theTrumpet.com

“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” President George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address to the American nation on January 31. He announced a new initiative aimed at developing alternative forms of energy—the Advanced Energy Initiative—involving a 22 percent increase in research. He foresaw breakthroughs in environmentally friendly energy production making use of solar, wind and nuclear energy sources, and cutting-edge technology. His goal? “[T]o replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025″ by moving “beyond a petroleum-based economy, and [making] our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

Given the unstable nature of the Middle East, one can easily see the critical nature of this goal.

Sadly, the measures President Bush is suggesting will prove to be too little, too late. The situation is already far more dire than even he is willing to acknowledge, and it will soon overtake America’s efforts to jump off the oil-dependency bandwagon.

The United States is the most voracious devourer of natural resources ever. Its 296 million citizens spend over half a trillion dollars each year on energy. Over 40 percent of that energy comes from oil, of which the U.S. guzzles 20 million barrels, and growing, daily. Since the U.S. produces only about a third of that itself, it must import well over 4 trillion barrels of oil annually (a quarter of that from our “friends” in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela). That is what it takes to enable 4 percent of the world’s population (Americans) to consume 25 percent of the world’s oil production.

America’s unmatched prosperity and record-breaking use of resources has erected a new standard not only in materialism and convenience, but also power projection. And it is a standard to which other nations in a competitive world are aggressively trying to catch up. Consider the U.S. military: To possess the most impressive armed forces in the world, the United States has paid close to a billion dollars a day, on average, for over 60 years. Nations that aim to compete on that level are shelling out money and manpower on a massive scale, forming alliances and pooling their assets—and all the while increasing their thirst for greater and greater quantities of natural resources.

This is not an insignificant development. The world is already straining just to fuel one superpower. But other empires-to-be are now coming of age. China, the most dramatic example, is growing twice as fast economically as the U.S. and has settled into its new role as the world’s home base for manufacturing.

As countries like China industrialize and urbanize, their oil consumption inevitably expands. Whereas a man living in a developing country uses two barrels of oil per year (that is the average per-capita usage of 5 billion of the planet’s 6.4 billion people), his brother in the developed world uses 18 barrels. The gap between these two figures is shrinking— and not because the developed world is cutting back in its oil consumption.

Unfortunately, at the same time demand is ballooning, supplies aren’t: In fact, global oil production appears to be approaching its peak.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s statistical agency, the Energy Information Administration, insists that the world will “require new [oil] production equivalent to three Saudi Arabias by 2025″ to meet projected growing global oil needs. In other words, three “Saudi Arabias” must be discovered, permitted, drilled and put into production over the next two decades just to meet demand (Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, Sept. 5, 2005). Furthermore, all infrastructure—including pipelines, tankers, storage facilities and refineries—would also need to be constructed before the oil could reach the market.

Clearly, this is not going to happen. What will happen is that competition for what oil does exist will get vicious.

While the scope of resource extraction, distribution and consumption in today’s world is unparalleled in human history, competing for resources is as old as the hills. A shortage or perceived shortage of required resources, or an increased appetite for more resources, has time and again brought families, clans, tribes, states and nations into conflict with one another in tragic cycles of violence, conquest, enslavement and revolution. To take nothing away from the friction between contrasting ideas (particularly religious ideas), nor from the competitive and hostile tendencies within human nature to simply want to dominate other people, throughout history physical resources—including land, water, livestock, material supplies, treasure, armaments and even slave labor—have been among the principle pursuits of those nations that have engaged other nations in war. The two world wars of the past century, for example, were ignited largely by resource grabs by Germany within Europe and Northern Africa, and by Japan in Southeast Asia.

So it will be in our day. Only now, in the age of wmd, the stakes are much, much higher.

The classic sign of oil demand exceeding supply is already in evidence today—and that is price hikes. Over the past decade, crude oil prices have tripled.

Such rate escalation especially wallops the countries that import oil the most. Certainly the U.S. is hurting: In 2004 it imported 58 percent of its oil. The world’s most populous nations, China and India—which import 44 and 70 percent of their oil respectively—also feel the crunch, though they are, as yet, generally less dependent on it. But this is a real crisis for the European Union, which ships in over 80 percent of its oil (last year, that figure in Germany, France, Italy and Spain exceeded 90 percent)—and the island nation of Japan, which imports fully 98 percent. Mounting costs for those oil imports can ravage a nation’s economy, simultaneously stunting economic growth and driving up inflation.

It is easy to see how quickly the tension between those nations that have the resources and those that need them—and among those who are competing for them—will escalate as they become more scarce. The incalculably high stakes of this game are producing some serious side effects. First, the nations that export those resources, especially oil and natural gas, are coming to enjoy a disproportionate amount of clout (witness Iran, which the world appears completely unable to prevent from gaining nuclear weaponry simply for fear of jeopardizing the 4.2 million barrels of oil it puts on the market each day). Second, while demand for resources skyrockets, production increases have not kept pace. As a result, the competition to lock down sources is already starting to become more fierce—and it is about to get ugly.

From Washington to Brussels, Caracas to Moscow and Beijing, national leaders and international corporations are stepping up their efforts to gain control over major sources of energy and commodities. With oil especially, never has the competitive pursuit of resources been so sharp, and, in the words of Michael T. Klare, director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies, “Never has so much money as well as diplomatic and military muscle been deployed” to gain control over major stockpiles (TomDispatch.com, May 9, 2005).

Economic analyst James Puplava succinctly sums up the global situation we face: “At a time of tremendous population growth and escalating demand for commodities of all types, resource scarcity will become a harbinger of war. The wars of the 21st century will arise over the scarcity of resources like water, oil and food as much as they will religion and economics. National security will become aligned and directed towards the securing and protection of global resource flows” (Financial Sense Online, Feb. 22, 2002).

The Feb. 9, 2005, Energy Bulletin quoted former Secretary of State Alexander Haig as stating the matter simply: “[T]he era of the resource war has arrived.”

But it is only when we compare those facts with the Holy Bible’s prophetic descriptions of the interplay among nations during the final days of our present civilization that the utter ferocity of the rivalry over resources we are about to witness—and the extent to which today’s great powers will claw their way into becoming tomorrow’s superpowers by raping weaker nations, while enriching an elite collection of international corporatists—truly leaps into focus.

Dark clouds foreshadowing a coming war over oil and other resources are gathering on the horizon, as nations react to looming shortages. As noble as the goals President Bush articulated may be, a target date of 2025 to replace three fourths of the U.S.’s Middle Eastern oil supply is far too late. Realizing their resource dependency and the potential for a coming supply crunch, nations, especially China and the EU, have already begun scrambling to secure sources, and war is soon to follow.

However, two of the major players in this drama, the United States and Iran, are about to be eliminated in a shocking manner. Read Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy to see why America will be an early casualty in the coming warfare. •