Oil, natural gas helped fuel war in Georgia

The lopsided war between Russia and Georgia may have come to an end. The conflict had many causes. They include Russia’s attempt to assert some of its old dominion over the region, overreaching by Georgia’s democracy-minded president, Mikheil Saakashvili, Russian umbrage at what it sees as Western meddling in its backyard and anger at moves by Georgia to join NATO.

But like so many of the world’s conflicts, the one in Georgia was also about oil and natural gas. Unless many nations, led by the United States, find alternative, environmentally sound sources of energy, such wars will proliferate as oil supplies shrink.

It was the global addiction to oil that allowed Russia to go, in less than two decades, from a nation struggling to remain economically viable to one rolling in energy riches. Those riches are threatened by pipelines for oil and natural gas that were built to link the energy wealth of the Caspian Sea region to Turkey and the Mediterranean, thus creating an end-run around Russia and its near monopoly as a regional provider of those fuels.

Concord Monitor