Financial Sense Newshour with Jim Puplava

Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict

Michael T. Klare

Author

October 25, 2008

Resource Wars Cover Image Recently, an unprecedented Chinese attempt to acquire the major American energy firm Unocal was blocked by Congress amidst hysterical warnings of a Communist threat. But the political grandstanding missed a larger point: the takeover bid was a harbinger of a new structure of world power, based not on market forces or on arms and armies but on the possession of vital natural resources

Surveying the energy-driven dynamic that is reconfiguring the international landscape, Michael Klare, the preeminent expert on resource geopolitics, forecasts a future of surprising new alliances and explosive danger. World leaders are now facing the stark recognition that all materials vital for the functioning of modern industrial societies (not just oil and natural gas but uranium, coal, copper, and others) are finite and being depleted at an ever-accelerating rate. As a result, governments rather than corporations are increasingly spearheading the pursuit of resources. In a radically altered world where Russia is transformed from battered Cold War loser to arrogant broker of Eurasian energy, and the United States is forced to compete with the emerging "Chindia" juggernaut – the only route to survival on a shrinking planet, Klare shows, lies through international cooperation

Michael T. Klare is the author of thirteen books, including Blood and Oil and Resource Wars. A regular contributor to Harper's, Foreign Affairs, and the Los Angeles Times, he is the defense analyst for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst.

Past Interviews

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, June 21, 2008
Real Player WinAmp Windows Media Mp3

Blood and Oil, January 15, 2005
Real Player WinAmp Windows Media Mp3 Book Information

Contact Information

Michael T. Klare
Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies, Hampshire College
Book Information | Website