Much of the worlds conflicts are about
energy.
Great Britain became great because of
an abundance of coal.
The Japanese attacked the United States
in World War II because we cut off our exports of oil and scrap
metal, to induce them to get out of China. To replace the oil, they
needed to take the Dutch East Indies and Malaya. Their shipping route
home was bound by the Philippines, so needed to eliminate that
obstruction. To counter the US Plan Orange, to defend the Philippines
with our Pearl Harbor fleet, they wiped out or attempted to wipe it out.
Had the carriers been at Pearl, they would have succeeded.
Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in no
small part to obtain access to Soviet's oil fields. That was the
purpose of Hitler's Southern Force, which he egotistically diverted
to Stalingrad. Had it not been diverted, he would have had the oil
and the Soviets would not have.
China, Japan and the Philippines are
now in conflict over some obscure islands in the South China Sea,
where the islands of little use to anyone, but the potential offshore
oil fields are.
The conflict between Britain and
Argentina has now re-intensified over the Falkland Islands because
extensive oil fields are being developed offshore from the
Falklands.
Europe is not interested in doing much
about Russia because they “greened” their way into dependency on
Russian oil and gas.
The United States cannot do much
because we “greened” ourselves into not being able to supply our
own needs in spite of having some of the richest energy sources in
the world.
Further, we are now in a greatly
weakened economic state, with gross deficits and debts, because we
“greened” ourselves into it. We quickly forgot we defeated the
Soviets because they could not match us economically. We upped out
defense spending from 3% to 6% of GDP, and the Soviets could not
match us by upping their 20% to 40%. Today, the Soviets and the
Chinese are economically sound and own trillions of dollars of
our debt.
By refusing to really get behind energy
production in the last five years, we assured our decline and assured
our citizens a deteriorating future. Documentation now coming out
shows Bush-Cheney indeed took Iraq to gain control of the oil, but
since we let China underbid us and take control, we are left with
only the expense in blood and treasure.
China has made a mission out of gaining
economic control of as many world resources as possible, even buying
coal mines in the United States at bargain prices. The Soviets have
taken the Crimea for the energy resources offshore. The United States
hit the snooze button for a second four years.
