War for Resources Chris Hedges

War for Resources

Chris Hedges (2001), a war correspondent, argues that war has continued through the ages because many human beings the world over live in a state of spiritual emptiness. Their lives lack meaning and purpose. And because of this emptiness, which they long to fill, they accept the myth that war is something grand and noble. There is a cause to uphold that is worth dying for. Without belief in this myth, nobody would join the military to do "the important work of defending our great country."

Without the myth that if threatened by an enemy, we have every right to kill, and if we are injured or die, our sacrifice is an honor and a privilege because it was for a just and noble cause, the government couldn't get Congress to appropriate the funds to back wars, or mount a campaign in the media to gain the support of people at home. No waves of nationalism would suddenly sweep over the people.

Others claim that war is "human nature" and human beings are predisposed genetically to violence. But if war is in our genes, why are not all of us always at war? How do some countries consistently stay out of wars? How do certain groups of people (Quakers, for example) live their whole life long without ever raising an aggressive hand to anyone? Peaceable cultures do exist, so not all human beings are aggressive. Aggression is not biologically determined; if it were, everybody would be aggressive. From their cultural environments, human beings learn to see violence as a way to solve problems.

There are many ways to look at war and many theories about why it continues. But until recently, not much attention was given to links between aggression and environmental stress; however, a large body of literature is now growing, which shows that damage to the environment often leads to conflict over resources and then to war.

Of course, everyone already knows that war damages the environment, particularly today. Because conflicts are not fought like they used to be -- in specific combat zones -- they get played out in everyday life where the consequences for civilians are devastating. In Iraq, for example, the sewage treatment equipment in Baghdad stopped working because the electricity went out after the invasion. Raw sewage and industrial waste went into the Tigris River and resulted in at least 200 hepatitis E cases and 5 deaths. Iraq's state of health, which was once robust, is now comparable to Yemen's and Afghanistan's with high infant mortality rates and reduced access to clean water (Brown, 2004). Moreover, "the military is the single largest polluter and waster of resources in the world. Acording to the Research Institute for Peace Policy in Starnberg, Germany, it is estimated that 10 to 30% of all global environmental degradation is due to military related activity" (Rosenberg, 2003).

Although we have known for a long time that war leads to environmental degradation, we have only recently become aware that environmental stress leads to war. Richard Matthew, an associate professor of international and environmental politics at the University of California, Irvine, argues in Conserving the Peace (2004) that the links between environmental stress and conflict can be distilled into four categories: unsustainable use of resources, inequitable access to resources, use of resources to finance conflict, and incompatible uses leading to conflict. These will be discussed in this essay.

Unsustainable Use of Resources

Coles (2004) puts it this way: "Most warfare may be blamed on a scarcity of limited resources, a trend that will continue to worsen unless steps are taken now" (p. 6). He argues that the only way to eliminate warfare is to provide adequate resources for everyone living on the planet and points out that many links exist between warfare and available resources. For example, he states, "it has long been documented that too many unmarried men in a society can lead to conflict (p. 6)." When resources are overexploited, lack of employment will make men too poor to support wives. Moreover, so-called ideological wars occur primarily in places with long histories of ecological stress and degradation -- in the Balkans, for example, the Middle East, Mexico, and Peru. These are places where resources are all used up, and according to Coles, this makes these places hotbeds of societal stress, poverty and conflict.

When a resource such as oil, for instance, is overused and in danger of running out, it can become the focus of foreign policy and a reason for going to war. Since the beginning of the twentieth century oil has been central to military power and to life in modern industrial society. A significant element of the U.S. power position relative to its rivals is having ample domestic oil supplies and control over access to foreign oil reserves (Painter, 2006). Petroleum access is a major foreign policy objective and has been since the 1920s. U.S. policy makers have worked consistently to help oil companies get and keep control of foreign oil reserves.

In his famous "Crisis of Confidence" speech, President Jimmy Carter warned (in 1978) that long-term energy dependence on foreign oil would be "one of constant conflict, ending in chaos" (Carter cited in "Breaking the Habit," 2006). As the appetite for oil has grown, so have U.S. exertions in the Middle East. Donald Rumsfeld argues that the U.S. now has no choice but to transform the politics, culture, and mores of the Islamic world. By a logical extension of this line of thought, the war (for control and access to oil) will not end with Iraq.

Big countries that are rich in natural resources (like oil, gold, cobalt, diamonds, coal) may become military targets. "Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented or war will be waged" ("The New American Century," 2004). The idea that Islamic radicals could pose a serious threat to our way of life, for example, would be preposterous if Americans were not addicted to oil and reliant on the Middle East to provide it. Take away the insatiable craving for oil, and "the notion that the United States should take it upon itself to forcibly change their way of life becomes absurd" (p. 11).

Inequitable Access to Resources

In Rwanda just before the war there started, groups of poor people were being forced to move onto land where the soil was marginal and the people could not sustain themselves. Farming households were frequently "resettled" from fertile flatland areas onto small plots of land that sloped steeply.

With a fast-growing population, plus conflict over farmland, the inequity was a "formula for disaster." From April until August, 1994, about one million Rwandans were massacred. Two million more fled their homes as refugees. The media presented the genocide as ethnic conflict between Hutu and Tutsi, but James Gasana (Rwandan minister of agriculture and environment) argues that "inequitable access to farmland based on ethnicity and resulting erosion in that mountainous country played a crucial role in the struggle. The ethnic tension was the fuse, not the explosive." (Global Resources: Abuse, Scarcity and Insecurity, 2004).

It's not just farmland where inequities abound. it's forest too:

According to the World Bank, forests worldwide contribute directly to the livelihood of 90% of the world's poorest 1.2 billion people, and where rules governing these people's access to nearby forests are unclear -- for example, when people, who have for generations collected firewood or fruit from a nearby forest, are confronted with new laws that ignore that traditional access -- researchers have found serious threats to health and stability (Global Resources, 2004).

In India thousands of people have been dispossessed by development projects. Big dams, for example, have forced between 33 million and 55 million people in India to leave their homes.

In the past two years there have been a series of incidents in which police have opened fire on peaceful protesters, most of them Adivasi and Dalit. When it comes to the poor, and in particular Dalit and Adivasi communities, they get killed for encroaching on forest land, and killed when they're trying to protect forest land from encroachments -- by dams, mines, steel plants and other 'development' projects. In almost every instance in which the police opened fire, the government's strategy has been to say the firing was provoked by an act of violence (the New American Century, 2004).

Around the world incoherent resource management comes just before the violence erupts. In Afghanistan, for example, CARE International has warned that the country's currently unstable atmosphere is largely based on unregulated drilling of deep wells. Rich people can afford to drill deeper wells. When they draw water, the aquifer level goes lower -- below the reach of the shallower wells poor people drill and which they depend upon for their water. Unregulated drilling makes the drought of the past several years worse too. But perhaps the greatest threat to security in Afghanistan is farmland production of opium poppies. Private armies and warlords support themselves with these crops -- an instance of exploiting (in fact, abusing) the environment to pay for war (Global Resources, 2004).

Use of Resources to Finance Conflict

Forest products are also often used to pay for conflicts. Timber requires little investment and can be converted to cash more cheaply than oil, which requires technology. Control over timber resources can shift the balance of power during a conflict and affect how long the conflict lasts. Underfunded armies, military, police, and rebel forces often finance themselves by cutting trees. Conflicts in Cambodia, Burma and Liberia have been funded with timber, and in each of those countries the wood produced more than 100 million dollars per year (Global Resources, 2004).

Incompatible Uses Leading to Conflict

Use or misuse of resources can be very profitable on one hand but ruinous to another. For example, jurisdictional conflicts have heated up in Montana and Wyoming where coal bed methane has become a valuable resource. Coal bed methane is a by-product of mining coal. It was once dismissed as a by-product of little value. However, developers now have started to harness this resource. Coal bed methane operators drill surface wells into coal seams. The coal seams contain large volumes of water, which the operators pump out. By pumping out the water, pressure is reduced inside the seam and any methane that is present is released. It rises to the surface where it is captured into pipes as it flows upward.

During this production process, operators pump large volumes of water from the coal seams, which become wastewater. When they dispose of the wastewater, it affects both ground and surface water resources adversely. The sodium content in it can be as much as 1500% higher than the sodium content in the Tongue River and 40 to 60 times more than the Powder River's natural state. Such high levels can cause soil particles to unbind and disperse, "destroying soil structure and reducing or eliminating the ability of the soil to filter out saline from the water" (cited in Waeckerlin, 2005).

Because coal bed methane is always found below the surface (several hundred feet deep), development always involves pumping and discharging wastewater into surface environments. Some data suggests significant threats to the region's long-term water supply. Farmers and ranchers are being ruined because they depend almost completely on groundwater that is now deadly to their animals. Complicating the situation is the fact that Congress extended a tax credit for non-conventional fuels, creating an incentive for coal bed methane development. Wyoming, meanwhile, has an $850 million tax surplus from its production, and coal bed methane is expected to bring 7,000 new jobs to Wyoming. Energy companies are expected to invest a billion dollars in development. It is unclear at this point how the conflict will be resolved.

These are only a few examples of "stress sports" where conflicts over resources have or may lead to violence and war. An international task force of leading experts that convened to assess links between environment and security, states:

resource degradation and disaster largely affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor around the world, especially those in indigenous and traditional communities. Loss of livelihoods, in turn, leads to social tension, migration and settlement in inappropriate areas, and often to conflict. It follows then that targeted investments in environmental conservation and the promotion of sustainable and equitable use of natural resources may be significant factors in mitigating disaster risk, reducing social tensions, and avoiding costly conflicts (Conserving the Peace, 2000).

Water

An article in USA Today (2003) warns that over-consumption of the earth's natural resources is depleting the water supply, which will lead to food shortages as well. Because of global warming, today's farmers are facing major new challenges. Their crops must survive the highest temperatures in 11,000 years. In addition widespread aquifer depletion with a resulting loss of irrigation water will result in reduced grain yields. Grain harvests in tropical areas could be reduced by five percent by 2020 and 11% by 2050.

Yields could drop as much as 46% by 2050. Falling water tables are the result of 50 years of overusing diesel and electric pumps, straining water reserves, and setting the stage for "dramatic cutbacks in water resources" (p. 15). Overpumping creates the illusion that there is plenty of food and enables farmers to feed expanding populations. But as the world harvest slows down, water tables fall, and temperatures rise, shortages and conflicts will increase.

In the United States CIA officials have been particularly concerned about issues of land use and water rights. They are asking environmental questions now, such as, what could happen if population pressure overwhelms environmental capacity? In a place like Djibouti (in the Horn of Africa area), for example, the number one cause of death is dehydration. The country is beset with serious social problems, extreme poverty, crime, violence and drug use. The soil looks like yellow talcum powder -- nothing can grow in it. Likewise, this week an acute water shortage hit a town in Ghana where residents have been compelled to use water from the Birim River for domestic use. The Birim River has been polluted by years of mining activity and the people are worried about an epidemic (Ghana: Acute Water Shortage Hits Oda New Town, 2006).

Russia is another place where water is a key issue. Intelligence there has found that in places where conflicts exist over natural resources, social instability is greatly increased.

A photo in Global Resources: Abuse, Scarcity, and Insecurity (2004) shows Russian children playing on an abandoned ship that once floated at the edge of the Aral Sea. Unsustainable environmental manipulation and mismanagement of resources left the area short of water and now the ship is on dry land. The old Soviet government tried to grow cotton in a high-desert area and built an elaborate irrigation system. When the Soviet Union disbanded, the system was not maintained. Now access to water is a key factor in security there.

Solutions in Progress

The magnitude of the problem with the environment worldwide might make it seem as though nothing is being done, but localized trends toward re-establishing balance between human activities and the planet are beginning to make small positive impacts in various places around the world.

The defense community, for example, did not used to be very interested in the environment, but now defense experts are more concerned about environmental stressors because the consequences can lead to violent conflict and lack of security. However, defense officials are still somewhat slow to take action in some cases. If a foreign plot were hatched to poison New York's water supply, for example, U.S. security forces would respond in a very timely manner. But when pollution is occurring more gradually, governments are less likely to react quickly -- despite the fact that the consequences are similar (Dannenmaier, 2001).

A new awareness of the connection between stressed environments, conflict over diminished resources, and violence has reached the collective consciousness. During the last 10 years a new way of looking at the goals of sustainable environmental management coupled with concerns about national security has emerged in the defense community. Planners want to make long-term environmental interventions in order to avoid security threats. In the past when the consequences of an environmental disaster led to violent conflict, only then did the defense community become concerned. But now, they have seen that research management, if implemented earlier, can avert violence, social problems, and greater expense later. Understanding the dynamics of security often rests on understanding land and water use rights. What appears at first glance "to be strictly political tensions are often, in fact, rooted in environmental strains" (Global Resources, 2004).