Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Resource Conflict in the Twenty-First Century

by Travis Sharp [contact information]

Published in Peace Review 19:3 (July-September 2007), 323-330

Constructing a grand theory of war is a difficult task. International Relations scholars such as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, John Mearsheimer, and Samuel Huntington have relied on the principles of Realism to interpret the history of armed conflict. Although realist theories possess a great deal of systems-level explanatory power, any theory must marginalize unit-level considerations in order to achieve broader applicability. Infinite variables can contribute to war, including but not limited to: population pressures, ethnic/tribal/racial hatred, conflicting ideologies, political repression, economic inequality, territorial ambitions, colonial expansion, psychological predilections, militarization, international alliances, destabilizing hegemony, and balance of power considerations.

Foremost among these unit-level variables are natural resources. As Arthur Westing of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute points out, "Even when natural resources do not figure prominently as the cause of a war, they are often a contributing factor of some significance." From 1914-1982, twelve major international conflicts were fueled by access to resources, including World War I, World War II, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the Falkland/Malvinas Conflict of 1982. Since 1982, resources have exercised an even more dramatic influence on the initiation, duration, and intensity of both inter- and intra-state conflicts.

Before going into more detail on the theoretical underpinnings of resource conflict and examining a case study, I want to briefly consider the question of exigency. One-fifth of the world's population currently uses about four-fifths of the world's energy, according to Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann in "Introduction: On the Edge of Scarcity." With upward trends in consumption, many analysts predict that the world will suffer severe oil shortages in 40-60 years, followed by natural gas shortages in 60-80 years. These non-renewable resources will also be allocated to many more people: the global population will be around 8.5 billion in 2025, 9.5 billion in 2050, and 10 billion in 2075.

This calculation of gradually diminishing population growth, while still staggering in terms of expected absolute growth, assumes that world birth rates will automatically decline as the Least Developed Countries experience economic prosperity. Birth rates declined in the US and Western Europe due to improved education, health services, and the pressure for households to earn two incomes (where husband and wife both work). There is no guarantee that this process will occur in exactly the same way in the Least Developed Countries; perhaps cultural or social norms will cause birth rates to actually go up during times of economic expansion. We really have no way of verifying that world population growth will adhere to the Western model of gradually diminishing birth rates. The combination of rising resource consumption and unpredictable population growth is liable to exacerbate conflicts throughout the globe as resource-dependent nations become desperate to retain access to foreign-based commodities.

Two persistent factors have driven resource scarcity. First, resources have geographical, ecological, and climatic limitations that mankind cannot control, as Waltraud Queiser Morales states in "Sustainable Development and Human Security." There are about 1047.7 billion barrels of proven oil reserves left in the world; once this supply is expended, according to Michael Klare in Blood and Oil, humans have no way of creating more oil and will have to either switch to alternative fuel sources or invent synthetic replacements. Second, resource scarcity stems from, in the words of Waltraud Morales, "...the social and political conditions of inequality and injustice that humankind has created and perpetuated in its struggle forpower and dominance globally and within states." George Kennan vividly illustrated the risks and rewards of resource inequality in a secret policy brief written for American leaders at the beginning of the Cold War: "We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population...Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt anticipated Kennan's argument during the closing months of World War II and organized a now-infamous summit with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. This meeting cemented the special US-Saudi relationship by ensuring US access to Saudi oil and Saudi access to American arms. Although Saudi proven oil reserves are substantial - about 25% of the global total - they will assuredly not last forever and are contingent upon a whole host of unstable social and political factors, including the repressive nature of the Saudi regime. This has led some analysts to predict that the US military will soon be converted into a glorified "oil-protection service." Underlying this prediction, however, are some fundamental assumptions about resource conflict that need to be considered in more detail.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Scholars have developed two separate visions of resource depletion. The Cornucopian model offers an optimistic approach to dealing with non-renewable resources. Relying on the virtues of the free market, the Cornucopian model asserts that, ceteris paribus, as resources become scarce and supply decreases, prices will increase and prolong total depletion. In the time between initial price increases and total depletion, humans will make technological advances that ameliorate the crisis. Essentially, the Cornucopian model is a prescription for procrastination - we will wait until the situation is critical before we start working on solutions. The Malthusian model takes the opposite view of resource depletion. Emerging from the writings of English economist Thomas Malthus, this theory suggests that population growth will place an undue burden on resources and ultimately lead to a cataclysmic clash over scarce commodities. Advocates of the Malthusian worldview support immediate action to prevent the apocalypse coming as a result of world resource depletion.

Neither of these models is completely accurate, but they both contain a semblance of truth that should guide responsible decision-making by international decision-makers - do not procrastinate but do not panic.

How does resource conflict relate to military security and the formulation of foreign policy within states? In the traditionalist or realist view, the international political system is anarchic and based on the principle of self-help. Taking nation-states as the most important level of analysis, realists favor military capabilities and economic vitality (which is latent military power) over more ethereal concerns like environmental sustainability, international consensus formation, or moral/ethical rationales. In general, realists oppose introducing non-military variables - such as natural resources - into security theory because it disrupts the coherence and explanatory power of any given paradigm, as discussed in Shlomi Dinar's work "Water, Security, Conflict and Cooperation." Furthermore, since resources are a "soft" issue compared to military power, hardcore realists tend to equate them with regional and international institutions (which they abhor) and eject them from any state-centric theories of security.

I think the traditionalist model fails in three very significant ways. First, although the nation-state is the most important level of analysis in an international political system based on self-help, natural resources do not respect borders. Oil fields, forests, mines, and river systems extend across political boundaries. Oceans, the atmosphere, and outer space are domains with shared sovereignty. If self-help guides the management of these complex environments, Hobbesian chaos will easily trump cooperative interdependence.

Second, the traditionalist model fails to adequately incorporate natural resources into its calculation of economic power. Resource scarcity constrains economic productivity and, if left uncorrected, may lead to long-term economic decline, social turmoil, or forced migration - all of which presage instability and violence, according to Dinar.

Third, irresponsible resource extraction poses a significant threat to the overall well-being of the international community. If export-oriented (EO) economies sacrifice environmental sustainability for economic growth, the concomitant degradation of water, soil, and air will lead to ozone depletion, global warming, and eventual downturn in agricultural productivity. The salient role food scarcity has played in the history of war suggests that we should not dismiss this possibility as Malthusian paranoia. As Shlomi Dinar points out, it is impossible to understand the recent violence in South Africa, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Haiti without acknowledging the impact resource extraction can have on food availability and environmental health.

Realizing that the traditionalist model failed to reliably account for the impact of resources on armed conflict, Dagobert Brito and Michael Intriligator in "Conflict, War, and Redistribution," set out to construct a two-period quantitative model incorporating both 1) the redistribution of resources as an alternative to war and 2) the existence of imperfect information. Brito and Intriligator's study predicts that if two countries are fully informed about the parameters of a conflict over resources, there will be no redistribution through actual war. Instead, both sides will voluntarily redistribute the contested resources since they understand both their opponent's intentions and the carnage warfare will cause. Moreover, war is unlikely to occur when resources are initially distributed in an equitable fashion; when the less-informed country has sufficient resources to bribe its opponent (in a situation where asymmetrical information exists); and when both countries possess very few resources.

Brito and Intriligator's results have been supported more recently by the World Bank's Collier-Hoeffler (CH) model of civil war onset. The CH model maintains that the opportunities to organize and finance a war are more significant variables than any social or political grievances per se. Under this rubric, the CH model predicts that the chance a nation with limited resources will have a civil war in any five-year span is 1 in 100, but the chance that a resource rich nation will is 1 in 5, according to the March 2006 Harper's Index.

Although mathematically-derived quantitative theories provide a rigorous and concrete demonstration of the causal relationship between resources and conflict, the historical record should verify any theory of war. I want to now use a specific case study to illustrate the historical link between natural resources and violence.

GEOPOLITICS REDUX: OIL IN THE CASPIAN BASIN

The conclusion of the superpower rivalry between the US and USSR was a watershed in the history of international competition over resources. Cold War-era flashpoints like the Middle East and the Balkans became part of a larger strategic showdown that has grown in the past fifteen years to include other resource-rich locations like the Caspian Sea.

As the world's largest inland body of water covering an area roughly the size of Japan, the Caspian Sea possesses 77.1 billion barrels in proven reserves representing 7.4% of the world total. The most promising oil and natural-gas fields are located in a narrow zone in the South Caspian extending from Azerbaijan's Absheron Peninsula to western Turkmenistan's Peri-Balkhan region, according to Cynthia M. Croissant and Michael P. Croissant in "The Legal Status of the Caspian Sea: Conflict and Compromise." During the 1990's, a rancorous debate over the legal status of the Caspian Sea developed among the five littoral states: Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

Iran and Russia asserted that the Caspian is actually an inland lake and thus is subject to joint control by all the littoral states under preexisting international law. While Iran and Russia claim that joint control is the only way to preserve the Caspian's fragile ecosystem, most critics recognize that as the most powerful states in the region, Iran and Russia will exercise de facto control and be able to exclude both the weaker littoral states and ambitious Western investors. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan have opposed this legal subjugation and argued that the Caspian is in fact a sea that should be divided into national zones over which each state has exclusive sovereignty. These states believe that control over Caspian oil resources is absolutely essential to their economic development following years of foreign domination. Their arguments, however, are also not immune from geopolitical concerns - the most promising oil fields are mostly located in the proposed off-shore zones of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, according to Croissant and Croissant.

The legal dispute between the littoral states is only the first complication in an emerging geopolitical crisis. Adding to the convolution is the fact that Russia enjoys a near-monopoly over oil and gas transportation from the Caspian through its Soviet-era pipeline system. These pipelines not only offer Russia a source of revenue, but also provide political leverage over the former Soviet republics Moscow still considers within its sphere of influence. American policymakers are understandably alarmed and have sought to circumvent Russian control by building new pipelines out of the region, most notably via the BTC pipeline through Georgia. US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson forcefully expressed American concerns in 1998: "This is about America's energy security, which depends on diversifying our sources of oil and gas...It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values."

The tension has not just been fueled by jockeying for pipeline contracts, but by conspicuous military buildup by both the US and Russia in the Caspian basin. The US stationed troops in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan during preparations for the war in Afghanistan with the understanding that they would be withdrawn once the Taliban and Al Qaeda were summarily defeated. Just like in Saudi Arabia after Gulf War I, however, major combat operations in Afghanistan have now subsided - but American soldiers remain in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and have received permission to remain indefinitely, according to Klare. Washington also sent American military instructors to Georgia in February 2002 with the ostensible intention of helping to develop Georgian defense systems. Moscow debated the need for these advisors and responded by reneging on an earlier promise to remove all its military forces from Georgia. Acting under the auspices of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Russia recently installed a squadron of combat planes and seven hundred support troops in Kyrgyzstan, increased its troop strength in Tajikistan, and bolstered its naval presence in the Caspian Sea. Both sides have used arms sales to reinforce friendly relations with local powers. Russia delivered jets, helicopters, artillery, and troop carriers to allies such as Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. In response, the US provided $1.3 billion in aid to Georgia - a country of five million - over the past decade.

Inject China into the fray and you have the foundations for a brand new "Great Game" in the Caspian basin. China was oil-independent until 1993, the year rising economic growth finally caused consumption to outstrip domestic production. In 2001, China produced 3.3 million barrels of oil per day and consumed 5 million, leaving a 1.7 million daily deficit ameliorated through imports. At 34% of total consumption, China's 2001 dependency ratio was substantially lower than America's, Klare states, which stood at 54%. Chinese oil production, however, is expected to remain constant in the coming years while its consumption will grow by an average of 4% annually. By 2025, the US Department of Energy predicts that China's oil consumption will be 14.2 million barrels per day, but its production will remain at a paltry 3.4 million. With a 10.8 million daily deficit, China's dependency ratio will reach a staggering 76% of total consumption, as David Sanger points out in "China's Big Need for Oil is High on the U.S. Agenda."

The consequences of this debilitating dependency are not lost on China. To secure access to the nearby Caspian basin and avoid exclusively relying on the oil fields of the South China Sea (which could become inaccessible if war were to break out with Taiwan, Japan, or the US), Beijing has provided military training, intelligence, and technology to several regional powers. Klare details that China delivered prefabricated border posts and communications gear to Kyrgyzstan; sniper rifles and night-vision goggles to Uzbekistan; police equipment to Kazakhstan; and assorted military gear to Tajikistan. In a more aggressive vein, Chinese troops conducted a joint counterinsurgency exercise with Kyrgyz forces on Kyrgyzstan's side of the border in October 2002 - the first joint training exercise Chinese forces have ever staged on foreign soil. Finally, Beijing assumed financial and political control of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a multilateral treaty alliance that includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski concluded that by taking the lead in the SCO, an organization purportedly dedicated to averting border clashes and promoting military cooperation, China has triggered "a geopolitical watershed" and entered "the region as a major player."

Oil is the key consideration in the Caspian basin. While war has thus far been avoided, geopolitical strategies are encouraging militarization and demonstrations of force by the three major superpowers. While outright war between the US, Russia, and/or China is a distinct possibility that could develop through proxy escalation and balancing considerations, it seems more likely that a smaller conflict will emerge involving two weaker states (with support from the superpowers) or one weak state (with support from the superpowers) and one of the superpowers. In either case, resources may not be wholly responsible for violent confrontation, but they are certainly a major contributing factor.

CONCLUSION

This article has illustrated the theory behind resource conflict using a single case study - the emerging interstate oil showdown in the Caspian basin. Intrastate resource war is a subject that deserves much closer attention, but due to space considerations I must omit any such evaluation. I concentrated on oil because it is the most critical commodity for nation-states to procure; indeed, oil is a fundamental fuel source for both military operations and domestic economies and thus is more concordant with realist paradigms. A plethora of other resources can contribute to conflict, however, including fresh water, grazing land, minerals, timber, cropland, natural gas, and coal. Especially in developing countries with export-oriented economies, control of these valuable resources offers one of the few paths to wealth and political power. The control of resources provides an understandable incentive for adopting violent techniques in the developing world where feelings of economic, political, and social powerlessness have become a part of everyday life.

The costs of conflict are typically measured in human mortality and military expenditures, but resource conflict has the capacity to significantly expand the destructiveness of warfare. After including the output losses and multiplier effects of reduced demand, the cuts in domestic and foreign investment, and the disruptions and concurrent price fluctuations in global resource markets, we must conclude that any major resource conflict will have a ripple effect throughout the entire world economy. While proposals to diversify imports and develop alternative sources of energy will help to insulate economies from the shocks of a resource war, the fact remains that non-renewable commodities are highly concentrated in a limited number of locales across the globe. While jittery Malthusianism is not a logical response, neither is the Bush administration's suggestion that drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge will solve all of our dependency problems. Until human ingenuity shines through and the Cornucopian vision of infinite resources is realized, policymakers and citizens need to accept the possibility that our resources may never be replenished and plan accordingly.

The US must continue to protect its strategic interest in foreign resources while pouring more time and effort into developing synthetics, hybrids, and other solutions to the resource conundrum. The US could benefit enormously if it were the first to free itself from dependency on traditional natural resources such as oil and timber. This non-dependency would not only ensure greater economic productivity with fewer negative externalities, but also permit the redeployment of troops from resource-rich zones; the development of military technology no longer dependent on traditional fuel sources; and an enhancement of the autarkic self-reliance so favored in realist paradigms.

RECOMMENDED READINGS

Brito, Dagobert L., and Michael D. Intriligator. "Conflict, War, and Redistribution." The American Political Science Review 79:4 (Dec 1985): 943-957.

Croissant, Michael P., and Bülent Aras, eds. Oil and Geopolitics in the Caspian Sea Region. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.

DeRose, Laurie, Ellen Messer, and Sara Millman. Who's Hungry? And How Do We Know? New York: United Nations University Press, 1998.

Dinar, Shlomi. "Water, Security, Conflict, and Cooperation." SAIS Review 22:2 (Summer-Fall 2002): 229-253.

Dobkowski, Michael N., and Isidor Wallimann, eds. On the Edge of Scarcity. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002.

Klare, Michael. Blood and Oil. New York: Owl Books, 2004.

Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Michael Watts, eds. Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Renner, Michael. The Anatomy of Resource Wars. Edited by Thomas Prugh. Worldwatch Paper #162 (Oct 2002). Accessible online.

Sanger, David E. "China's Big Need for Oil Is High on U.S. Agenda." New York Times (19 Apr 2006): A1, A8.

Westing, Arthur H., ed. Global Resources and International Conflict. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986.

This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the Peace Review 2007 Copyright Taylor & Francis; Peace Review is available online at www.informaworld.com.