Demos and the World Policy Institute hosted a discussion May 13 with author Michael Klare, America's preeminent expert on resource geopolitics.
Surveying the energy-driven dynamic that is reconfiguring the international landscape, Michael Klare's new book, Rising Power, Shrinking Planet, forecasts a future of surprising new alliances and explosive danger. World leaders are now facing the stark recognition that all materials vital for the functioning of modern industrial societies (not just oil and natural gas but uranium, coal, copper, and others) are finite and being depleted at an ever-accelerating rate.
As a result, governments rather than corporations are increasingly spearheading the pursuit of resources. In a radically altered world—where Russia is transformed from battered Cold War loser to arrogant broker of Eurasian energy, and the United States is forced to compete with the emerging “Chindia” juggernaut—the only route to survival on a shrinking planet, Klare shows, lies through international cooperation.
WPI Senior Fellow Mira Kamdar provided comments.
Michael T. Klare is the author of thirteen books, including Blood and Oil and Resource Wars. A regular contributor to Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, and the Los Angeles Times, he is the defense analyst for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst.
Mira Kamdar is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and a 2008 Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society in New York. Her latest book is Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the Largest Democracy and the Future of Our World (Scribner 2008).
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