Natural Resources in the Post-War World

Abstract

War result largely from the struggle to possess resources. Resources are not simply a few commodity items; they involve locations, space, climates, and the whole complex gamut of geographic goods which underlie economic production. Resources are of two kinds-fixed an fluid. The fluid ones can be equalized among nations by free trade and a post-war in international resources board, but such a policy would be suicidal for us until certain nations change their population policies. The fixed resources cannot be equalized without a completely new attack upon the problem. Present division of space, for instance, denies all future increases to cultured people like the Dutch, Swiss, and Czechs, but will permit both the African Bantus and the Brazilians ot reach the billion mark. Such inequalities will continue to produce war. Perhaps our failure to comprehend the whole problem grows out of our habit of studying social science from historical and institutional, rather than from the geographical, point of view.