Abstract
Metropolitan Books, 2001 289 pages; $26.00
Norman Myers
Most people probably don't draw a connection between last September's terrorist attacks on the United States and issues of environmental security. But according to Osama bin Laden, the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation is a key factor motivating his terrorist activities; and central to that confrontation is water. And then there is oil. What price is the United States willing to pay to guarantee the stability of the House of Saud, which is viewed by Islamic fundamentalists and many Saudi citizens as a trifle infidel for harboring American soldiers in the land of Mecca and Medina?
Water has long been more crucial to Middle Eastern politics than oil. Gen. Moshe Dyan, the architect of Israel's victory in the 1967 war with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, once told me that Israel mobilized for that war in part because President Gamal Ab-del Nasser wanted to close off Israel's access to the Red Sea, and in larger part because Syria and Jordan wanted to sequester some of the River Jordan's flow away from Israel. Since 1967, the Israelis, with their thirsty agriculture and industry, have exploited a greater share of the West Bank's aquifers than the Palestinians, and the aquifers are proving inadequate for today's demands, let alone tomorrow's. As a result, water has been a central element of peace negotiations for decades.
The Middle East is not the only region where water is a source of conflict. According to Sandra Postel, director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project: “As demands for water hit the limits of a finite supply, conflicts are spreading within nations. More than 50 countries on five continents might soon be spiraling toward water disputes unless they move quickly to strike agreements on how to share the rivers that flow across international boundaries.” Included on the list of places where water is a potential source of conflict are traditional rivals such as India and Pakistan, Brazil and Argentina, and Turkey and Syria.
But as Michael Klare, director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies in Amherst, Massachusetts, makes clear in Resource Wars, water is just one of many strategic resources over which future conflicts may be fought. Other resources include minerals, oil, fish, and timber, all of which are coming under increasing demand and most of which are in increasingly short supply. Underpinning all of these resources is climate stability. As Klare points out, global warming has the potential to drastically alter weather patterns, undermine agriculture and health, and generally disrupt the world as we know it.
I first started analyzing “environmental security” in the early 1980s, introducing the concept in a draft chapter for the 1987 Brundtland Report, a report by the World Commission on Environment and Development that examined the environmental basis of the world's future economic stability. Of the many books that have been written on the issue since then, Klare's is among the best. An experienced security expert and defense analyst, Klare had access to a range of government documents and military publications—which according to the publisher's blurb are “not available to the general reader” —to write his book. He presents many new insights and analyses, all of which he supports with detailed documentation. He is particularly adept at meshing theoretical factors with empirical evidence. And he covers a lot of terrain, taking the reader from the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea to Borneo and the Philippines, Sierra Leone and Egypt, and many points in between.
Four chapters of Resource Wars are devoted to oil, two to water, one to minerals and timber, and a final overview to “the new geography of conflict.” Klare buttresses his assessments with numerous maps and tables, plus 42 pages of notes and hundreds of references. It is all fine stuff.
However, because Klare's agenda is restricted to just a few natural resources, he gives short shrift to other potential sources of conflict, including marine fisheries and the various forms of environmental degradation—deforestation, desertification, topsoil erosion, and acid rain, to name just a few. Nor is there any word on the emerging phenomenon of “environmental refugees.” I have calculated that there are some 25 million people (as many as all traditional types of refugees combined), who have been forced to abandon their homelands for environmental reasons. Widespread flooding of coastal zones resulting from global warming could easily cause this number to swell to 200 million by around 2050.
As with most writers in this field, Klare has a hard time predicting exactly where or why future resource conflicts may arise. We still have no over-arching sense of which resource problems will lead to which sorts of conflict, in which lands, and at which point in the future. Fortunately, these issues are firmly established on many countries' political agendas—NATO, for example, recognizes resources as a key factor in strategic planning, and the Pentagon has an Office of Environmental Security. Increasingly, questions like whether the United States could purchase more all-around security by diverting as little as $50 million from military spending to environmental measures are now much debated both in and out of government.
Of course, the best way to cut off environmental problems at the pass is to tackle them at the source. We need to put much more effort into pushing back the deserts, replanting forests, becoming more energy efficient, recycling, and stabilizing the climate.
Global security is only one of many reasons we should be doing these things. Unfortunately, Klare neglects to discuss these reasons or the multiple benefits we might get from, say, recycling water. Why should there be threats of war over what is intrinsically a renewable resource? Klare seems preoccupied with supply-side questions, although there is more need for demand-side answers, which he addresses in only the final four pages of the book.
Although Resource Wars covers complex issues, it is an eminently readable book. Klare enlivens his narrative with frequent anecdotes of the “imagine you were about to” type, which help to leaven what otherwise might be a bit of a slog.
Despite its sometimes limited treatment of an expansive theme, the book should be required reading for security experts and military buffs, political scientists and academics in the field of international relations. I would also recommend it to anyone concerned with the future security of our world. •
BulletinWire
A free electronic news service from the Bulletin.
Get timely e-mail updates of Bulletin stories in the news!
To subscribe, visit
www.thebulletin.org/bulletinwire, or e-mail your request to