OIL AND WAR

"Fifty years ago petroleum was an old ladies' remedy for rheumatism. To-day it has become the omnipotent commodity that gives life to automobiles, tanks, navies, bombing planes. Heavy petroleum means naval empire; light gasoline means empire of the air; gasoline and kerosene mean land empire ... The Americans have long regarded their wells as inexhaustible. Eager for immediate profit and careless of future generations, they provide 76 per cent of world production. The English, being more farsighted, are not the biggest producers, but they control all reserves ... The geological division of the United States Department of the Interior and two dozen specialists of universal standing agree that between 1940 and 1950 there will be no more petroleum in American soil ... Hence the American oil interests grow more and more embittered ... At the moment, many machines are unemployed. There is overproduction of petroleum, but when the machines, the gods of'our time, begin to move again the struggle for petroleum deposits will become more intense. It will turn into open and very probably bloody struggle ... During the last week of December four different politicians, journalists, writers, and industrialists gave the date of the next war as 1940. They all had different reasons, but they were wellfounded. 1940 is the year when American petroleum becomes exhausted. Is the nightmare of a war for petroleum to be added to the spectres of war in the Pacific and in Europe? ... To those who believe, in the force of the spirit or in any ideal, facts are discouraging ... I have come to the conclusion that all the bloody conflicts of our epoch, all the secret wars ... are the apparent image, the popular version, of a struggle for certain raw materials—grain, cotton, iron, oil—above all, oil."

Zum Artikel von Anton Zischka, erschienen in The Living Age (April 1934) »

Anmerkung: An dieser Stelle sollte betont werden, dass sich die ASPO natürlich vom nationalsozialistischen Gedankengut Zischkas explizit distanziert. Jedoch sind seine Aussagen bezüglich der Zusammenhangs von Öl und Krieg nahezu 80 Jahre später so gültig wie damals. Darüber hinaus ist es interessant zu bemerken, dass in seiner Zeit - ebenso wie heute - große Uneinigkeit über die Verfügbarkeit des Öls herrschte. Schließlich sollte noch angemerkt werden, dass der Sieg der Alliierten im 2. Weltkrieg in großen Teilen durch den enormen Verbrauch amerikanischen Öls zu erklären ist - und dadurch auch die zunehmende Rolle des Öls aus dem Mittleren Osten, somit Schauplatz unzähliger, bewaffneter Konflikte bis zum heutigen Tag.