Green = Less War?

I'm sure a work friend of mine, who supported Obama and his current push for funding alternative energy development, would reply "Exactly" if he were to read this, but the beauty of certain alternative energy success is beginning to don on me.

The personal revelation came to me as I was reading from two sources, both of which highlight that most, if not all wars, are fought over natural resources and sources of energy. In Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, historian Stephen Ambrose includes the need for sources of energy as major motivations for Japan's strategy for its own imperial ambitions in the time leading up to the Second World War. In his January 2009 newsletter, market timer Thomas Gleason reiterates his view that the current Iraq war was launched mainly to free up more oil for America's energy needs.

I am personally convinced that there was ample justification for invading Iraq and taking Saddam out of power (though the timing could have been better) on the grounds of violating every single one of the U.N. Security Council resolutions and Iraq's saber-rattling about its nuclear and chemical capabilities. BUT, it also seems to me to be more than coincidental that we and the United Nations have still not intervened, militarily, to stop the slaughter that has been persisting for years in Rwanda. Could it be that Rwanda has nothing to offer in terms of oil, or gold, or (fill in your preference)?

The wealth of a nation is defined by, and constrained by, its available resources, human and natural. Wars sparked by nations gaming to gain such wealth through conquest are as old as history.

So it occurred to me that developing a truly renewable and ubiquitous source of energy, such as sunlight, or wind, that each nation can own for themselves, would not only decrease one country's dependence on another for energy, but also could lead to a diminished need for war.

Perhaps that outlook is too rosy. After all, there are other reasons for war, and there are other resources to contend for (food, e.g.). But if there is a chance for a more peaceful world in renewable energy, I'm all for it (so long as the research and development necessary to get us there is undertaken in a way that is economically responsible).