"Oil Wars"

David Frum posts:

Very interesting from Foreign Affairs - better on analysis than prescription, but hey ... who isn't?

The world is far more peaceful today than it was 15 years ago. There were 17 major civil wars — with "major" meaning the kind that kill more than a thousand people a year — going on at the end of the Cold War; by 2006, there were just five. During that period, the number of smaller conflicts also fell, from 33 to 27.

Despite this trend, there has been no drop in the number of wars in countries that produce oil. The main reason is that oil wealth often wreaks havoc on a country's economy and politics, makes it easier for insurgents to fund their rebellions, and aggravates ethnic grievances. Today, with violence falling in general, oil-producing states make up a growing fraction of the world's conflict-ridden countries. They now host about a third of the world's civil wars, both large and small, up from one-fifth in 1992. According to some, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq shows that oil breeds conflict between countries, but the more widespread problem is that it breeds conflict within them.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at April 30, 2008 10:11 PM