Listen Closely Children and You'll Hear the Drums of War

Over the past few weeks, conflict with the potential to escalate to global warfare came closer to touching off than most Americans perhaps realize. Major geo-political events like Arab spring, along with the realities of financial and energy markets have continued to compound longtime cultural and military tensions, as world powers are reorganized in the 21st century. Here's a rundown of things to watch as the world heads toward its next inevitable world war.

Israel

Political support from pro-Israel forces in the U.S. has been so valuable in recent years, that running for President or Congress has mostly required a verbal commitment to militarily support Israel under any and all circumstances. This sounds fine as a talking point, but once you give it even a moment's thought, it's a ludicrous assertion.

For better or worse, Israel has never been either subtle or meek when conducting foreign policy. To essentially make the blanket statement that the U.S. will go to war anytime the State of Israel is engaged, implies that Israel's actions will inherently override American foreign policy, and that should it decide to strike another state, or even provoke a strike on itself, the U.S. would be obliged to send its sons and daughters off to die in the ensuing conflict. That might sound like an oversimplification, but many politicians have routinely spoke in such matter-of-fact terms, so I don't think it's unfair to say that it makes some Americans uncomfortable to be blindly tied to another nation's actions, especially when we often seem so misguided in our own.

This week, we saw at least some evidence that the current administration is not prepared to blindly follow Israel at whatever cost. Last Sunday, the White House called off Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint military exercise, or war game, that the U.S. and Israel have ever staged. It was suggested that this was at least partly in response to a comment by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, who suggested that the United States was reluctant over increased sanctions against Iran for fear of a spike in oil prices.

Friction actually began to form the week before, when Washington harshly condemned the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, widely thought to have been ordered by Israel. The official reason given for the exercise's cancellation was “budgetary constraints,” but as the biggest expenses were already incurred in deploying 9,000 U.S. troops into the region earlier this month, that seems spurious.

If Israel wants to act unilaterally in attacking Iran, it would seem as if they would be on their own, at least at this point. Look for that to become a major issue in the 2012 presidential election as the Republican challenger will likely see a more hawkish stance as a potential way to cull pro-Israel support. Though whether American voters not eager to see World War III would be open to such a position remains to be seen. Even the lastest "troubling" IAEA report, does not claim that Iran even has a nuclear weapons development program, let alone a nuclear weapon. After the WMD debacle and almost a decade in Iraq, Americans are unlikley to support another foreign war on the credit card over a phantom threat or someone else's aggression.

Oil

As the Libyan conflict demonstrated, a shakeup in the oil markets anywhere, is a shakeup in oil markets everywhere. Iran sends about four million barrels of oil into the world market daily. While the U.S. hasn't bought crude from Iran since 1979, an embargo from someone who uses a lot of Iranian oil, like the European Union, would have a major impact on the price of oil, as those countries began competing for that supply elsewhere.

Higher energy prices in the U.S. and Europe, where economies are already very fragile, would not help and could even touch off another major recession. So while hawks on both continents are banging the war drums, many market-based interests are lukewarm to the otherwise profitable venture of combat they might otherwise support.

For its part, while Iran may hold the third largest oil reserves in the world (as well as second largest natural gas reserves), it's also painfully inefficient in terms of energy consumption. They use roughly 10 times as much energy per capita as EU nations, aided by the nearly $100 billion in energy subsidies Iran provides its citizens.

About half of Iran's state revenues come from oil exports, so a fall off in crude sales would be felt immediately. The pain will be compounded by the fact that Iran lacks the refining capacity to be gasoline independent, relying on 30 percent of domestic gas to be shipped back in from foreign countries – many in the EU.

So a major boycott would have immediate impacts on almost everyone. Europe would see its economic problems deepen, while as unthinkable as it seems, Iran might find it near impossible to meet domestic energy demands, while the U.S. would face economic consequences that would only be exacerbated should it then find itself borrowing money it doesn't have to finance more military adventurism as a result. EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels tomorrow to vote on the sanctions, but while they were once considered highly likely to be approved, the events of this week have seemed to have cooled heels, and the vote now seems in doubt.

Other big players

The growing tension has seemed to hasten the cozying up between Saudi Arabia and China, who announced this week that they would be working together closely to develop Saudi Arabia's nuclear energy program. China has an almost irrelevant amount of domestic oil and because the entire region has been explored thoroughly, it is unlikely to benefit from new discovery. Therefore, even more than the U.S., China needs to have strong relations as a client state in the Middle East right now.

Remember, the U.S. still gets the bulk of its oil imports from Canada and Mexico and supplies about 40 percent of its own consumption. Saudi Arabia accounts for about 10 percent of our oil supply, less than half of what it supplies as China's number one importer. China gets the rest of its oil from a host of countries including Iran, Russia and Angola, but as their demand continues to rise exponentially, and with few major producers in their immediate region, they'd clearly like to have a strong relationship with a country like Saudi Arabia, as it's a lot more stable to rely on one oil-rich country for the bulk of your imports than maintaining positive relationships with 10 or more. Regarding the prospect of conflict between the U.S. and Iran, China has been almost supportive of the U.S. in its relative silence, and warnings against an Iranian shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz.

Russia on the other hand, has expressed grave concerns over such circumstances and looks to be enhancing relations with Tehran. The two countries announced on Friday that they would be using their own currencies in domestic trade, rather than the dollar, a move that was also undertaken between Russia and China in 2010. Despite improved relations with Russia since the Obama administration took over, Moscow is still unlikely to ever view American interests with anything less than suspicion. Despite realignment in our missile defense system for the region to their west, Russia continues to remain uneasy regarding our intent in that area – clearly a suspicion shared by Iran.

Also, facing domestic challenges of its own, Russia has long been trying to instigate a move away from the dollar as the world reserve currency, in order to promote the ruble as an alternative, and this can simply be an opportunity to make headway in a place where that would have the greatest impact – oil markets.

How does it play out?

For now, it seems that the Strait of Hormuz is the proverbial line in the sand. The U.S. has indicated that it is already prepared to act in force should Iran make good on its threat to choke off oil supplies by closing the straight. Because of the kind of energy disruption such a move would cause – and it's ensuing economic calamities – Iran is unlikely to find much sympathy from the international community should it be attacked upon doing so.

Short of such a move, however, it would also seem that no one is giving Israel a green light to unilaterally engage Iran and should they do so, they'd likely find a similar lack of support, again, if only because of the ramifications such a strategy could set off globally. Obviously, once shots are fired and sides are chosen, all bets are off. But it seems safe to assume that all back-channel dialog to Israel is aimed at avoiding such full-on conflict. Meanwhile, the U.S. appears to be militarily engaged with Iran already, at least to a certain degree, as former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke detailed in a recent article, pointing to things like captured drones and cyber attacks as evidence that the two nations are harassing each other in covert conflict that has managed to avoid actual warfare, at least for now. 

Tomorrow's vote of EU foreign ministers will tell us more in terms of where Europe stands, but absent a new development, this issue might fall back to a cat and mouse game between IAEA inspectors, existing sanctions and a resolution that allows Western nations to feel comfortable with Iran's nuclear ambitions, while allowing Iranian leaders to save face and avoid being perceived as having kowtowed to the West, especially after the assassination of one of their top scientists and their highly publicized drone capture. 

In the long term, this might just be a whisper to what is eventually heard as a scream. Many of the stressors that have historically led to global conflict have been gathering for some time. As economic concerns, energy supplies, political instabilities, domestic uprisings and the increased insecurity that accompanies a world of declining resources and growing population continue to mount, history tells us that they are most likely to shake out amid the smoke of detonation. Few leaders ever truly savor the prospect of war, but in uncertain times, war does produce clear winners and losers -- a chance to grab more power, just as what power you have is slipping away. Of course, it also serves up spoils. As institutions weaken and leaders face increased threats to their power structures, the temptation to roll the dice for a chance to stand atop of the ashes only grows.

The decimation of most of the developed world during the last world war set the table for the United States to jump to the front of the pack, while ushering in an era of prosperity and relative stability that looks good compared to most times in history, at least if you're us. But we might be well-served to remember that the reigning dynasty rarely remains on top when the world shakes, just like the biggest kid doesn't win at king of the mountain, as all at once, the other players focus their sights on the largest threat to the prize. The reset button needs to be hit in many ways before we find ourselves in a global system that has any sort of viability, even in the near term. I'd like to think that could be accomplished without long-range ballistic missiles ripping the limbs off of tomorrow's children, but let's be honest – that's never been mankind's style. Meanwhile, keep listening for those drums.

Dennis Maley is a featured columnist and editor for The Bradenton Times. His column appears every Thursday and Sunday on our site and in our free Weekly Recap and Sunday Edition (click here to subscribe). An archive of Dennis' columns is available here. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com. You can also follow Dennis on Facebook and Twitter by clicking the badges below.

Dennis Maley