring ‘inviolability’ in the face of invasion threats or attempts. As we can however also note, any large-size nuclear reactor is a ‘potential Chernobyl’. Conventional ballistic missile capability brings these ‘dirty bombs’ into the sweep of nuclear-related targets, in any country possessing civil nuclear power plants of any size. Answering the key question of when this Oil Apocalypse could or might start is in fact relatively easy: When there is world economic crisis, as in 1929-36, this is nearly always a ‘Mother of War’. When we have global economic crisis at least equal in intensity to the 1929 crisis, we can assume we also have the basic geo-economic conditions able to trigger Oil Apocalypse, especially where recession is thought of, and presented by media as “only due to oil supply shortage and high prices”. Unlike the 1980-83 global economic crisis, when declining oil demand and increasing production capacities crossed over, giving nearly 15 years of cheap oil through 1986-2000, Peak Oil decline in export capacities will tend to shut-out and shorten this ‘slump premium for consumers’. The period during which oil prices would fall, with the start of a major recession, is likely short, making a repeat of 1985-2000 very unlikely or impossible. As well demonstrated by the Putin-Medvedev Kremlin, and de facto national oil and gas entity Gazprom, ‘the state within the state’, thermonculear-armed Russia can dictate supply and price conditions unlike any other oil exporter. Possessing even rudimentary atomic weapons is therefore a key, of course undeclared strategy of many oil exporter countries. How and why did the Last Oil War happen? As we noted above, there is always dispute of how and why wars started, but historians and analysts agree on one salient point: since the early-20th century, wars increasingly kill civilians and destroy civilian and economic infrastructures. Oil and gas infrastructures in the Middle East will surely not escape this rule, as clearly shown by Iraq’s intentional destruction of Kuwaiti installations when Iraq was forced out of Kuwait in 1991. Wars in the 20thC increasingly started, or spun-off from civil and ethnic wars but today, these are unwisely considered ‘manageable’ by media and politicians in the Great Powers. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 was already, at least in part a Chi’ite-Sunnite ethnic war. Any attack on Iran to punish it for developing nuclear weapons capability, and surely with the hope this ‘unlocks’ new oil production capacities, will rather surely open Pandora’s Box – possibly triggering an uncontrolled spiral of regional instability, and fatally drawing in other and newer oil-hungry Great Powers. The theory of ‘permanent war’ can in fact be traced to late 19th century historians and military strategists, including Clausewitz, Marx and Engels. Their theory affirms that under certain conditions, ‘low level permanent war’ occasionally breaks out into paroxysms of total war, for example when national or regional civil wars coalesce and attain a ‘critical mass’. The 1980-88 war could be interpreted as a regionally limited and circumscribed but long ethnic war. At the time, world oil demand was around 20 Mbd less than today, and world oil reserves were around 25 years further away from Peak Oil. Adding pressure from gasoline- and diesel fuel-hungry citizens in nuclear-armed Great Powers, today, any potential repeat of regional and ‘low-level Sunnite/Chi’ite conflict’ cannot operate. [Next Page] Nuclear War[Continues] Also making this option impossible or very unlikely, Iran’s march towards possessing atomic weapons makes it near certain we would start with high-level warfare. Regional ethnic conflict and the Peak Oil war From the late 1980s, spurred by intensifying poverty due to record-low commodity export prices and IMF-imposed structural adjustment, population growth, and the AIDS scourge, the Pan African Civil War broke out. In 1994 this helped trigger the Rwanda genocide, where around 1 million persons were slaughtered in a few months – a kill rate even higher than the insane excesses of Germany’s Nazi ‘final solution’. Within the opulence of petrodollar-fuelled double-digit economic growth in today’s GCC countries, large population groups, notably Chi’ite communities, are exposed to relative or absolute poverty and exclusion from jobs. This context, which in excluded minorities within Sunnite minority communities of the GCC countries feeds Al-Qaida and Salafist recruitment, is a potent support to Ahmedinejad’s strategy of winning majority-Chi’ite support inside the oil-rich GCC countries, and elsewhere in central and west Asia. It is surely hard to gauge what regional intensity of support has been won by Ahmedinejad, for example in Iraq where Chi’ite demographic clout leaves little chance for post-American Iraq to remain unaligned with Iran. Eradicating the certainty of Iraq falling into the Chi’ite sphere, dominated by Iran, and then moving on to repeat and extend this geopolitical and oil resource takeover in the GCC countries, has only one method. Pre-emptive war against Iran, under the easy-to-communicate pretext of stopping Iran from developing atomic weapons capability, is surely an attractive rationale for certain US, Israeli, European and other Great Power strategists as oil prices move towards 150 USD/barrel. During economic recession, as proven in the ‘Cheap Oil interval’ of 1986-2000, surely heightens ethnic tension between Chi’ite and Sunnite communities in the GCC countries. The rising likelihood that 150-dollar oil can trigger global recession underlines this economic pre-emptive rationale for war against Iran. Placing the Last Oil War in context Marking the end of the 1914-91 phase in a near-century of war, ‘total war’ historians argue, the 1991 first Gulf War, or strong anchorage of Kuwait’s Sunnite-minority ruling regime to US and OECD Great Powers was one of the last, or the last outbreak of ‘total war’. Conversely, we can argue today in 2008, the ‘Liberation of Kuwait’ was the first, and real outlyer Oil War, preceding The Final Energy Crisis. The 1991 Gulf War, we can note, was not only be a model for, but even the cause of those to come. Massive aerial supremacy, the non-possession of atomic or thermonuclear weapons by the opposing Iraqi side, the desert terrain and other factors made US-led victory fast and easy. When the Last Oil Wars come, probably announced and triggered by regional civil wars, almost certainly in the Middle East and central Asia, not one but many nuclear armed ‘players’, from the Big 9 list, can play in this final Petro Apocalypse. The classic game of variable geometry alliances will decide the alignment, and who will have the world’s last remaining reserves of oil. The real cause and enablement of the 20th century’s total or permanent war was dramatic expansion of population and unrepeatable growth of cheap energy supplies. We are forced to conclude it was a one-shot event that will not and cannot be repeated. A few simple facts underscore this claim. Through 1900-1999 world population increased from about 1450 Million to nearly 6000 Million (around 6.55 billion in 2008), while fossil fuel production and consumption rose from about 1100 Million tons of oil equivalent (Mtoe) to some 9800 Mtoe. Population rose 4-fold, but cheap energy supply rose 9-fold. But when we take account of a considerable increase in average efficiency of use, rising from around 10%-15% in 1900 to over 25% in the 1990s, actual applied and useful energy consumption increased about 18-fold for about a 4-fold rise in human numbers. This one-off feat is unlikely to be repeated. But while energy supply growth is certainly and surely constrained weapons supply growth is not. Key indicators for output of both civil and military equipment, such as light and midweight armored vehicles, small arms and light artillery showed spectacular increases. While civil automobile production increased ‘only’ about 65 times through 1900-1999, (a growth of 6400%), the production of mortars, mines, grenades, service rifles, small caliber missile and grenade launchers, and small calibre artillery (105 mm and below) increased about 250-fold in the same period (24 000% growth) Nuclear reactors are not designed to resist even the smallest and lightest hand-held antitank missile and, where they are claimed to be ‘terror-proof’, their cooling systems and control systems are entirely vulnerable. In any Great Power rivalry sparked by intense dispute for shrinking oil reserves, the enemy’s ‘civil’ nuclear reactors will be the softest of soft target for certain missile attack. The Ahmedinejad regime, like any other power, great or otherwise, should understand and comprehend this simple fact. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 9.54 Mb. Share with your friends:
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