The Iraq war was just the first of this century\’s "resource wars", in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities for themselves, according to the UK government\’s former chief scientific adviser.
Sir David King predicted that with human population growing, natural resources dwindling and seas rising because of climate change, the squeeze on the planet would lead to more conflict.
"I\’m going to suggest that future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind – the first of the resource wars," he told an audience of 400 in London as he delivered the British Humanist Association\’s Darwin Day lecture.
So let\’s think about this a little.
Joe Stiglitz tells us that the Iraq war will, in total, cost the US $3 trillion.
Oil\’s currently $45 a barrel or so.
So that money would buy, umm, 66 billion barrels.
Iraq has some 112 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Hmm, so, maybe?
Well, no. This still ignores two very basic facts. The first is that everyone is still paying Iraq for each and every barrel of oil. It\’s a bit silly to go paying for things twice over, isn\’t it?
The second is the response to those who say that it\’s all about access.
This ignores the meaning of the word fungible.
This is, I\’m afraid, the sort of moronic twattery that you get when scientists stray off the rather norrow confines of their specialist subject.
Well at least he didn’t say it was all about the Jooooos,
You could make a case that the iraqi war was fought to make certain groups very wealthy… and the expense was fobbed off on the general public..
would there have been a war if the industrialist(or others) had to pay for it ??
war is profitable for some…
certain groups in britain were quite gung ho for their wars..
>You could make a case that the iraqi war was fought to make certain groups very wealthy
Go on then, make that case instead of alluding to it, and then we can see how weak it is.
>would there have been a war if the industrialist(or others) had to pay for it ??
Irrelevant. Would we have fought the Nazis is industrialists had to pay for it? Probably not. Was that war wrong then?
The more free a market there is in a good, the less reason anyone would have to fight over it.
If these people really believe that we invaded Iraq to steal their oil, they should be campaigning for freer markets in the stuff.
King was one of the least impressive Chief Scientific Advisers and it is a pretty low-grade contribution , but
“This is, I’m afraid, the sort of moronic twattery that you get when scientists stray off the rather norrow confines of their specialist subject.”!!
Whereas beancounters are veritable masters of, well, the universe, I suppose.
(I wouldn’t want to upset anyone, so for “beancounter” please feel free to substitute economist, free-marketeer, Chicago boy, owner-of-the-complete-works-of-Ayn-Rand, or some suitably fungible term)
“You could make a case that the iraqi war was fought to make certain groups very wealthy”
OK, make the case.
Which groups?
Bollocks.
“Would we have fought the Nazis is industrialists had to pay for it? Probably not. Was that war wrong then?”
Yes, as was the previous one.