BY MICHAEL T. KLARE
The Nation/Truthout
Posted by Bulatlat
ALTERNATIVE READER
Vol. VIII, No. 13, May 4-10, 2008

While the day-to-day focus of US military planning remains Iraq and Afghanistan, American strategists are increasingly looking beyond these two conflicts to envision the global combat environment of the emerging period – and the world they see is one where the struggle over vital resources, rather than ideology or balance-of-power politics, dominates the martial landscape. Believing that the United States must reconfigure its doctrines and forces in order to prevail in such an environment, senior officials have taken steps to enhance strategic planning and combat capabilities. Although little of this has reached the public domain, there have been a number of key indicators.

Since 2006 the Defense Department, in its annual report Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, has equated competition over resources with conflict over Taiwan as a potential spark for a US war with China. Preparation for a clash over Taiwan remains “an important driver” of China’s military modernization, the 2008 edition noted, but “analysis of China’s military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also developing capabilities for use in other contingencies, such as conflict over resources.” The report went on to suggest that the Chinese are planning to enhance their capacity for “power projection” in areas that provide them with critical raw materials, especially fossil fuels, and that such efforts would pose a significant threat to America’s security interests.

The Pentagon is also requesting funds this year for the establishment of the Africa Command (Africom), the first overseas joint command to be formed since 1983, when President Reagan created the Central Command (Centcom) to guard Persian Gulf oil. Supposedly, the new organization will focus its efforts on humanitarian aid and the “war on terror.” But in a presentation delivered at the National Defense University in February, Africom’s deputy commander, Vice Adm. Robert Moeller, said, “Africa holds growing geostrategic importance” to the United States – with oil a key factor in this equation – and that among the key challenges to US strategic interests in the region is China’s “Growing Influence in Africa.”

Russia, too, is being viewed through the lens of global resource competition. Although Russia, unlike the United States and China, does not need to import oil and natural gas to satisfy its domestic requirements, it seeks to dominate the transportation of energy, especially to Europe. This has alarmed senior White House officials, who resent restoration of Russia’s great-power status and fear that its growing control over the distribution of oil and gas in Eurasia will undercut America’s influence in the region. In response to the Russian energy drive, the Bush Administration is undertaking countermoves. “I do intend to appoint…a special energy coordinator who could especially spend time on the Central Asian and Caspian region,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February. “It is a really important part of diplomacy.” A key job of the coordinator, she suggested, would be to encourage the establishment of oil and gas pipelines that bypass Russia, thereby diminishing its control over the regional flow of energy.

Taken together, these and like moves suggest that a momentous shift has occurred. At a time when world supplies of oil, natural gas, uranium and key industrial minerals like copper and cobalt are beginning to shrink and the demand for them is exploding, the major industrial powers are becoming more desperate in their drive to gain control over what remains of the planet’s untapped reserves [for more evidence of major shortages in fossil fuels, see Klare, “Beyond the Age of Petroleum,” November 12, 2007, and Mark Hertsgaard, “Running on Empty,” May 12]. These efforts typically entail intense bidding wars for supplies on international markets – hence the record high prices for all these commodities. But they also take military form, as arms transfers and the deployment of overseas missions and bases. It is to bolster America’s advantage – and to counter similar moves by China and other resource competitors – that the Pentagon has placed resource competition at the center of its strategic planning.

Alfred Thayer Mahan Revisited

This is not the first time that American strategists have placed a high priority on the global struggle over vital resources. At the end of the nineteenth century a bold and outspoken group of military thinkers, led by naval historian and Naval War College president Alfred Thayer Mahan and his protégé, then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, campaigned for a strong American Navy and the acquisition of colonies to ensure access to overseas markets and raw materials. Eventually, their views helped generate public support for the Spanish-American War and, upon its conclusion, the establishment of a Caribbean and Pacific empire by the United States.

During the cold war, ideology reigned supreme as containment of the USSR and the defeat of Communism were the overriding objectives of American strategy. But even then, resource considerations were not entirely neglected. The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 and the Carter Doctrine of 1980, though couched in the standard anti-Soviet rhetoric of the day, were principally intended to ensure continued US access to the Persian Gulf’s prolific oil reserves. And when President Carter established the nucleus of Centcom in 1980, its primary responsibility was protection of the Persian Gulf oil flow – not containment of the Soviet Union.

After the cold war, the first President Bush tried, and failed, to establish a global coalition of like-minded states – a “new world order” – that would maintain global stability and allow Western corporate interests (American firms foremost among them) to extend their reach across the planet. This approach, in watered-down form, was subsequently embraced by President Clinton. But 9/11 and the current Administration’s relentless campaign against “rogue states,” notably Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Iran, has reinjected an ideological element into US strategic planning. As George W. Bush tells it, the “war on terror” and rogue states are the contemporary equivalents of earlier ideological struggles against Fascism and Communism. Examine the issues closely, however, and it is impossible to disentangle the problem of Middle Eastern terrorism or the challenge posed by Iraq and Iran from the history of Western oil extraction in those regions.

Islamic extremism of the sort propagated by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda has many roots, but one of its major claims is that the Western assault on and occupation of Islamic lands – and the resulting defilement of Muslim peoples and cultures – has been driven by the West’s craving for Middle Eastern oil. “Remember too that the biggest reason for our enemies’ control over our lands is to steal our oil,” bin Laden told his sympathizers in a December 2004 audiotaped address. “So give everything you can to stop the greatest theft of oil in history.”

Likewise, the US conflict with Iraq and Iran has largely been shaped by the fundamental tenet of the Carter Doctrine: that the United States will not permit the emergence of a hostile power that might gain control over the flow of Persian Gulf oil and thus – in Vice President Cheney’s words – “be able to dictate the future of worldwide energy policy.” The fact that these countries might be seeking weapons of mass destruction only complicates the task of neutralizing the threat they pose, but it does not alter the underlying strategic logic.

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