My interview with Michael Klare: Part II

Part II of the transcript includes a discussion of various parts of the world from which the EU imports oil and natural gas, including Russia, the Caspian Sea Basin, and North Africa, the implications of a potential U.S. invasion of Iran, and Prof. Klare's term "Energo-fascism."

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M. Klare – First of all, Russia alone has the largest supply of natural gas, far more than anybody else, so it's not going to be easy to break Europe's addiction to Russian natural gas. Second, it has a huge advantage in terms of piping it to Europe. Nobody else has the pipeline advantage that Russia has. There aren't any other pipelines existing, really, to bring it in easily.

Now you can build pipelines from Central Asia, and there's talk of doing that, but Russia is going to try to short-circuit that, so it won't be easy. The only other way to bring it in is as liquefied natural gas. There are also pipelines under the Mediterranean from North Africa, but those countries don't have nearly the amount of natural gas that Russia does so you really can't rely on them as an alternative source to Russia, otherwise you have to get it as liquefied natural gas and that's expensive and complicated. It's going to be very hard to break the European addiction to Russian natural gas.

That just means that Europe, to some degree, is going to be beholden to Russia and must accept the fact that Russia's going to have a certain kind of political advantage that comes with that. I don't think there's any getting away from it. And we've seen, with what happened to Ukraine, that that means accepting some degree of political subservience. I don't know any other way to put it.

A.M. – Speaking of pipelines in places that Russia might try to subvert: the Caspian Sea Basin and the countries surrounding it; what is the situation like there?

M. Klare – I'll be discussing that in my talk tonight. First of all, this was an area that was once part of the Soviet Union and before that part of the Tsarist Empire, so this is an area that Russia has long dominated. There is a belief in Moscow that this is the natural order to things: that the Caspian Basin should be under Moscow's control, or under Russian influence. There has been a real attempt by President Putin to restore Russian domination over the area and I expect that to continue to be the case. You will see continuing efforts on Russia's part to control the transportation of energy from the Caspian Sea basin. Mr. Putin has had considerable success in this regard, especially in the past two years. He has signed a whole slew of deals with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to ensure that new production of oil and natural gas from those countries will flow though Gazprom's pipelines to Europe…. Even though Europe would like to see the energy flow independently of Russia, it doesn't look like that's going to happen, at least not for a long time to come.

A.M. – You mentioned earlier importing gas and oil from North Africa via Algeria. EUROMED, which is a partnership between the European Union and countries around the Mediterranean, is especially concerned with Algeria. Would you care to elaborate on the situation in Africa.

M. Klare – Well it's not just [Algeria], also Libya is another source of natural gas for Europe. I sympathize with Europe's efforts to establish links with North Africa; this is essential because all kinds of all kinds of economic and population pressures that Europe will face from North Africa, especially as global warming intensifies, North Africa will be among the first and hardest hit parts of the world…. This is going to have tremendous implications for Europe, because there will be a natural inclination for the population of those countries to come to Europe. We see, already, the political implications of that. One way for Europe to deal with this is to try to promote economic growth in North Africa and energy is one way to do that.

So Europe has a vested interest in promoting economic growth in Algeria and Libya and the other countries of North Africa. That said, I worry about the future instability of those countries because of the historic imbalance in wealth between those who benefit from energy development and those who are excluded from those benefits. This is going to be a constant source of instability.

A.M. – What would be the implications of the US attack on Iran be? [For more information, see Prof. Klare's The Tripolar Chessboard: Putting Iran in a Great Power Context

M. Klare – Well, this is something I consider highly likely. This is not a theoretical question because the President and the Vice-president of the United States have very clearly threatened to attack Iran in the not-to-distant future, so we may see this. Obviously Iran does not have the conventional capacity to retaliate against such an attack or even to defend itself and the Iranians have said that they will retaliate through unconventional, or so-called asymmetrical, means.

One of the ways they have threatened to do so is to try to attack the oil flow from the Persian Gulf, and they could do that in several ways. [It could be done] directly by trying to cut off the flow of oil through the Straight of Hormuz by strewing anti-shipping mines – it's a very narrow channel, no more than a mile or so wide, through which one-fifth of the world's oil flows every day. If they succeeded in closing that passage it would have a catastrophic effect on the world's oil supply, and if it stayed closed for any length of time we would have an immediate, worldwide economic crisis.

They [Iran] could also create indirect economic chaos by provoking uprisings and sabotage in the oilfields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait…. Bear in mind that most of Saudi Arabia's oilfields in the Eastern Province are in an area where Shiites are the majority. Most of Saudi Arabia, of course, is Sunni…and those Shiites historically have been discriminated against by the Sunni majority in Saudi Arabia: they haven't been able to practice their religion; they're looked down upon and they bear a grudge against the government. No doubt, agents of Iran have been working with disgruntled Shiites. One might expect, in the event of a U.S. attack, for the Iranians to stir up some kind of uprising among the Shiites that could lead to sabotage….

How far this could go, nobody knows. But one could expect that their retaliation would be to try to attack the world oil supply.

A.M. – Could you explain Energo-fascism to us? [The full question, not in the video, referred to Mr. Klare's article Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?]

M. Klare – Well this is, of course, my response to the term Islamo-fascism, which I think is an illegitimate term that is made up to discredit the Islamic world and I reject it. Partly in response to that I…

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