Resource Wars Quotes

“In some cases, the materials at stake will be viewed as so essential to national survival or economic well-being that compromise is unthinkable. It is difficult, for example, to imagine that the United States will ever allow the Persian Gulf to fall under the control of a hostile power, or that Egypt will allow Sudan or Ethiopia to gain control over the flow of the Nile River. In such situations, national security considerations will always prevail over negotiated settlements that could be perceived as entailing the surrender of vital national interests.”
― Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict

“President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abdel-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi dynasty, while returning from the Allied summit conference in Yalta. Although the details of this meeting have never been made public, it is widely believed that Abdel-Aziz offered Roosevelt unlimited access to Saudi oil in return for a U.S. pledge to protect the royal family against internal and external attack. And whatever the exact nature of this agreement, the United States has served as Saudi Arabia’s principal defender ever since.”
― Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict

“Ultimately, the United States is prepared to intervene with its own forces to defend the regime against internal attack. This was made abundantly clear in 1981, when President Reagan declared that the United States would not allow an insurgent movement to overthrow the Saudi monarch, as had occurred in Iran two years earlier. “I will not permit [Saudi Arabia] to be an Iran,” he told reporters at the White House.67 Direct American involvement in a civil war is, no doubt, the last thing that Washington would like to see happen. To prevent this, great emphasis is being placed on intelligence activities and the disruption of antigovernment organizations. But President Reagan’s 1981 statement provides an unambiguous indication of America’s determination to protect the Saudi monarchy at all costs. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that this commitment has in any way been diluted since Reagan’s time; if anything, the United States is even more closely wedded to the Saudi regime now than it was in 1981. And while it is impossible to predict the exact nature of the U.S. response to any particular threat to the regime, it is likely to be swift, muscular, and lethal.”
― Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict

“The next war in our region will be over the waters of the Nile, not politics,” observed Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then Egypt’s minister of state for foreign affairs, in 1988.”
― Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict

“A key factor in the evolution of these and many other states’ security policies has been the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the international statute governing offshore resource development. Under this agreement, ratified by the U.N. General Assembly in 1994, nations that border on large bodies of water are able to claim an “exclusive economic zone” (EEZ) extending up to two hundred miles out to sea, within which they can claim unlimited rights to seabed development. This means that many coastal and island nations have suddenly acquired dominion over vast offshore tracts with substantial energy and mineral potential. In many cases, however, these tracts are divided up among several adjoining states, leading to often fractious disputes over the location of offshore boundaries.”
― Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict