The Security Implications of the Current Resource Scramble

Respected security analyst and author Michael Klare’s new book ‘The Race for What’s Left’ discusses the growing competition for resources across the globe driven by the depletion of fossil fuels, minerals, water and arable land. Klare argues that the full extent of the political, economic and security implications of this trend are yet to be fully understood in mainstream political circles. The alternative to this, Klare contends, is a coming race to adapt to a resource and climate-constrained world which can offer a way out of war, widespread starvation and environmental catastrophe.

The book argues that the current scramble for the world’s resources and the new “assault on resource frontiers” is qualitatively different to the historical exploitation of undeveloped territories in years gone by. The analysis presented shows that “never have we seen the same combination of factors that confronts us today: a lack of unexplored resource preserves beyond those now being used for development; the sudden emergence of rapacious new consumers; technical and environmental limitations on the exploitation of new deposits; and the devastating effects of climate change.”

One of the most interesting findings of the book is that “for all the importance and forthcoming scarcity of oil, gas, and vital minerals, perhaps the fiercest resource struggle in the coming decades will involve food and the land it is gown on.” Klare describes the trend towards global ‘land grabs’ led by the governments of China, India, South Korea, and the Persian Gulf countries across parts of Africa, Central and Southeast Asia and even Russia. The relationship between this trend and the marginalisation of dispossessed and angry populations is likely to be a key driver of violence. The book states that “Land ownership has always been a source of conflict in the countryside, especially where notions of customary land rights collide with formal decrees handed down by distant, often suspect government bureaucracies; when the official new owners are foreigners who appear completely oblivious to the historic claims and customs of the people they are displacing, the hostility will be far greater still.”

Klare is explicit in the stakes here: “The race we are on today is the last of its kind that we are likely to undertake” and this book provides a devastating critique of ‘business as usual’ thinking in times of intense global insecurity.

More information on the book (including a sample chapter) is available here and a recent review on the Huffington Post is available here. An interesting video has also been released where the author explains a number of the issues raised in the book which can be seen here.