ENERGY WARS?

Not much about sun and wind to fight over, but oil and gas? That's another story:

NATO Prepares For Energy Wars
Roman Kupchinsky, December 5, 2006 (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

- During the recent NATO summit in Riga, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar urged the alliance to declare that an energy boycott of any member be seen as an act of coercion against all members of the alliance and one that requires a collective response…
- The senator used Russia's brief cutoff of gas to Ukraine in January as an example of the dangers that could lurk ahead…"The Ukrainian economy and military could have been crippled without a shot being fired, and the dangers and losses to several NATO member nations would have mounted significantly," Lugar said…The day before pressure was reduced in the pipeline that supplied Ukraine (and Europe) with natural gas, NTV, which is controlled by the state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom, aired long news segments showing Gazprom technicians preparing for the cutoff. The scenes, which were aired globally, resembled a wartime propaganda operation…

- Such a tactic could have been Russia's way of showing that it…would limit its energy subsidies only to pro-Russian leaders…[and] a warning to the West to stop its support for "colored revolutions," as seen in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004…Lugar's words at the NATO summit did not go unnoticed in Moscow…
- Energy cutoffs have been used as a geopolitical tactic before…in July 1941, the United States declared a de facto oil boycott on imperial Japan by freezing all of its financial assets in the United States, which were then being used to pay for [80% of its] oil…Three days later, Japan launched an invasion to grab Royal Shell Petroleum's southern Indonesian oil fields…had the oil boycott been proclaimed years earlier, critics have said that the devastating war in the Pacific might have been avoided…

- When the United States announced a $2.2 billion emergency aid package to Israel [during the 1973 Yom Kippur War] in October 1973, Saudi Arabia responded by announcing it would cut off all shipments of oil to the United States. The other Arab oil producers followed suit. Daniel Yergin, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the petroleum industry, "The Prize," quoted [Henry Kissinger, the architect of U.S. foreign policy at the time] as saying the decision to use oil as a weapon was "political blackmail."
Despite the economic damage and disruptions caused by the embargo, the United States never officially regarded it as an act of war by OPEC. It was, however, the beginning of a new era…
- Most world leaders…are painfully aware of the importance energy plays in international politics…But the question remains as to what exactly an organization like NATO can do…Political strategists will likely be busy trying to find the answers…