Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin R. Barber [36]
24.36 percent of the total proven oil reserves are located in nations either currently involved in an ethnic conflict or at a high risk for future conflicts.
Moderate Risk
Oil Reserves Percentage of World Oil Reserves
Albania 0.17 0.012
Angola 1.50 0.15
Argentina 1.57 0.16
Brazil 3.03 0.30
Cameroon 0.40 0.04
China 24.00 2.41
Commonwealth of Independent States* 57.00 5.72
Congo 0.83 0.08
Egypt 6.20 0.62
Gabon 0.73 0.07
India 6.05 0.61
Kuwait 94.00 9.43
Malaysia 3.70 0.37
Mexico 51.30 5.15
Oman 4.48 0.45
Peru 0.38 0.04
Romania 1.57 0.16
Saudi Arabia 257.84 25.86
United Arab Emirates** 98.10 9.84
Venezuela 62.65 6.28
TOTAL 675.50 billion barrels 67.75
67.75 percent of the total proven oil reserves is located in nations that are at a high and moderate risk for current or future ethnic conflict.
GRAND TOTAL ______
918.34 billion barrels of oil
92.11 percent of the total proven oil reserves is located in nations that are at a high or moderate risk for current or future ethnic conflict.
Source: The International Petroleum Encyclopedia (Tulsa: PennWell Publishing Company, 1993).
In the moderate-risk group, non-Arab nations account for about 21 million barrels a day (better than a third of global production), while the Middle East tinderbox (not including high-risk-category Iraq and Iran) accounts for nearly 13 million more barrels a day, or another fifth of world production. Add it up: better than three-fifths of the world’s current oil production (and almost 93 percent of its potential production reserves) are controlled by the nations least likely to be at home in McWorld and most likely to be afflicted with political, social, and thus economic instability.28
The results are equally disconcerting when we rate energy exporters in the high-and moderate-risk categories on a democracy scale. Since democracy is correlated with continuity of government and thus stability and since democratic nations are less likely to make war on other democracies than nondemocratic nations, oil-producing democracies make safer partners in McWorld’s trade relations. Yet the Western powers were content to return Kuwait to oil production without inducing it to become more democratic.
The most rigorous standards would put the Latin American group and India on the democratic margin, at best, giving them only 7 of the 42 million barrels produced by nations in the high-and moderate-risk group, and leaving over four-fifths of production in these two groups in non-democratic hands. If all of the oil-producing ex-USSR republics actually become democratic, another 10 million barrels will be “safe,” but nearly one-half of world production will still remain at risk. Indeed, the subdivision of once-extensive federations like Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union into smaller fragments has turned once-producing exporters into net importers. As part of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine could think of itself as part of a powerful fossil-fuel and lumber producer. But though it has now acquired the illusion of independence, it has become a needy importer desperately negotiating with Russia for oil, gas, and wood. Yuri Byelomestnov, director of the Ukraine’s October Mine, says bitterly: “Ukrainian independence, it’s a mistake…. [N]ationalism blinds intelligence. We used to get 8,000 pieces of equipment—conveyor belts, lumber—from Russia a month. Now we can’t get them.”29
The logic is spare and fearful: both Jihad and McWorld weaken nations. Jihad splinters them but increases their dependency on McWorld; McWorld draws nations out of their isolation and autarky, but in making them dependent, reduces their power. Democracy suffers either way, especially if, as I will argue below, democracy historically has rooted its liberties in nation-state institutions. Even as we secure the macropeace through trade, treaties, law, cooperation, and common force, the microwars occasioned by Jihad’s fractious parochialisms become of ever greater global significance. Interdependence makes boundaries permeable not just for the good but for