Georgian conflict is energy wake-up call

The subtext of Russia's strong-arm tactics against Georgia should, by this point in the 21st century, be well-understood. It's about energy, specifically Russian energy security and hegemony.

Despite the West's knee-jerk, 20th-century reaction, Russia's military incursion is not about trying to rebuild the evil old Soviet empire and reverting to the Cold War. It's about Russia's self-interest in a world in which energy is the most pertinent measure of national leverage, not nuclear arsenals or space exploration or that old Nazi favorite, lebensraum.

The geopolitics of the 18th century were about exploration and colonial exploitation by the major powers. The 19th century's were about the industrial revolution and building manufacturing bases. For the big winners in the industrial revolution, the early part of the 20th century was about occupying territory, then, in its second half, about nuclear domination.

The 21st is going to be all about petro-politics. Explosive economic growth -- particularly in Russia, China and India -- means that in the first decades of this century the winners will be the countries that control and develop the most energy resources.

The Chinese get it. Once a minor oil exporter, China is rapidly nearing the level of U.S. imports and consumption, so it is busily ensuring future supplies by diplomatically cuddling up to unsavory regimes such as Sudan, Iran and Venezuela.

India gets it and is feverishly making protective deals around the world.

The Russians get it; thus the move on Georgia.

Russia needs Georgia to be a malleable ally, if not a client state, because the only pipeline routes for Caspian Sea oil and gas that do not run through Russia run through Georgia to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. If Russia controls those pipelines, directly or indirectly, it recaptures the oil and gas resources of the world's third-largest repository that it lost in the breakup of the Soviet Union.

So when Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili recklessly sent troops storming into breakaway South Ossetia over what amounts to a small-bore bit of territorial rivalry, he gave Moscow an excuse to try for the regime change it strongly desires. And as he fully intended, he sucked the United States into a high-risk confrontation with Russia.

That America's stake in who controls those pipelines can put us into a dangerous conflict with Russia should be yet another energy wake-up call for the nation's leadership.

We cannot expect to continue to consume 25 percent of the world's oil while having direct access to only 3 percent.

Nor can we expect China, India and Russia to forgo the benefits of carbon-based economic growth that we profligately rode to major power status over two centuries.

Nor can we persuasively lecture that their growing carbon consumption drives global warming when we set a poor example of global stewardship ourselves.

We had a virtual free energy ride into the new century, but the level of the game is escalating, and it's a game we cannot win against nations that control much more fossil fuel than we do.

Everybody else seems to get it about carbon-based energy. When will we get it -- that our only response lies in alternative energy -- and act on it?

Davis Merritt is a former editor of The Eagle. Reach him at dmerritt9@cox.net.