Resource Wars or Turning Stones

Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict

Author: Michael T Klar

This sobering look at the future of warfare predicts that conflicts will now be fought over diminishing supplies of our most precious natural resources.From the barren oilfields of Central Asia to the lush Nile delta, from the busy shipping lanes of the South China Sea to the uranium mines and diamond fields of sub-Saharan Africa, Resource Wars looks at the growing impact of resource scarcity on the military policies of nations. International security expert Michael T. Klare argues that in the early decades of the new millennium wars will be fought not over ideology but over resources, as states battle to control dwindling supplies of precious natural commodities. The political divisions of the Cold War, Klare asserts, are giving way to an immense global scramble for essential materials, such as oil, timber, minerals, and water. And as armies throughout the world define resource security as their primary mission, widespread instability is bound to follow, especially in those places where resource competition overlaps with long-standing disputes over territorial rights.A much-needed assessment of a changed world, Resource Wars is a compelling look at the future of warfare in an era of heightened environmental stress and accelerated economic competition.

Publishers Weekly

Klare analyzes the most likely cause of war in the century just begun: demand by rapidly growing populations for scarce resources. An introductory chapter setsthe scene, laying out the complexities of rapidly increasing demand as the world industrializes, the concentration of resources in unstable states and the competing claims to ownership of resources by neighboring states. Succeeding chapters look more closely at the potential for conflict—over oil in the Persian Gulf and in the Caspian and South China Seas, over water in the Nile Basin and other multinational river systems and over timber, gems and minerals from Borneo to Sierra Leone. The strength of Klare's presentation is its concreteness.

His analyses of likely conflicts, for example among Syria, Jordan and Israel for the limited water delivered by the Jordan River, are informed by detailed research into projected usage rates, population growth and other relevant trends. As Klare shows, the same pattern is repeated in dozens of other locations throughout the world. Finite resources, escalating demand and the location of resources in regions torn by ethnic and political unrest all combine as preconditions of war. Klare, an expert on warfare and international security (Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, etc.), presents a persuasive case for paying serious attention to these impending hostilities and furnishes the basic information needed to understand their danger and the importance of international cooperation in staving off conflict.

Publishers Weekly

Klare analyzes the most likely cause of war in the century just begun: demand by rapidly growing populations for scarce resources. An introductory chapter sets the scene, laying out the complexities of rapidly increasing demand as the world industrializes, the concentration of resources in unstable states and the competing claims to ownership of resources by neighboring states. Succeeding chapters look more closely at the potential for conflict over oil in the Persian Gulf and in the Caspian and South China Seas, over water in the Nile Basin and other multinational river systems and over timber, gems and minerals from Borneo to Sierra Leone. The strength of Klare's presentation is its concreteness. His analyses of likely conflicts, for example among Syria, Jordan and Israel for the limited water delivered by the Jordan River, are informed by detailed research into projected usage rates, population growth and other relevant trends. As Klare shows, the same pattern is repeated in dozens of other locations throughout the world. Finite resources, escalating demand and the location of resources in regions torn by ethnic and political unrest all combine as preconditions of war. Klare, an expert on warfare and international security (Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, etc.), presents a persuasive case for paying serious attention to these impending hostilities and furnishes the basic information needed to understand their danger and the importance of international cooperation in staving off conflict. (May) Forecast: Klare's message is important, but it probably won't be heard by many beyond readers of the handful of major newspapers that will review it. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Table of Contents:

1. Wealth, Resources, and Power: The Changing Parameters of
Global Security	1
2. Oil, Geography, and War: The Competitive Pursuit of
Petroleum Plenty	27
3. Oil Conflict in the Persian Gulf	51
4. Energy Conflict in the Caspian Sea Basin	81
5. Oil Wars in the South China Sea	109
6. Water Conflict in the Nile Basin	138
7. Water Conflict in the Jordan, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus
River Basins	161
8. Fighting for the Riches of the Earth: Internal Wars over
Minerals and Timber	190
9. The New Geography of Conflict	213
Appendix: Territorial Disputes in Areas Containing Oil and/or
Natural Gas	227
Notes	233
Acknowledgments	275
Index	277

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Turning Stones: My Days And Nights With Children At Riska Caseworker's Story

Author: Marc Parent

An 8-year old boy holding a knife to his younger brother's throat. Three small children who watch their older sister jump out of a twenty-third story window, following their mother's orders. Two boys whose mother believes they are all victims of a hex laid on them by her ex-husband. An eleven-year-old boy at a fashionable Manhattan address whose mother is so drunk she can't keep her robe closed when child welfare workers come to visit. These are the heroes of Marc Parent's Turning Stones, small and unsuspecting victims of a society, and of a bureaucracy, that do not know what to do with them. For three years, Marc Parent was a respected caseworker in New York City's Emergency Children's Services, a city agency created to investigate cases of abused children during the evening and nighttime hours. Parent applied himself to his work with devotion, and in his tiny charges he saw day-to-day bravery as well as some of the strangest twists the human soul can suffer. Eventually, however, Parent discovered what a thin line separates any of us from tragedy, especially when children are involved. Faced with the horror of a child's death he ultimately, inspiringly, rediscovers the feeling of making a difference in our world - if only by turning one stone at a time. There are no prescriptions or policies here, only the lives of human beings in a fearsome world, told with vividness, humor, honesty, and deep sympathy.

Newsweek

"A revelatory and affirmative work, a grace note played against the darkest passages of family life."

Kirkus Reviews

At once heart-wrenching and heart-lifting is this record of four years that the author spent riding to the rescue of abused and neglected children.

Parent was an Emergency Children's Service worker in New York City's child welfare system, one of the men and women who on nights and weekends investigate calls about children in danger. Parent (yes, he took a lot of flack about his name) came to public prominence when a baby died after he and another worker had visited a family in a mice- and drug-infested building and missed identifying the child as at "imminent risk," that is, in immediate danger of death or serious injury. Official blame was placed elsewhere, but Parent agonized over the judgment for weeks. This compelling book is the result of his self-scrutiny. It includes what the author considers the most tragic and dramatic of the hundreds of cases he encountered. Here is the story of a mother who, anticipating Armageddon, urged her five children to jump out a 23rd-storey window; two leaped before help arrived. Another woman, convinced that she was hexed and seeing blood on the walls and broken glass in the food, had barricaded herself and her hungry children inside their apartment. In another horror story, a nine-year-old had beaten his five-year- old cousin to death. Amid the sad tales are often humorous sketches of Parent's colleagues and telling vignettes of the primitive working conditions—among other things, no place for children removed from their homes late at night to sleep except a straight chair. In the long anecdote that provides the title for the book, Parent comes to believe that even in cases where child welfare workers can do little, the work provides "an opportunity to touch a life at a critical moment and make it better."

Riveting stories, tuned to the headlines, that also defend the much maligned caseworkers who must make snap judgments under often bizarre circumstances in the field.