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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (9941)	11/12/2001 12:37:46 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 281500

Agua Caliente! Petroleos Peligroso! Re: I'd love to see a comparison and contrast of the restriction of flows of water and of oil as motivators to war. To wit, here's a quote from the early 1990's: <Snip> The Turkish President Suleyman Demirel's words on this issue are a good indication of the frustration felt by the Turkish people: "Neither Syria or Iraq can lay claim to Turkey's rivers any more than Ankara could claim their oil. This is a matter of sovereignty. We have a right to do anything we like. The water resources are Turkey's, the oil resources are theirs. We don't say we share their oil resources and they cannot say they share our water resources." <End Snip> Source: John Bulloch and Adel Darwish, Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East. London; Victor Gollancz, 1993, 60. amazon.com Considering that this book is out of print, I'd think that oil may be considered the hands down winner of the contest on the most contentious commodity. -RD

To: FaultLine who wrote (9941)	11/12/2001 9:01:50 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

I'd love to see a comparison and contrast of the restriction of flows of water and of oil as motivators to war. Nothing different than the water or cattle wars of the old west... Or the Israelis taking on the Syrians to prevent their diverting the Jordan's waters in 1967... Or the Turks cutting off the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates for 3 weeks back in 1990 when they flooded the Ataturk dam. "Neither Syria nor Iraq can lay claim to Turkey's rivers any more than Ankara could claim their oil. This is a matter of sovereignty. We have a right to do anything we like." Suleyman Demirel, Turkey's former president news.bbc.co.uk The struggle for scarce, or precious, natural resources has driven conflict for centuries... It's certainly nothing new today.. Oil was fought over in WWII (Japan's pretext for capturing Malaysia and Burma)..., Desert Storm, and will be the center of attention in the future. So the "fault lines" have always been there... but they shift as the economic and political "tectonic plates" shift, applying stress on one area, while relieving it in another. Hawk