Courting Future Resource Conflict: The Shortcomings of Western Response Strategies to New Energy Vulnerabilities

Abstract

With the phenomenon of economic globalization having absorbed our attention for the last decade, environmental challenges as well as the necessity to manage the distribution of resources have been neglected. This paper focuses on the potential for future resource conflicts among states which – as will be argued – will be fought along the axis of the consumers and producers of energy. Conflict over resources can be provoked by the increased energy import dependency of some Western states, intensified by a progressive process of global fossil fuels depletion. The strategies of the West to prevent and manage this type of conflict – risk reduction, crisis management and geopolitics of energy – will be evaluated according to their effectiveness. It will be argued that these strategies might be effective in the short- and mid term but are inadequate in the long term, and that Western states cannot depend on them to prevent a conflict over fossil fuels. The focus of the study is the EU and its precarious strategy of “risk reduction” which, in effect, places all the eggs in the Russian basket. The discussion of Western crisis management as implemented by the International Energy Agency also points to their lack of reliability and effectiveness to manage a severe shortage crisis. The third strategy to prevent and manage supply crisis for the West – a geopolitics of energy – might work in the short run by furnishing Western states' control of cheap oil, but is counterproductive in the long run by deepening the chasm between them and the producer countries on whose energy they depend. The only two effective and complementary strategies to avoid conflict over resources would be to start to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels by developing alternative and renewable energy, and, most of all, to pursue a global policy based on a more equitable and controlled energy distribution.