By Michael T. Klare, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on January 20, 2007, Printed on January 21, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46838/
It has once again become fashionable for the dwindling supporters
of President 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. The
President 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 we 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 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 U.S. 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 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 twentieth 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 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 a half. If, however, it is used to replace oil (in various
coal-to-liquid schemes), it will disappear much more rapidly.
This does not, of course, address coal's disproportionate contribution
to global warming; if there is no change in the way it is burned
in power plants, the planet will become inhospitable long before
the last coal mine is exhausted.
Natural gas and uranium will outlast petroleum by a decade
or two, but they too will eventually reach peak output and begin
to decline. Natural gas will simply disappear, just like oil;
any future scarcity of uranium can to some degree be overcome
through the greater utilization of "breeder reactors," which
produce plutonium as a byproduct; this substance can, in turn,
be used as a reactor fuel in its own right. But any increased
use of plutonium will also vastly increase the risk of nuclear-weapons
proliferation, producing a far more dangerous world and a corresponding
requirement for greater government oversight of all aspects
of nuclear power and commerce.
Such future possibilities are generating great anxiety among
officials of the major energy-consuming nations, especially
the United States, China, Japan, and the European powers. All
of these countries have undertaken major reviews of energy policy
in recent years, and all have come to the same conclusion: Market
forces alone can no longer be relied upon to satisfy essential
national energy requirements, and so the state must assume ever-increasing
responsibility for performing this role. This was, for example,
the fundamental conclusion of the
National Energy Policy
adopted by the Bush administration on May 17, 2001 and followed
slavishly ever since, just as it is the official stance of China's
Communist regime. When resistance to such efforts is encountered,
moreover, government officials only wield the power of the state
more regularly and with a heavier hand to achieve their objectives,
whether through trade sanctions, embargoes, arrests and seizures,
or the outright use of force. This is part of the explanation
for Energo-fascism's emergence.
Its rise is also being driven by the changing geography of
energy production. At one time, most of the world's major oil
and natural gas wells were located in North America, Europe,
and the European sectors of the Russian Empire. This was no
accident. The major energy companies much preferred to operate
in hospitable countries that were close at hand, relatively
stable, and disinclined to nationalize private energy deposits.
But these deposits have now largely been depleted and the only
areas still capable of satisfying rising world demand are located
in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
The countries in these regions were nearly all subject to
colonial rule and still harbor deep distrust of foreign involvement;
many also house ethnic separatist groups, insurgencies, or extremist
movements that make them especially inhospitable to foreign
oil companies.
Oil production in Nigeria, for example, has been sharply
curtailed in recent months by an
insurgency in the impoverished Niger Delta. Members of poor
tribal groups that have suffered terribly from the environmental
devastation wrought by oil-company operations in their midst,
while receiving few tangible benefits from the resulting oil
revenues, have led it; most of the profits that remain in-country
are pilfered by ruling elites in Abuja, the capital. Combine
this sort of local resentment with lack of security and often
shaky ruling groups, and it's hardly surprising that the leaders
of the major consuming nations have increasingly been taking
matters into their own hands -- arranging preemptive oil deals
with compliant local officials and providing military protection,
where needed, to ensure the safe delivery of oil and natural
gas.
In many cases, this has resulted in the establishment of
oil-driven, patron-client relations between major consuming
nations and their leading suppliers, similar to the long-established
U.S. protectorate over Saudi Arabia and the more recent U.S.
embrace of
Ilham Aliyev,
the president of Azerbaijan. Already we have the beginnings
of the energy equivalent of a classic arms race, combined with
many of the elements of the "Great Game" as once played by colonial
powers in some of the same parts of the world. By militarizing
the energy policies of consuming nations and enhancing the repressive
capacities of client regimes, the foundations are being laid
for an Energo-fascist world.
The Pentagon: A Global Oil-Protection Service
The most significant expression of this trend has been the
transformation of the U.S. military into a
global
oil-protection service whose primary function is the guarding
of overseas energy supplies as well as their global delivery
systems (pipelines, tanker ships, and supply routes). This overarching
mission was first articulated by President Jimmy Carter in January
1980, when he described the oil flow from the Persian Gulf as
a "vital interest" of the United States, and affirmed that this
country would employ "any means necessary, including military
force" to overcome an attempt by a hostile power to block that
flow.
When President Carter issued this edict, quickly dubbed the
Carter
Doctrine, the United States did not actually possess any
forces capable of performing this role in the Gulf. To fill
this gap, Carter created a new entity, the
Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), an ad hoc
assortment of U.S-based forces designated for possible employment
in the Middle East. In 1983, President Reagan transformed the
RDJTF into the Central Command
(Centcom), the name it bears today. Centcom exercises command
authority over all U.S. combat forces deployed in the greater
Persian Gulf area including Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa.
At present, Centcom is largely preoccupied with the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, but it has never given up its original
role of
guarding the oil flow from the Persian Gulf in accordance
with the Carter Doctrine.
The greatest danger to the Persian Gulf oil flow is now said
to emanate from
Iran,
which has threatened to choke off all oil shipments through
the vital Strait of Hormuz (the narrow passageway at the mouth
of the Gulf) in the event of an American air assault on its
nuclear facilities. In possible anticipation of such a move,
the Pentagon recently ordered additional air and naval forces
into the Gulf and replaced
General John Abizaid, the Centcom Commander, who favored
diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria, with
Admiral
William Fallon, the Commander of the Pacific Command (Pacom)
and an expert in combined air and naval operations.
Fallon
arrived at Centcom just as President Bush, in a nationally
televised
speech on January 10, announced the deployment of an additional
carrier battle group to the Gulf and warned of harsh military
action against Iran if it failed to halt its support for insurgents
in Iraq and its pursuit of uranium-enrichment technology.
When first promulgated in 1980, the Carter Doctrine was aimed
principally at the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. In recent
years, however, American policymakers have concluded that the
United States must extend this kind of protection to every
major oil-producing region in the developing world. The logic
for a Carter Doctrine on a global scale was first spelled out
in a bipartisan task force report, "The Geopolitics of Energy,"
published by the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) in November 2000. Because the United States
and its allies are becoming increasingly dependent on energy
supplies from unstable overseas suppliers, the report concluded,
"[T]he geopolitical risks attendant to energy availability are
not likely to abate." Under these circumstances, "the United
States, as the world's only superpower, must accept its special
responsibilities for preserving access to worldwide energy supply."
This sort of thinking -- embraced by senior Democrats and
Republicans alike -- appears to have governed American strategic
thinking since the late 1990s. It was President Clinton who
first put this policy into effect, by extending the Carter Doctrine
to the Caspian Sea basin. It was Clinton who originally declared
that the flow of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to the West
was an American security priority, and who, on this basis, established
military ties with the governments of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. President Bush has substantially
upgraded these ties -- thereby laying the groundwork for a permanent
U.S. military presence in the region -- but it is important
to view this as a bipartisan effort in accordance with a shared
belief that protection of the global oil flow is increasingly
not just a vital function, but the vital function of
the American military.
More recently, President Bush has extended the reach of the
Carter Doctrine to West Africa, now one of America's major sources
of oil. Particular emphasis is being placed on Nigeria, where
unrest in the Delta (which holds most of the country's onshore
petroleum fields) has produced a substantial decline in oil
output. "Nigeria is the fifth largest source of U.S. oil imports,"
the State Department's Fiscal Year 2007 Congressional Budget
Justification for Foreign Operations declares, "and disruption
of supply from Nigeria would represent a major blow to U.S.
oil security strategy." To prevent such a disruption, the Department
of Defense is providing Nigerian military and internal security
forces with substantial arms and equipment intended to quell
unrest in the Delta region; the Pentagon is also
collaborating
with Nigerian forces in a number of regional patrol and surveillance
efforts aimed at improving security in the Gulf of Guinea, where
most of West Africa's offshore oil and gas fields are located.
Of course, senior officials and foreign policy elites are
generally loath to acknowledge such crass motivations for the
utilization of military force -- they much prefer to talk about
spreading democracy and fighting terrorism. Every once in a
while, however, a hint of this deep energy-based conviction
rises to the surface. Especially revealing is a November 2006
task force report from the Council
on Foreign Relations on
"National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency."
Co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger
and former CIA Director John Deutsch, and endorsed by a slew
of elite policy wonks from both parties, the report trumpeted
the usual to-be-ignored calls for energy efficiency and conservation
at home, but then struck just the militaristic note first voiced
in the 2000 CSIS report (which Schlesinger also co-chaired):
"Several standard operations of U.S. regionally deployed forces
[presumably Centcom and Pacom] have made important contributions
to improving energy security, and the continuation of such efforts
will be necessary in the future. U.S. naval protection of the
sea-lanes that transport oil is of paramount importance." The
report also called for stepped up U.S. naval engagement in the
Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Nigeria.
When expressing such views, U.S. policymakers often adopt
an altruistic stance, claiming that the United States is performing
a "social good" by protecting the global oil flow on behalf
of the world community. But this haughty, altruistic posture
ignores crucial aspects of the situation:
- First, the United States is the world's leading gas
guzzler, accounting for one out of every four barrels of
oil consumed daily around the world.
- Second, the pipelines and sea lanes being protected
by American soldiers and sailors at risk of life and limb
are largely those oriented toward the United States and
close allies like Japan and the NATO countries.
- Third, it is often specifically American-based corporations
whose overseas operations are being protected by U.S. forces
in turbulent areas abroad, again at significant risk to
the military personnel involved.
- Fourth, the Pentagon is itself one of the world's great
oil guzzlers, consuming 134 million barrels of oil in 2005,
as much as the entire nation of Sweden.
So while it is true that other countries may obtain some
benefits from the activities of the American military, the primary
beneficiaries are the American economy and giant U.S. corporations;
the primary losers are the American soldiers who risk their
lives every day to protect the pipelines and refineries, the
poor of these countries who see little or no benefit from the
extraction of their natural resources, and the global environment
as a whole.
The cost of this immense undertaking, in both blood and treasure,
is enormous and it's still on the rise. There is, first of all,
the war in Iraq, which may have been sparked by a variety of
motives, but cannot in the end be separated from the historic
mission first laid out by President Carter of eliminating any
potential threat to the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.
An assault on Iran would also have a number of motives, but
it, too, would be tied to this mission in the final analysis
-- even if it had the perverse effect of closing off oil supplies,
driving up energy prices, and throwing the global economy into
a tailspin. And there are sure to be more wars over oil after
these, with more American casualties and more victims of American
missiles and bullets.
The cost in dollars will also be great. Even if the war in
Iraq is excluded from the tally, the United States spends about
one-fourth of its defense budget, or some $100 billion per year,
on Persian Gulf-related expenses -- the approximate annual price-tag
for enforcement of the Carter Doctrine. One can argue about
what percentage of the approximately
$1 trillion
cost of the war in Iraq should be added to this tally, but
surely we are minimally talking about many hundreds of billions
of dollars with no end in sight. Protection of pipelines and
tanker routes in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Gulf of
Guinea, Colombia, and the Caspian Sea region adds additional
billions to this figure.
These costs will snowball in the future as the United States
becomes predictably more dependent on energy from the global
south, as resistance to Western exploitation of its oil fields
grows, as an energy race with newly ascendant China and India
revs up, and as American foreign-policy elites come to rely
increasingly on the U.S. military to overcome this resistance.
Eventually, the escalation of these costs will require higher
domestic taxes or diminished social benefits, or both; at some
point, the growing need for manpower to guard all these overseas
oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and tanker routes could entail
resumption of the military draft. This will generate widespread
resistance to these policies at home -- and this, in turn, may
trigger the sorts of repressive government crackdowns that would
throw an ever darkening shadow of Energo-fascism over our world.
Read Part II of Michael Klare's two-part series, "Behold
the Rise of Energy-Based Fascism."
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security
studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and the author
of
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing
Petroleum Dependency.
© 2007 Independent Media
Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/46838/
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