New war and energy alliances over next resource wars

Posted on October 29, 2024 by

Preface. My greatest fear is nuclear war over the remaining resources on earth, since that has the potential of driving us extinct.  I don’t believe there are enough fossil fuels left to do that via climate change because world conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, the master resource that makes all others possible — coal and natural gas too (though for sure hundreds if not thousands of years of crazy weather and vastly reduced carrying capacity, perhaps enough to make agriculture difficult for a long time). But with the end of oil and endless growth capitalism depends on, the world will return resource wars, the time immemorial way to keep growing and gain wealth. Russia’s attack on Ukraine is all about resources, check this encyclopedia entry out, Ukraine has incredible fertile soil, minerals, and more (Britannica Ukraine Resources and Power).

With only 3% of world oil reserves in the USA, many of them too expensive in the very deep sea, and arctic, or too little produced too Canadian oil sands,, the U.S. will soon have to rely on the kindness of Middle Eastern nations, where 80% of the cheap and easy conventional oil is.  Drill Baby Drill just brings that day forward. Even back in the first energy crisis there were people who said it would be madness to drill for oil here if we could buy it elsewhere. best to hang on to what we had for a rainy day.

At this point drill baby drill won’t find much more oil, we’ve drilled the best places already. Sure a bit under national parks and off the coast of California, but if it were there oil companies wouldn’t frack and drill for very deep ocean oil (2/3 of U.S. oil) which is terrifically expensive compared to drilling on land.

Related: Some recent posts from Art Berman

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Financial Sense, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

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Brands H (2024) Ukraine is now a world war. And Putin is gaining friends. Bloomberg

Foreign policy experts have worried for decades about a second Korean War. No one ever imagined it would happen in Ukraine. Today, Seoul and Pyongyang are waging their decades-long struggle on Ukrainian battlefields. It is a microcosm of the world proxy war underway. Since 2022, the two Koreas have made themselves central to a raging war in Europe. South Korea has indirectly  given Ukraine a small mountain of artillery ammunition — solid gold in a protracted ground war. North Korea has served as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armory, supplying ballistic missiles used  to ravage Ukraine’s cities and artillery shells used to pound its troops. Both countries, moreover, are part of clashing coalitions that have turned the fight between Ukraine and Russia into a grander, more encompassing test of strength.

From the outset, Kremlin officials have alleged that the US is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia. Two years ago, I explained  that they were basically correct: In helping Ukraine defend itself, America is also imposing heavy costs on one of its fiercest enemies. What has changed since 2022 is that the proxy war has expanded — and been fully joined by both sides.

Ukraine has the support of democracies spanning North America, Europe and the Indo-Pacific — countries committed to sustaining Kyiv’s independence and punishing Putin severely in the process. Yet that support is being matched and blunted by a cohort of Eurasian autocracies lending vital aid to Moscow and making life more difficult for the West. Two vast alliances are squaring off, albeit indirectly, on European battlegrounds. The fight in Ukraine has become the first global conflict of a new cold war.

During the first Cold War, proxy conflicts were ubiquitous. The superpowers dueled indirectly because direct confrontation was too dangerous in the nuclear age.

Moscow and Washington backed local partners — and bled each other — in the conflicts that ravaged the Global South. The wars of decolonization in Africa and Asia, the insurgencies and civil wars in Latin America, and the brutal fights in Korea and Vietnam became arenas in which the superpowers maneuvered for advantage. Now, the war in Ukraine is deepening another struggle to set the terms of global order, and pitting the rival coalitions — advanced democracies and Eurasian autocracies — against each other.

To be sure, the war in Ukraine wasn’t supposed to become a sprawling proxy war, because it wasn’t supposed to be much of a war at all. When Putin’s forces invaded in February 2022, they expected to take Kyiv in days and finish off remaining resistance in weeks. Putin hoped that a weak, divided West would acquiesce in this show of strength. But a desperate Ukrainian defense, combined with head-scratching Russian blunders  , produced a messier, more protracted conflict, one that quickly became internationalized.

First to enter were the US and its allies, which scrambled to sustain Ukraine after having failed to deter  Russia’s attack. A Russian victory, they feared, would subject a vulnerable democracy to conquest and atrocity, while also shattering the balance of power in Eastern Europe and energizing dangerous aggressors everywhere. So they rushed in economic assistance, intelligence support and weapons to help Ukraine hang on.

This was a far-flung coalition. Poland was its key logistical hub; Germany, France, Britain and other European countries gave aid and arms. But allies on the far side of the world also did their part, with Australia, Japan, South Korea and others providing — directly or through  the US — money and military gear. The war thus fused the community of advanced democracies together.

Early on, in fact, the war served several Western purposes. It stimulated greater defense spending within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which benefited from adding Finland and Sweden to its ranks. Scared democracies in the Western Pacific began to strengthen  their defenses against China. The war slashed Europe’s dependence on Russian energy; it drove a wedge between European countries appalled by the invasion and a China that, through its ties to Moscow, seemed complicit in it.

Putin’s assault also revealed the fragility of the Western defense industrial base, and offered a chance  (not yet fully taken) to fortify it. Not least, the conflict provided the democracies with the opportunity to begin grinding down Russia, now confirmed as an incorrigible, violent rogue state.

“We want to see Russia weakened,” said  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, so it “can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Other American officials touted  sanctions intended to obliterate the Russian economy. In classic proxy-war fashion, the US and its allies were pursuing their own safety by helping Ukraine wreak havoc on an aggressive but overextended enemy. Indeed, doing so was central to America’s global strategy.

President Joe Biden’s National Defense Strategy of 2022 was premised  on the idea that the Pentagon must remain heavily focused on China, so it must not deploy, on any sustained basis, significant new forces to Europe. This made it vital that Russia fail in Ukraine — and that it emerge from the conflict a shell of its former self, economically and militarily. The more effective, the more ruthless the proxy war, the more security the US would purchase for a democratic community facing many threats.

Putin’s Friends Fight Back

This was what worried leaders in China, Iran and North Korea — members of the autocratic bloc that would soon coalesce behind Putin. These leaders probably couldn’t care less about the merits of Russia’s clash with Ukraine. They weren’t always pleased with the war’s effects. But they were alarmed that Russia might lose in humiliating fashion, as seemed possible when Putin’s advance stalled and his armies were pushed back in late 2022. A decisive victory by Ukraine and its Western backers could have global implications, by crippling Russia and leaving the remaining revisionists more exposed. So the aid that Moscow desperately needed began to flow.

Iran provided  Putin with thousands of Shahed exploding drones and ballistic missiles  to be used against Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Tehran has even dispatched advisers  to train Russian forces in the use of those drones — and helped Russia build them on its own soil.

North Korea has sold Moscow between  1 million and  3 million artillery shells — compared  to the roughly 2 million rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition America and all of its allies combined have sent Ukraine. North Korean missiles are also sustaining Putin’s war effort; their debris has been found  at the site of Russian attacks. Tehran and Pyongyang are the armorers of autocracy, giving Moscow the punching power to wage a protracted war.

China hasn’t gone that far: Threats of US and European sanctions have prevented it from transferring the weapons of war. But China has provided Moscow with components — from microchips to machine tools — needed  to make those weapons and rebuild Russia’s thoroughly sanctioned defense industrial base. More broadly, China became Russia’s economic hinterland, absorbing its trade, helping its firms raise capital and otherwise easing the effect of Western sanctions. The military, economic and technological sinews  of the Sino-Russian relationship are stronger than ever. Aligning closely with Moscow, President Xi Jinping announced  in 2023, was China’s “strategic choice.”

None of this was charity: Ties between Russia and its fellow autocracies are transactional in the extreme. North Korea has traded arms for Russia’s support  in evading the scrutiny of the United Nations and, perhaps, in advancing Pyongyang’s missile and advanced weapons programs. Iran is getting  state-of-the-art Russian jets and air defenses. China is establishing a stronger hold on Russia’s economy and tech sector; it is reaping the gains of shadowy military co-production deals. As Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns has taunted  , Russia “risks becoming an economic colony of China over time.

But whatever their price, these relationships helped keep Russia afloat when its war effort was foundering — and helped it retake the initiative after Ukraine’s offensive in mid-2023 failed. A remarkably efficient division of labor — North Korea and Iran provide military succor, while China provides economic sustenance — changed the course of the war. It also began imposing costs on the West.

By protracting the fighting in Ukraine, the autocratic entente keeps the US focused on Europe — a strategic bonus for China, North Korea and Iran. Pyongyang, for instance, is testing missiles at a near-record clip, something that would gain far greater US attention if not for ongoing fights in other regions. Iran and its proxies are exploiting American distraction to violently roil the Middle East.

The war has also forced the Pentagon to dip into stockpiles of scarce weapons, like Patriot missiles, even as it has ramped up production of others, like artillery shells. Not least, the conflict has encouraged the autocracies to invest  in trade routes — such as the Caspian corridor connecting Russian and Iran — that are immune from sanctions or Western military pressure, and it has helped solidify the strategic partnerships that China, Iran and North Korea might need in their own showdowns with a superpower someday.

A proxy fight in Ukraine is serving the cause of autocratic cohesion — and assisting the revisionists’ quest to subvert the global rules of the road. Biden’s Democracy Push

Officials in the free world have long insisted that this war is not just about Ukraine or the balance of power in Europe: It is about the norms that govern global affairs. If Putin can destroy one democracy, other actors will see a green light for aggression. If he can perpetrate shocking atrocities, such crimes will proliferate around the world.

This war, Biden has said, is “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” Even distant democracies agree.

“Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” said  Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, in a recent speech to the US Congress. So the democracies “must have all hands on deck.” A world reshaped by Russian victory would be a world most democracies don’t want to live in — but one that would suit the Eurasian autocracies just fine.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have their differences; their ambitions, in regions from Africa to the Arctic, may eventually collide. But for now, all share the aim of creating a world primed for predation, because that is the only way they can subdue the countries around them and attain  the spheres of influence they desire. So they all stand to benefit from a world in which coercion and aggression are facilitated by the breaking of the liberal international order.

The Eurasian powers don’t quite say this explicitly, but it isn’t hard to detect the sentiment. The supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has deemed Putin’s war entirely justified, as a response  to the malign hegemony of NATO — a “dangerous creature” — and the US. As far back as 2010, then-Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi infamously demanded deference from 10 Southeast Asian nations, telling them  , “China is a big country and you are small countries, and that is a fact.” In 2023, another Chinese diplomat echoed  Putin in saying that the countries of the former Soviet Union aren’t really sovereign states at all.

The creation  of modern-day empires requires the destruction of self-determination. That part of Putin’s project unites the Eurasian autocracies, whether they admit it or not. Global South’s Role

The Ukraine war has polarized world politics more thoroughly than at any time since the Cold War. And like proxy conflicts of that earlier era, this one has affected a range of other countries around the globe.

The Global South was buffeted economically as the war roiled world markets for food and energy. By redirecting Russian commerce from Europe to Asia, the fighting changed patterns of trade on an epic scale. Some countries have tried to steer clear of the conflict; others, such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, are playing both sides. All the while, the key players in Ukraine are trying to pull new members into their respective groupings — while their adversaries try to keep them out.

This is simple military arithmetic: In a war of attrition, the side with the greater endurance and the greater resources wins. So the US, as well as key European countries like the Czech Republic, have been scouring the globe for artillery ammunition and other materiel. Moscow has been doing the same.

In early 2024, the US convinced Ecuador to transfer Russian-made helicopters and air-defense systems to Ukraine — until Moscow stopped buying one of Ecuador’s top exports, bananas. Before that, Egypt had agreed to send Russia 40,000 rockets plus artillery and small arms ammunition — before America, Cairo’s primary military patron, induced it to deliver artillery to Kyiv instead.

Likewise, the rumored provision of South African weapons to Russia triggered an angry public response from the US ambassador. Pakistan’s involvement in the war is shrouded in secrecy, which testifies to the competing pressures third parties face. The longer the conflict lasts, the more vital expanding one’s coalition — and limiting the opponent’s — becomes. The World’s War

For a time, it looked like Ukraine and its allies were winning the fight. These days, it’s not so clear. Russia holds the battlefield initiative; its forces are slowly grinding out gains. US officials have been dismayed by how much Chinese support has helped Moscow ramp up military production. The $61 billion aid package Congress recently approved, after six months of deadly delay, should help ensure Ukraine doesn’t lose this year. But which combatant, and which alliance, will ultimately win is up for grabs.

The answer will hinge on which coalition shows greater stamina — and which is more effective at coercing or subverting the other side.

The US is currently using the threat of sanctions to discourage Chinese banks from facilitating dual-use commerce with Russia; it recently hit more than a dozen Chinese firms involved in this trade. Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought this message straight to Xi. “Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” Blinken said after meeting Xi. “If China does not address this problem, we will.

Russia, meanwhile, will presumably use its own weapons of choice — political meddling, cyberattacks, disinformation, sabotage — to influence the elections occurring throughout the transatlantic alliance this year, or otherwise weaken Western support for Kyiv. A spate of mysterious incidents involving European arms factories and railroads indicates that this campaign is already well underway. Putin is also issuing renewed nuclear threats to discourage the West from providing longer-range missiles to Ukraine — or allowing Kyiv to use those arms for strikes within Russia itself.

This activity will be intense because the war’s impacts are so far-reaching. Democracies and autocracies throughout Eurasia know that the outcome in Ukraine will either affirm or erode the liberal order. It will shape the balance of advantage in their larger global struggle.

What happens in one theater of an interconnected world cannot fail to affect others. Right now, Ukraine is where the clash between advanced democracies and Eurasian autocracies is most severe: America and its allies won’t prosper if they end up losing there.

Yet it is also worth remembering that victory in a proxy fight can occur on two levels. It is a question of who wins the shooting war. But it is also a question of which coalition better uses that conflict, by learning the relevant military lessons, strengthening the ties among its members and using this war to generate the urgency and capabilities needed to get ready for what comes next. In many ways, then, events in Ukraine will shape the future. Ukraine’s war has become the world’s war, too.

Watkins S (2024) Russian And Iran’s New ‘Energy Corridor’ Is Packed With Dangers For The West. oilprice

Iran’s offer to establish an ‘energy corridor’ from Russia to the Persian Gulf could have major consequences for energy flows. The creation of two possible land bridges for Iran from its mainland to the shores of the Mediterranean – one in southeastern Turkey and the other in northwestern Syria could help both Tehran and Russia to export hydrocarbons.

First, Russia would be able to bypass many current international restrictions using Iran’s long-established mechanisms to avoid sanctions on gas and oil flows – both into Turkey and then southern and eastern Europe, and via Iraq into the rest of the world.

Second, Iran would be able to expedite the progress of its long-sought ‘land bridge’ from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea by which it could exponentially increase the scale and scope of weapons delivery into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria to be used against Israel and the U.S. in Middle Eastern conflicts.

A great deal of Iranian oil is already being shipped illegally by simply changing the name of the origin of the oil to Iraq on the shipping documents.

For Iran, a land bridge into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria would have a huge force multiplier effect for Iran’s own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria – and for its proxy Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine – to use in attacks on Israel. This cornerstone policy of Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution was always geared towards provoking a broader conflict in the Middle East that would draw in the U.S. and its allies into an unwinnable war of the sort seen recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. The aim of this on Iran’s part was to unite the world’s Islamic countries against what it believes to be an existential battle against the broadly Judeo-Christian democratic alliance of the West, with the U.S. at its centre. Russia’s interest alongside Iran in such a plan aligns with Moscow’s broad foreign policy objective of creating chaos where possible, into which it can eventually project its own solutions. Under the Russian- and Iranian-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Syria has four huge strategic advantages to Russia.

first, it is the biggest country on the western side of the Shia Crescent of Power, which Russia has been developing for years as a counterpoint to the U.S.’s own sphere of influence that had been centred on Saudi Arabia (for hydrocarbons supplies) and Israel (for military and intelligence assets). Second, it offers a long Mediterranean coastline from which Russia can send oil and gas products (either its own or those of its allies, notably Iran) for cash export, plus weapons and other military items for political export. Third, it is a vital Russian military hub, with one major naval port (Tartus), one major air force base (Latakia) and one major listening station (just outside Latakia). And fourth, it shows the rest of the Middle East that Russia can and will act decisively on the side of the autocratic dynasties across the region.

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Intro to 2015 Baker Rice article below:. Anyone who has no clue about the role of fossils in every aspect of our lives — we practically live in it just like fish depend on water, thinks we went in to promote Democracy, genuinely thought there were Weapons of Mass Destruction, harboring and supporting al-Queda, even though the 9/11 Commission concluded there was no evidence of any relationship between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda and no evidence of WMD was found. But of course it was oil!  Even FDR knew oil would run out some day. In 1943, the future King Faisal flew to Washington to meet President Franklin Roosevelt, who declared, “I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States (Rundell 2020).”

President Bush and VP Cheney were in the oil business. They knew about M. King Hubbert’s prediction of world Peak Oil in 2000 probably, because Matt Simmons at the Denver ASPO peak oil conference in 2005 told us he’d spoken to them about this.  Regardless of what they knew, if you read house and senate congressional hearings, you can see that our leadership is very much aware of how important fossil fuels are to the economy and our lives, even if the public is easily fooled by renewables (I also was until I read my grandfather Pettijohn’s (1984) memoir in 2000 in which he talks about mentoring and becoming friends with M King Hubbert at the University of Chicago).

There is a lot of evidence that petroleum was the big reason why we invaded, but here are excerpts from just one source, the Baker Institute, which has long been a think tank on energy and the Middle East (though more recent documents are not of interest there because they promote “peak oil demand” from EV cars, which they surely know isn’t going to happen, but it is in our strategic interest to pretend we think it will work perhaps).  Currently about two-thirds of conventional oil is in the middle east, and 80% of conventional in OPEC nations.  The Middle East will become increasingly critical as both U.S. and Russian oil decline. And Middle Eastern oil for that matter, not just from depletion but growing populations will mean less exports in the future.

Barnes J, Bowen A (2015) Rethinking U.S. strategy in the middle east. Rice University Baker Institute for public policy, center for the national interest.

What strategy should we pursue in confronting ISIL and addressing the broader challenges of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, stability in the Persian Gulf, and the everpresent Israeli-Palestinian dispute? Lt leadership and engagement must be subservient to the objectives of U.S. strategy, which are the protection and, if possible, the advancement of our core interests in the region. At one level, our policymakers and opinion shapers are aware of those interests, ranging from the unimpeded flow of oil to international markets. The most critical step is to “get back to basics” by a hardheaded examination of our core interests.

First and foremost comes oil.

The Middle East represents roughly 50% of world’s oil reserves. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” This declaration—what would be called the “Carter Doctrine”—was narrowly directed at the Soviet Union. But it also reflected the broader reality revealed by the oil shocks of the 1970s: the American and, indeed, global economies were profoundly dependent on Middle Eastern—and specifically Persian Gulf—oil. This reality also explained our “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is by far the most important oil producer in the Middle East; it is also the only country in the world with significant excess production capacity, permitting it, in a crisis, to offset the major loss of supply elsewhere in the world. At its root, the “special relationship” is grounded on a fairly direct quid pro quo. Saudi Arabia would work to assure a steady supply of oil to world markets; the United States would, if necessary, act militarily to protect Saudi Arabia. When Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened the kingdom, we made good on our part of the bargain, first, by going to war to eject Iraq from Kuwait and, second, by supporting international sanctions to constrain Iraq’s ability to threaten its neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia, in the wake of outright hostilities.

How does the rise of “fracking” and the dramatic increase in U.S. oil production affect our national interest in a steady supply of Persian Gulf oil? The answer: rather less than one might think. [Note: and it appears that world peak oil production happened in 2018 but is declining now that fracked oil production is decreasing –for citations and details see this post: Peak oil is here!)

The boom in U.S. production—driven by fracking and, to a lesser extent, deepwater technologies—is a clear boon to the U.S. economy. It reduces our trade deficit, boosts employment, and bolsters our overall economic growth. Moreover, increased U.S. production—reflected in a sharp decline in U.S. oil imports—has also increased total world supply and placed downward pressure on global petroleum prices. The latter has, of course, plummeted over the last year. However, a dramatic disruption of the flow of petroleum from the Persian Gulf would still lead to higher prices and slower economic growth around the world and here in the United States. The reason: oil prices are set by global supply and demand. U.S. production increases, in other words, may have diminished the importance of the Persian Gulf to world oil markets but have not come close to ending it.

References

Pettijohn FJ (1984) Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist: A Candid Profile of Some Geologists and their Science, 1921-1981. University of Chicago Press.

Rundell D (2020) Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads. I.B. Taruis.

 

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