PowerSwitch

...and Oil Wars

A very interesting article posted on the ICH website this morning by Dr Nafeez Ahmed

Nafeez Ahmed wrote:While energy has always played a role in military conflicts, US military experts believe the geopolitics of energy, land and water is increasingly central to who rules, or ruins, the world.

It's ruins the world. All imperialistic ventures ultimately end up ruining everything.

Nafeez Ahmed wrote: Two research documents published in recent months by the US Army reveal the military establishment’s latest thinking in startlingly frank terms. The research not only lends credence to environmental warnings about how climate change will fuel political instability, but also vindicates concerns about how looming resource shortages could destabilise the global economy.

The penny has quite clearly and loudly dropped.

There is a very interesting conundrum here:

Nafeez Ahmed wrote: The lessons for industrial-era technologies in fossil fuel production, transport, infrastructure and so on, are stark.

Many technologies widely used today started life for narrow military purposes. The US Army’s concerted decision to spearhead a rapid transition to sustainable energy, land and water systems sounds the death knell for the old, industrial-era systems.

The current failing economic model is based on industrial era system thinking (amongst others it should be added).

The next paragraph puts the conundrum into stark relief:

Nafeez Ahmed wrote: The plan is not perfect. The US Army’s understanding of “resilience” – the capacity to anticipate, prepare for, withstand and adapt to “natural or man-made disruptions” and to “recover rapidly” from them – is based on the unquestionable assumption that US-dominated global capitalism must be protected.

This notion of resilience is not about transforming the system that generates disruptions, but about increasing the US military’s ability to withstand disruptions to capitalism, thus keeping the system rumbling along:

“Resilience is essential for a responsive Army force posture and an effective network of installations and capabilities at home and abroad to protect US interests and those of our allies.”

It is this capitalism itself that is doomed regardless of the effectiveness (or not as the case may be) of the US military.

Dr Ahmed concludes:

Nafeez Ahmed wrote:The unswerving commitment to protecting business-as-usual, the fatalistic capitulation to a future of expanding oil dependence, and the blinkered belief that global economic health is tied to endless resource exploitation, all show that US policymakers still have their heads in the sand.

If Pentagon officials really want to defend US national security, they must wake up to the fact that the global system itself must undergo a fundamental transformation, in which economic stability is no longer dependent on the unlimited consumption of fossil fuels.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Pentagon Prepares for a Century of Climate Emergencies and Oil Wars

Thanks for that RB. Previous articles by Nafeez have also been very enlightening. One of the few really switched on journalists.