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4 The Pentagon's energy-protection
racket By Michael T Klare
It has once again become fashionable for
the dwindling supporters of President George W
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.
Bush 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 the US 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 Americans 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 US 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-weapon 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
20th-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 million 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
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