As a general rule, the most
successful man in life is the man who has the best information
Fact;
The world’s resources are finite.
Fact;
Supply
is constrained and demand keeps growing along with the world’s population.
Fact; A sustainable and secure supply of
raw materials and energy is becoming the number one priority for all countries.
Major
powers are scrambling for as much of the world’s resources as they can control.
Exploration and drilling intensify daily. Previously inaccessible or unprofitable
areas are targeted - the days of easy access to the globe’s resources no longer
exist.
Unseen
wars in previously unheard of places - soon to become front page news - are
beginning for resource control. Peace today, harmonious relations tomorrow are nothing
but fleeting illusions.
Hydrocarbons,
mineral resources, fresh water and arable land are finite.
Understand
someday peak oil and gas proponents will be proven right.
Understand
arable, productive farmland is disappearing from overuse, desertification and
urbanization.
Understand
the world’s current population of 7 billion people use 60 percent of our annual
renewable freshwater supply.
The world's
population is projected to hit 10 billion by 2050 - global demand for food and
water is expected to increase by 50% and 30% respectively by 2030.
“It should be
pointed out that when we speak of wars in the last third of the twentieth
century we are talking about civil wars. Between 1965 and 1999 if we look at
those wars in which more than a thousand people were killed a year, there were
seventy-three civil wars, almost all driven by greed to control resources—oil,
diamonds, copper, cacao, coca, and even bananas.” William K. Tabb,
Resource Wars
Try and imagine the coming pressure
on governments in regards to sourcing resources on a national scale. The world's most
powerful nations are staking claims, through aggressive diplomacy, wherever
vital reserves of resources can be found. It isn’t enough.
Nations are going to go to war over
natural resources. Conflicts are inevitable.
South & East
China Sea
China has been involved in territorial disputes with Japan
and Taiwan over the Senkaku islands, and Vietnam over the Spratly islands.
China has also ramped up its naval presence in the South
China Sea. Why? China’s energy starved and the areas off the coast of the
Philippine province of Palawan are oil rich. In mid-2012, the Philippines and China came
dangerously close to an armed conflict over the Scarborough Shoal in the South
China Sea.
China's increasingly
contentious showdown with Japan in the East China Sea could prove to be even more
dangerous. At issue are disputed Islands (Senkakus to the Japanese, Diaoyu to
China) and the fishing rights and natural resources those islands would deliver
to their owner.
The standoff has already
resulted in several direct confrontations between China and Japan.
The U.S. has treaty
obligations to Japan. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently warned China
that any attack on the disputed islands would "fall under our security obligations."
India-China Border
Chinese dam-building on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River has
raised fears in India that Beijing might one day turn off critical water
supplies.
India's state oil company, Oil and Natural Gas Corp., accepted an invitation
from Vietnam to explore for oil and gas in the disputed South China Sea
escalating an already intense drama.
Both India and China are pushing to gain a foothold in the Arctic. Melting
ice is opening passages for shipping and creating the conditions for a boom in
the extraction of fossil fuels and minerals.
Both countries are building up their navies to project influence, and China’s
presence in the Indian Ocean is expected to grow.
"India will be concerned by a
growing Chinese naval presence in the western Indian Ocean, which it has always
considered its preserve. It has tolerated a significant U.S. presence there,
but it has never considered the U.S. an enemy." David Shinn, a former
U.S. ambassador in Africa
Arctic
The Arctic Council is made up of the eight Arctic
nations: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the
United States. These countries work through the Arctic Council to lay ground
rules for governing the Arctic - the Council acts as a key vehicle for hashing
out the not inconsiderable strategic stakes.
“With the Arctic ice
melting, the region’s abundant supplies of oil, gas and minerals have become
newly accessible, as have shortened shipping routes and open water for
commercial fishing, setting off a global competition for influence and economic
opportunities far beyond the nations that border the Arctic.” Yale.edu
China has recently won
observer status on the council as has India, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South
Korea.
Water War
Data scientists
recently downloaded from a pair of NASA gravity-sensing GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites
show ground water is increasingly in short supply.
The biggest
losses show up as red hotspots. Almost all of those red hotspots center on the
major aquifers of the world. GRACE shows us that groundwater depletion is
happening at a very rapid rate in the arid and semi-arid parts of the world.
And the losses
are staggering.
Parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along
the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic
kilometers) of its total stored freshwater. That’s almost equal to the amount
of water in the Dead Sea.
The majority of
the water loss, about 60 percent, is due to reductions in groundwater.
There’s 600
million people living in the extremely dry 2,000 km stretch of land that
extends from eastern Pakistan across northern India and into Bangladesh.
NASA’s GRACE satellite
measurements show a loss of 54km3 of groundwater a year.
At 54km3 of water
loss per year, Lake Ontario (water volume of 1,639km³) would be dry in 30
years. A cubic kilometer of water equals about 264
billion gallons.
Egypt has
demanded Ethiopia stop construction of a mega-dam on the Nile, vowing to
protect its historical rights to the river at "any cost".
Jordan’s Prince
Hassan, the uncle of King Abdullah, warned in February of 2014 that a war over
water and energy could be even bloodier than the Arab spring.
The United Arab
Emirates, Crown Prince General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said:
"For us, water is now more important than oil."
A
2005 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development Issues Brief
suggested that conflicts and violence over access to water would likely
increase because, “competition for water
exists at all levels and is forecast to increase with demands for water in
almost all countries. In 2030, 47% of world population will be living in areas
of high water stress.”
In
a 2012 report, the US director of national intelligence warned that overuse
of water – as in India and other countries – was a source of conflict that
could potentially compromise US national security. “Our Bottom Line: During the next 10 years, many countries important to
the United States will experience water problems—shortages, poor water quality,
or floods—that will risk instability and state failure, increase regional
tensions, and distract them from working with the United States on important US
policy objectives. Between now and 2040, fresh water availability will not keep
up with demand absent more effective management of water resources. Water
problems will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate
energy, posing a risk to global food markets and hobbling economic growth. As a
result of demographic and economic development pressures, North Africa, the
Middle East, and South Asia will face major challenges coping with water
problems.”
The Pacific Institute,
which studies issues of water and global security, found a fourfold
increase in violent confrontations over water over the last decade. “There
is a long history of conflicts over water resources, extending back thousands
of years into myths, legends, and ancient history. But even now, in the modern
world, disputes over access to water, the use of water as a weapon, and the
targeting of water systems during conflicts remain all too common. It has been
argued that water resources have rarely, if ever, been the sole source of
violent conflict or war. But this fact has led some international security
“experts” to ignore the complex and real relationships between water and
security, which remain a major challenge. Indeed, our work suggests that the
risks of water-related violence and conflict is growing, not diminishing, as
population, resources, and economic and environmental pressures on scarce water
resources increase. Many of these risks are materializing at the sub-national
level rather than as disputes among nations, but even at the national level,
there are growing concerns about tensions in Africa and parts of Asia that
share international rivers but lack international agreements over how to manage
those waters.”
Nations are going
to increasingly compete for the world’s diminishing resources.
China is a surging
military power, Russia is a resource powerhouse but politically corrupt and
economically crippled. Japan is rebuilding its
military. The U.S. is treaty bound to protect Japan and South Korea and will
protect the Philippines in the face of Chinese aggression. Proxy conflicts in Africa, and elsewhere, between and
among, U.S., Chinese, Indian and European backed forces will intensify in the
future.
The Arctic will be
an area of growing resource interest and rising conflicts.
Imperialism
Déjà Vu
Imperialism is the process whereby
the dominant politico-economic interests of the time expropriate, for their own
enrichment, the land, labor, natural resources and markets of others.
In
the mid-1990s, German Defence Policy Guidelines defined the main tasks of the
Bundeswehr (German armed forces) as the “maintenance
of free world trade and access to strategic raw materials.” This paved the
way for the transformation of the German military from a territorial defense
force into a powerful international intervention force. Germany’s 2011
Defense Policy Guidelines declare that the “security
of and access to natural resources” is the “most important security and military policy interest.”
World War II gives us an
excellent example of imperialism. The Nazi state gave German business cartels
the opportunity to plunder the resources of occupied Europe.
Leading German industrial
companies
(to name four - BASF and Bayer who emerged from now infamous IG Farben,
ThyssenKrupp, formerly two separate companies. Thyssen and Krupp both supported
Hitler, the Volkswagen Group was founded on Hitler’s initiative) have launched the Resource Alliance
(Rohstoff Allianz) for the purpose of securing the supply of
selected raw materials for its shareholders and corporate members.
Conclusion
Will future historians write that Iraq
(oil), Libya (more than oil, Libya has one of the largest fresh water systems
in the world contained in four major underground basins), Afghanistan and Syria, both literal
gold mines of mineral wealth were the first battlegrounds in a continual war
over resources?
Increasingly it’s going to be a resource
centric world. Major powers will confront resource rich areas, in the left hand
will be aggressive diplomacy – WE will build you bridges, schools, hospitals,
transportation and power infrastructure in return for long term off take
agreements for your resources. The right hand is understood to be a military
club. Proxy conflicts, rebels, insurgents and civil war if you don’t agree or
deal with someone else.
It isn’t if, it’s when do confrontations
already underway, and the coming future conflicts spin out of control?
China’s after oil in the South China Sea
and again it’s China but versus Japan in the East China Sea, both of whom are
starved for energy.
India’s short of water, China controls
the flow.
Russia annexes the Crimea, Putin’s
eventual goal - the vast natural resources of the Ukraine. In 2008 Putin
stopped NATO from signing up Georgia and Ukraine into its membership action
plan. He then moved against Georgia. In 2013 he interrupted Ukraine’s signing
of an association agreement with the EU. Now he’s annexed the Crimea and is on
record stating that Ukraine is not a country but a territory and insists it
should be divided. If Putin is successful in his bid for Ukraine what’s next?
The Baltic states come to mind.
The German industrial complex, the Rohstoff
Allianz,
is openly advocating imperialism.
An escalation in tension, and an
increase in resource driven conflicts is certainly on my radar screen. Is the
truth behind what’s increasingly going to drive future armed conflicts on your
radar screen?
If not, it should be.
Richard (Rick) Mills
Richard
lives with his family on a 160 acre ranch in northern British Columbia. He
invests in the resource and biotechnology/pharmaceutical sectors and is the
owner of Aheadoftheherd.com. His articles have been published on over 400
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