Reply To: The North Atlantic Current

[Brian H]

texaslabrat wrote:

texas is right to some extent — where war is caused by desperation or actual imposed inequality. This is the minority of cases, of course. Try coming up with examples. There aren’t many.

Coming up with examples where competition for resources was the underlying cause for war? Um, WWII pacific theater (Japan attacking the U.S. largely out of desperation from the embargoes set on it by America). Both Gulf Wars (do you really think we would be involved in the Middle East if we didn’t need the oil?). The current “cold war” brewing with China at the moment. The attempted assisted coup in Venezuela not too long ago. And that’s just in the past 60 or so years that we personally were involved in. Leaders might rally the troops with calls of service to a higher power or whatever…but in the end it’s usually about money or its equivalent in natural resources. Extremely cheap power mitigates that to a very large extent. As I said, exceptions to every rule but history is chock-full of examples of this.

A huge breakthrough in solar power would also be welcomed (I don’t see that one must exist to the total exclusion of the other)..though that obviously has a capped limit in the amount of power per square meter that falls on the earth. Every watt helps though! Especially given the very real possibilities of the decades it might take for FF to be fully commercialized and socially accepted….solar and other renewables can prove valuable in the mean time.
Japan wanted both the resources and its military adventures (the embargoes were not just for fun or out of meanness!), and couldn’t have them. You will note that since it began depending on brains instead of guns, it is able to afford all the resources it wants.

As for the ME, oil was important for the globe, not just the US. Saddam in charge of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was not something anyone could accept. And the “cold war” with China is not a war, and won’t become one unless China decides to eliminate the local non-Communist competition. Democracies do not go to war with each other. Tyrants go to war with democracies (and each other), however.

As for Venezuela, it’s been controlled by a coup leader since Chavez took over, made especially clear by his permanent negation of any Constitutional restraint on his tenure. Despite its oil wealth, it is speeding into the economic dumpster (22% inflation*, growing fast, with store shelves empty because retailers refuse to lose money on every sale under government controlled pricing), for reasons explained long ago by the first Secretary General of OPEC, a Venezuelan, who noted that every country dependent on the Devil’s Excrement had debased social and economic and intellectual conditions as a result of the ‘rentier’ mentality plentiful oil engenders. Chavez, of course, has the full proceeds of his (mostly expropriated) oil sales to throw around and foment mischief with, regardless of the state of the country. Whatta guy!

*Correction, update: 34.5% in August, 27.3% in September, 26.7% in October.