Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict [Hardcover]

Michael T. Klare (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805055754 | ISBN-13: 978-0805055757 | Publication Date: May 17, 2001 | Edition: 1st

This sobering look at the future of warfare predicts that conflicts will now be fought over diminishing supplies of our most precious natural resources.

From the barren oilfields of Central Asia to the lush Nile delta, from the busy shipping lanes of the South China Sea to the uranium mines and diamond fields of sub-Saharan Africa, Resource Wars looks at the growing impact of resource scarcity on the military policies of nations. International security expert Michael T. Klare argues that in the early decades of the new millennium wars will be fought not over ideology but over resources, as states battle to control dwindling supplies of precious natural commodities. The political divisions of the Cold War, Klare asserts, are giving way to an immense global scramble for essential materials, such as oil, timber, minerals, and water. And as armies throughout the world define resource security as their primary mission, widespread instability is bound to follow, especially in those places where resource competition overlaps with long-standing disputes over territorial rights.

A much-needed assessment of a changed world, Resource Wars is a compelling look at the future of warfare in an era of heightened environmental stress and accelerated economic competition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Klare analyzes the most likely cause of war in the century just begun: demand by rapidly growing populations for scarce resources. An introductory chapter sets the scene, laying out the complexities of rapidly increasing demand as the world industrializes, the concentration of resources in unstable states and the competing claims to ownership of resources by neighboring states. Succeeding chapters look more closely at the potential for conflict over oil in the Persian Gulf and in the Caspian and South China Seas, over water in the Nile Basin and other multinational river systems and over timber, gems and minerals from Borneo to Sierra Leone. The strength of Klare's presentation is its concreteness. His analyses of likely conflicts, for example among Syria, Jordan and Israel for the limited water delivered by the Jordan River, are informed by detailed research into projected usage rates, population growth and other relevant trends. As Klare shows, the same pattern is repeated in dozens of other locations throughout the world. Finite resources, escalating demand and the location of resources in regions torn by ethnic and political unrest all combine as preconditions of war. Klare, an expert on warfare and international security (Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, etc.), presents a persuasive case for paying serious attention to these impending hostilities and furnishes the basic information needed to understand their danger and the importance of international cooperation in staving off conflict. (May) Forecast: Klare's message is important, but it probably won't be heard by many beyond readers of the handful of major newspapers that will review it.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In this tour d'horizon for prospective wars in the next few decades, Klare identifies the factors and the actors in several contested areas of Africa and Asia. Distancing himself from ruminators like Samuel Huntington, whose Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) maintained that cultural differences, such as between Muslim and Christian, will drive post-cold war international politics, Klare contends that power struggles over petroleum, water, gems, and timber will be the engines. Indeed, where oil and water are concentrated in Asia and Africa--the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, and the South China Sea in the former; the Nile, Jordan, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus River regions in the latter--Klare notes marked increases in military activity. Saber sharpening, rattling, and use have their provocations in increasing worldwide demand, driven by economic and population growth, for oil and clean water. Buttressing the text with tables attesting the finitude of both resources, Klare provides needed clarity on and a needed current-affairs summary of the issue. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (May 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805055754
• ISBN-13: 978-0805055757
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #960,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book's message drowned out by recent events, March 15, 2002

By 

"michaeleve" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Hardcover)

And it's a pity because Klare is on the right track with his analysis. Very early in the book he puts the issue into context. In a time of globalization with more and more countries industrializing, there is a concomitant increased demand for finite resources, which is exacerbated by growing populations.

To the extent that these resources are in unstable regions of the world, and many of them are, it poses a problem. The arguments about a convergence of resources, geography, and national self-interests seems to recall Europe of the last century and their "great game" of Middle Eastern conquests or their "Scramble for Africa." Some of the objectives are the same - oil and gems - but mostly the resources in question are simply essential to basic national existence - food and water. Klare's analysis is penetrating and supported with tables. His data seems to point to an inevitable conflict between Israel, Jordan, and Syria over the River Jordans' outflow. Similar population pressures impact the Nile, and Egypt's relations with its neighbors.

In contrast to the plausible and much more likely scenarios as portrayed here, shallow arguments such as Samuel Huntington's CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS are enjoying post September 11th renewed sales. Huntington has seemingly identified the problem, but many persons recognize his analysis as superficial and too generalized and his clash was never originally about terrorism. More to the point is the type of collapsed-state, money-laundering financed type of conflicts involving diamonds which Klare identifies as taking place in Sierra Leone and Angola. Here we have an intersection of Western corporate interests, strategic resources and local political considerations. These "conflict diamonds" are a topic of broad discussion in Matthew Hart's recent DIAMOND: A JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF AN OBSESSION. Here Klare sees them as illustrative of the type of resource over which future wars will be fought. In Klare's view they are more likely to live up to their other name - "blood diamonds".

RESOURCE WARS is a wide ranging, carefully argued, and very plausible portrait of where future battles will be, and what they will be about.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling glimpse of near future, June 1, 2004

By 

S. A Troutt (MURFREESBORO, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author (Paperback)

Out of oil by 2050, or 2040 , or 2080 and shortages long before then. Potable water.. scarce now and getting scarcer (one of the roots of the 67 Arab-Israeli War was water rights). The facts roll over the reader, dispassionate and almost mindnumbing in detail. Population growing far beyond any capacity to maintain (The population of Ethiopia in 1950 was 18 million, the projected population in 2050 will be 212 million!)Civil wars, wars by proxy, the depletion and devastation of irreplacable old growth forests, rainforests, whole fragile ecosystems gone in a decade. And these are facts....facts no reputable scientist will argue other then exactly WHEN the resources will be finally depleted. The feeling I got at the end of the book was that we are all 'fiddling' as our world starts to burn.

68 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ground Truth That Will Be Ignored, May 31, 2001

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Hardcover)

This is a very thoughtful and well-documented book that has been 20 years in the making--although it was actually researched and written in the past three years, the author is on record as having discussed water wars in 1980, and should be credited with anticipating the relationship between natural resources, ethnic conflict, and great power discomfort well before the pack.

He covers oil in particular, energy in more general terms (to my disappointment, not breaking natural gas out from oil, a very relevant distinction for commodities brokers), water, minerals, and timber. His footnotes are quite satisfactory and strike a very fine balance--unusually good--between policy, military, and academic or industry sources.

Sadly, I believe that this book, as with Laurie Garrett's book on the collapse of public health, will be ignored by the ...Administration, which appears to have decided that real war is only between states, that energy is something to be increased, not moderated in use, and that real men do not concern themselves with ethnic conflict, small wars, or scarcity of any sort in the Third World.

As I reflect on this book, and its deep discussion of the details of existing and potential resources wars (it includes a very fine illustrative appendix of oil and natural gas conflicts, all current), I contemplate both my disappointment that the author and publisher did not choose to do more with geospatial visualization--a fold out map of the world with all the points plotted in color would have been an extraordinary value--and the immediate potential value of adding the knowledge represented by this book on resources and the Garrett book on public health threats--to the World Conflict & Human Rights Map 2000 published by PIOOM at Leiden University in The Netherlands.

What I really like about this book is its relevance, its authority, its utility. What I find frustrating about this book is that it is, like all books, an isolated fragment of knowledge that cannot easily be integrated and visualized. How helpful it would be, if US voters could see a geographic depiction of the world showing all that the author of this excellent work is trying to communicate, and on the same geographic depiction, see the military dollars versus the economic assistance dollars that the U.S. is or is not investing. The results would be shocking and could lead to political action as the community level, for what is clear to me from this book is that there is a huge disconnect between the real threat, our national security policies, and how we actually spend our foreign affairs, defense, and trade dollars from the taxpayers' pockets.

A trillion dollar tax cut, or a trillion dollar investment in deterrence through investments in natural resource stabilization and extension? Which would be of more lasting value to the seventh generation of our children? The author does not comment--one is left to read between the lines.