David King: Iraq was the first 'resource war' of the century

David King was the UK government's chief scientific adviser in the run-up to the start of Iraq war. The main cause of the war in Iraq was Saddam Hussein and the presence of weapons of mass destruction. According to King, this wasn’t the only reason for a war between the United Stated and Iraq.

The Iraq war is called the first of this century's "resource wars" by Sir King. He says that these wars will be caused by powerful countries to secure valuable resources for themselves. The human population is growing and the natural sources are running out, this would lead to more conflict. Sir King is sure that if we don’t handle this problem this will lead to a planet where large, powerful nations will secure the resources for their own people at the expense of others.


David King had a solution. He tried to persuade the Bush government to introduce more climate-friendly policies and to decarbonise the American economy. This would have been much better for the climate issue and the research for durable energy resources. He added that in this world with growing population and dwindling resources, changes in economy and society are necessary.


In my opinion David King is right. I think if there will be any war in the future, the reason would be to secure or to obtain natural resources. Nowadays, you can already see the economical power of oil (The Arab states of the Persian Gulf). I don’t think that the US had set up a war just because of the oil stocks in Iraq but I’m quite sure that it was also a mission to secure the stocks. Bush was a president who wanted world power, according to me. He interfered in all the problems over the world, while there were enough problems in the US. Like David King said, it had been better if Bush had financed the input of durable energy in the American economy instead of making a war. I hope that the new president, Barack Obama, will do a better job and will have more attention for pollution and the need of new energy sources without making war.

Robby Lampens


Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/12/king-iraq-resources-war