Anyone who has read my book or previous blog posts have probably figured out that I’m interested in domestic and international politics, both current and past. For this piece, I wanted to discuss strategic dependency. What I mean by strategic dependency is that when a country or countries’ societies are dependent on a certain resource to function. This resource can be anything and it has changed for different places at different times. It could be tin and copper ore used to make bronze in the Bronze Age, or it could be the crude oil and natural gas that the world economy is still addicted to currently in the 21st century. I wanted to discuss this topic in two parts 1. How strategic dependency constrains what politicians can and cannot do and 2. How it affects their rhetoric. As with a lot of the topics I discuss, both of these parts blur together in the real world but for the sake of clarity I’m splitting them apart.
Part 1:
What inspired me to write about this topic was a fascinating discussion on the podcast The Rest is History. The hosts of the podcast were doing a series on FIFA’s world cup, and they arrived at the topic of the host nation of the 2022 games, Qatar. For years before the 2022 World Cup journalists and news publications had been publishing story after story telling the world about the horrible conditions that migrant workers were experiencing as they built the infrastructure for the games. Many of them had their passports stolen as they lived in appalling and unsanitary housing, and reportedly thousands died in atrociously unsafe working conditions. It was essentially modern chattel slavery with people being treated as disposable tools. So why don’t we hear about the United States or Western European governments demanding investigations or sanctions against Qatar for their barbaric practices? Luckily for Qatari government, they sit atop some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world. The demand for the resources that Qatar controls is constant, and governments who depend on Southeast Asian energy imports cannot afford to antagonize the people who provide their lifeblood. It would be as if energy dependent nations were a patient getting a constant blood transfusion from a volunteer, the patient cannot risk upsetting the volunteer and risk them cutting them off. The need for essential resources has always controlled the strategic calculus of states for all of human history. It’s almost ironic in a way, people in positions of political power often see themselves as masters of the world, and in many ways they are. But at the same time, they are also caged by the unchanging dynamics of politics and strategic dependency.
Just a quick note, why didn’t we see more ordinary people demanding that their governments act against Qatar, or at the very least condemn the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar? I think the ancient Roman poet Juvenal said it best when he coined the phrase “bread and circuses.” For most people, as long as they get their appetite for spectacle satiated, they don’t much care who suffered to create that spectacle. Or to quote another intellectual powerhouse, the TV show SpongeBob SquarePants, “No one cares about the fate of labor so long as they get their instant gratification.”
Part 2:
When one sovereign power is forced to import a strategically important resource from another sovereign power, the dependent power has to tread very carefully in order to keep their access. This includes political rhetoric; politicians cannot risk upsetting those that they depend on. But rhetoric can also be a tool that politicians wield in order to help them gain access to resources they need. Let’s see how both of these cases might play out in a short hypothetical.
Imagine that the United States turns its glutenous eyes towards a relatively small but oil rich nation. The US wants access to this oil, but the local strongman who rules the country is a staunch nationalist who plays the great powers off of one another in order to stay independent. Using outright force would be too much of a provocation to be feasible. But there is an alternative. While the CIA finds people within the country with frustrated ambitions who would be amicable to a US alliance, politicians within the United States begin to denounce the dictator to all the world’s media outlets, and to the American public. These politicians earnestly and convincingly condemn the dictator’s extrajudicial executions, restriction of the press and other civil rights, and other aspects of the repressive police state. When the CIA funnels money into the right hands to help foment a revolution to overthrow the dictator, US politicians cheer on the revolution as a triumph for democracy and human rights. The clique that is swept into power also offers very generous terms to the US for their oil resources.
There is some initial optimism that the new regime will be more democratic and less authoritarian than the previous one. But those hopes are soon dashed. The new ruling elite didn’t have a principled objection to dictatorial power, they just wanted to be the ones wielding that power. So how does the United States respond to this new anti-democratic regime? Nothing. In fact, they do less than nothing. US politicians didn’t have a principled objection to dictatorship abroad either, their concern was getting someone friendly to US interests in power. Now the rhetoric of US politicians shifts from calling the oil rich country a repressive police state to a bringer of stability in a chaotic region.
Hopefully this quick scenario demonstrates how political rhetoric can be a tool to either gain or keep access to strategically important resources. The particulars of who, what, and when in this game have changed countless times over millennia. But the dynamics of the game have remained basically unchanged.
Conclusion:
From a moral perspective this geopolitical game of always fighting for a steady supply of important resources is pretty revolting. This is a game where compassion and basic humanity almost always loses to the grim “necessities” of politics. At this level of national and international politics people’s lives are treated like a currency to be bought or traded if the value of what’s being traded is deemed worth it. I wanted to make that clear before I offer the slightest caveat in the next paragraph.
This is something I discussed in my book, and I first heard the concept in an episode of the Hardcore History podcast about the first World War; that is the concept of leaders often being forced into a sort of prisoner’s dilemma when it comes to resources (another way in which politicians’ actions can be limited as I alluded to in Part 1). A world leader might make the case for their conduct as follows: “I didn’t like what we had to do to get our hands on those resources. But if we didn’t secure them our rivals would have, and that would have made us weaker while they became stronger.” The idea behind this statement is that potentially conscientious or principled leaders are forced into acting ruthlessly because they have to ensure that their state remains strong. They might not like the rules, but everyone is forced to play by them.
I’m not sure I buy that argument, at least entirely. But I do think it helps explain why this process of resource dependency looks achingly similar no matter what time period you choose to look at in history. And it looks like this process will continue long into the future. What resource and where it can be found might change. But how the game is played to hold those resources will not change.
P.S. If you got the reference that I made with the title of this piece then I salute your knowledge of WWI history.