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While the world fights war on terror and struggles against the economic exigency, it scuffles further into the ensuing haze of gloomy clouds, clouds of portending storm’ the storm of inexorable energy crisis. We as a race are heralding towards a future that is deficient in means to quench our insatiable needs, we lie at the very doors of an era where major shifts are in the making’ tectonic leagues of sufficient versus the energy deficient nations are in the casting, tremors are about to jolt the conventional power centers while shifting the ballast of influence and dominion away from the traditional West. What would be the consequences of such a colossal shift? Is the world ready to embrace the czar of the likes of Viladamir, accept the models of Hugos, bow before the coffers of Sauds and live with the nuclear tipped Najaads? With resources becoming vital, scarce and expensive’ would energy be the next weapon of mass influence, the tool for global hegemony and a win chip for blank concessions?
We already have stepped into this precarious era! Demand is stripping supplies and it’s just a matter of time when a sudden stampede would trigger massive avalanche of antagonism and clash. And that matter of time is only strides away when the world would be back on its feet’ when confidence would resurrect, pushing economies to grow’ thus setting off the dormant strains to press the till-now hibernated fault lines to fracture and explode. Towing the bottom-line and realizing a simple fact; our planet with all its resources cannot brace even a fourth of human population at par with the American Dream, thus the very presumption of today’s developing giants striding towards the realization of such a delusion is not just fallacious but also destructive. Living and consuming at such pace would render this planet a premature death’ thus ramming its inhabitants on to the path of suicidal whirl!
With the race already on for sealing’ if not stealing world’s vitality chowks, significant repositioning of alliance and allegiances are in the making. With the energy hungry dragon awake’ ready to devour what ever it takes to quench its thirst, those already having stakes stands hassled and perturbed and while they are entangled into getting themselves unravel from the financial calamity’ the red beast sails across continents on acquisition splurge. Standing tall on reserves worth trillions with wings spread wide’ a single month of o-9 saw her sealing resources from swathes of Zuela to the seas of PetroBras, from Horn of Africa to the Nefts of Siberia, from mines of Alum to the corps of Australia. Thus the resurgent Dynasty is ready to roar and roar loud’ enough to scare off the fatigued and fragile. Does this lead world to a path of collision? Could this be the beginning of an age of confrontation and desolation?
While betting upon one thing; neither the West with all its power concentration nor the ascending East with growing dynamism and weight’ are ready to give up on their existing or realizing paradigms. Thus in an ideal world based upon the foundations of mutual respect, space and honor for each others prosperousness’ we see both working together’ efficiently harnessing the unexplored while sagaciously distributing the existing ones. This not only would avert a prodigious clash but save the rest from crowding-out shiver!
But unfortunately’ our world as it stands today has transformed tremendously; getting complex, confused, entangled and yet more wary! We as nation states have metamorphed to become more skeptical and dubious then betting on trust and truthfulness. We have integrated under the umbrella of WTO yet have ceased to exist under the aegis of the existence of commons. And as the world comes out of the Great Seizure’ and exerts to gain control of world supplies under the marathon to redeem the lost glory, the realm of attrition would undoubtedly swell and bleed. And thus would dawn the age of an era of the ‘clash for resources’ and the ’struggle for survival’
Muhammad Shafqat
April 2009
