Calm Down Klare

In Resource Wars, Michael T. Klare argues that after the Cold War, new conflicts between nations will be centered on resource security. The need to make sure that a nation has enough natural resources to sustain its economy will lead to increasingly militarized conflicts between nations fighting over finite resources.

There are several things I find problematic about Klare’s argument. The first one is that the idea of nations fighting over resources is hardly new. Even before the Cold War, natural resources were already causes for conflict on top of other more pertinent things such as ideologies, ethnicity, etc. Germany and France had for a long time fought over mineral resources in Alsace and Lorraine, Russia has fought over the oil-rich fields in Romania, and many other older examples can be found in history including during exploration campaigns to the new world. Even when the issue of scarcity was not yet an issue, countries were already willing to fight over control of resource-abundant areas. Klare does recognize that resources alone are not enough to justify how certain conflicts have broken out. However, he does seem to believe that in the future, resources will the most important reason for conflicts. If we look at history as an indicator we can make a case arguing that it will not be the case. So as far as reasons for conflict go, resource is not a brand new one as Klare suggests.

Another factor to be taken into consideration is that more powerful countries waging wars to protect their interest is not something new. Countries waging wars to have access or control over resources will simply be a further extension and representation of the balance of power, whatever that might look like at a certain point in time. Resources are no different than, say, security or ideology as far as reasons for conflict go. So knowing that resources are finite, and assuming that states do not find alternatives in time, resources can explain conflict under the same framework of reference used for security issues.

With that said, there is something else to take into consideration. Klare seems to suggest that as the situation tightens up, countries will be willing to use whatever means necessary to obtain what they need, including depriving other countries of resources in order to protect their own interest. That sounds reasonable enough if one looks at the issue from a purely realism perspective. However, it is important to consider that countries are increasingly interconnected economically due to the globalization of industries. It is difficult to imagine a country making decisions to guarantee its access to resources at the cost of ruining another country economically. This kind of future cut-throat competition scenario proposed by Klare is not reasonable. If one of the major power falls due to its inability to sustain its economy due to lack of resources, all other countries in the system will feel the hit. This notion of “if I fall, so will you” is, in my opinion, enough of an incentive to guarantee that nations will be actively looking for alternatives to the energy problem.

Finally, there is the idea discussed in class presented by the Prometheans. If we look at the history of humanity we have always saved ourselves from seemingly unavoidable crises by technological and scientific advancements. The famine that many predicted in Asia in the 60’s was avoided by advances in agriculture and genetically modified crops. Many diseases that threatened us as a species have been dealt with by scientific advances. The current climate problem will more likely than not follow the same pattern. Things will get really bad before we are forced to find an alternative, but what matters is that we will.