Product Description

A much-needed assessment of a changed world, Resource Wars is a compelling look at warfare in an era of rampant globalisation and intense economic competition. The political divisions of the Cold War, Klare asserts, have given way to a global scramble for oil, natural gas, minerals, and water. And as armies throughout the world define resource security as a primary objective, widespread instability is bound to follow, especially in those areas where competition for essential materials overlaps with long-standing territorial and religious disputes .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67958 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
'Brilliantly researched, ably argued...Resource Wars shows a new geography of conflict based on looming scarcitles. Klare's analysis is indisputable.' - David Rleff, Los Angeles Times Book Review

About the Author
MICHAEL T. KLARE is the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Amherst and author of Low-Intensity Warfare, Word Security, and Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Extremely timely analysis
This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the post-cold war outlook for global conflict. Mr. Klare's analysis is based on the thesis that domination over energy, water and mineral resources will be the driving force behind all future major and most minor conflicts.

The author devotes-rightly-the largest portion of the book to crude oil and natural gas, with emphasis on the Persian Gulf, the Caspian region and the South China Sea. His analysis is rigorous, clear and presented in a cooly professional manner (he is the Director of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts), making his conclusions indisputable. Long before the current Iraqi crisis Mr. Klare had predicted that "..Washington will take other steps to bolster its position in the Gulf, including the initiation of a new drive to oust Saddam Hussein". The Caspian Sea is seen as the next oil Eldorado, where Russian, American, European and even Chinese interests are likely to clash in the next decade. As presented, contested drilling rights and the positioning of pipelines go a long way in explaining the Chechnya war and even the desire to control Afghanistan. The expansion of naval and air power in the South China Sea is analysed in terms of the potentially large oil deposits in the area.

The book also includes well researched chapters in water conflicts in the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates and Indus river basins, but it is clearly the oil&gas chapters that make it such an extremely timely read, right now.

A Superb Book - for all interested in geo-politics & justifications for conservation measures
This is the kind of book I've been looking for for years - an exceptionally well-researched study that doesn't descend into politicised rhetoric like so many books in the field. It is enlightening and has not gone out of date yet - it 'predicts' the South Ossetia/Georgia conflict, and, obviously, further Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea wars... An excellent book.

Dates very, very badly
While this book might have been valid when written it has dated badly.

The major issue is the complete lack of attention paid to unconventional oil (e.g. tar sands, deep offshore etc). These significant reserves, available in great quantities in stable parts of the world, are completely ignored with reserve statistics seemingly focusing on low cost conventional reserves. While this might have made sense when the book was written its not how the world looks today.

A high level of confidence in the US military's capacity is also a recurring theme. In the case of a assymetrical war in a resource rich part of the world America's well equipped and trained conventional forces might not be able to achieve the results it is implied they might.

I think the lesson of the last 10 years should be its smarter to invest in diversified sources of resources and substitutes rather than fighting wars to support an increasingly unsustainable energy and resource regime - the complete opposite to what this book seems to propose.