In the most recent development Russia raised the prospect of war in the Arctic yesterday as nations struggle for control of the world’s dwindling energy reserves. The country’s new national security strategy identified the intensifying battle for ownership of vast untapped oil and gas fields around its borders as a source of potential military conflict within a decade.
“In a competition for resources it cannot be ruled out that military force could be used to resolve emerging problems that would destroy the balance of forces near the borders of Russia and her allies.”
Its warnings of armed conflict suggest that it is willing to defend its interests by force if necessary as global warming makes exploitation of the region’s energy riches more feasible. An earlier Kremlin document declared the Arctic a strategic resource for Russia and said that development of its energy reserves by 2020 was a vital national objective. It set out plans to establish army bases along the Arctic frontier to “guarantee military security in different military-political situations”. Putin accused the West last year of coveting Russian energy reserves, saying: “Many conflicts, foreign policy actions and diplomatic moves smell of oil and gas. Behind all that there often is a desire to enforce an unfair competition and ensure access to our resources.”
But as Socialist Courier blog has high-lighted , Russia is by no means the sole culprit in the militarization of the Arctic Circle . In one stage of civilisation the food question causes tribe to fight against tribe, the fate of the defeated tribe being to serve as food for the victors. In another phase of civilisation those captured in battle are sent as slaves to toil for the benefit of those who have vanquished them. Our contention that war has always been fundamentally economic can be justified from every historical epoch, yet this has not always been obvious. The struggle for the oil and gas and minerals of the North Pole now clearly exposes the economic character of war .
The workers to-day has nothing to fight for. The interests of their masters are not their interests. National prestige is not their prestige. When the capitalist-class fully realises that they can no longer depend upon the working-class, when they find that the workers have , at last , come to understand their class position, and that they have no reason for fighting in their master’s interests against those with whom they have no personal quarrel, the capitalist will see that it is impossible to appeal to patriotism and all the rest and then it will be impossible to make war . Militarism is an inevitable effect of capitalist domination and the struggle for markets and profit, and so long as the workers are ruled by a master class, so long will their masters use them as cannon fodder. The only solution of the question of militarism from the proletarian point of view is the abolition of capitalist exploitation. It is then our duty to concentrate our efforts upon Socialism. The revolutionary Socialist is the truest peace advocate.
The origin of war lies in class ownership of the means whereby the people live. The straightest road is the shortest road, and the only way to get rid of the evil of militarism is to get rid of capitalism.
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