As the Georgian-Russian war revealed, inter-imperialist rivalry has reached a new level. It demonstrated the Russian bosses’ willingness to commit military power to defend their centuries-old sphere of influence and their control of the energy-rich Caspian Sea-Caucasus region. It also again exposed the U.S. bosses’ growing inability to rely on proxy forces to defend their interests abroad, prompting an eventual clash of U.S. and Russian troops. This, plus the on-going worldwide economic crisis, has accelerated the threat of world war as the only "solution" to this rivalry.

At stake in this Georgian dogfight is not only who will exploit, transport and decide where to market those energy resources, but which imperialist gangs will dominate the world, which, since World War I has been based on controlling the world’s energy resources. Since WWII, U.S. bosses’ world supremacy stems from controlling the oil-rich Middle East and energy resources in Latin America and Africa. This control, however, has been eroding, hammered by unrelenting challenges posed by rival imperialists and local bosses.

All this has intensified the U.S. bosses’ decline. To reverse it, says Foreign Affairs (September/December 2008; "A Daunting Agenda" by Richard Holbrooke), the weakness in "the domestic economy" must be repaired because "in the long run, the rise and fall of great nations is driven primarily by their economic strength…." But in reversing this economic downturn "… a new factor has emerged, unlike any the United States has previously faced"; with the high price of oil "...Americans ….are contributing to the greatest transfer of wealth from one set of nations to another in history" — an astounding $3 trillion yearly to oil-producing countries.

Historically, economic power helped determine military power of past empires. U.S. rivals, like Russia, are using their energy wealth to rebuild their military with state-of-the-art weaponry. The Russian navy has commissioned six new carrier groups to be built starting in 2012. The U.S. has eleven.

To regain its economic clout, U.S. imperialism must reassert control over the world’s energy resources and seize or destroy its main rivals’ industrial base. Energy-wise, so far, it has been waging a losing battle in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela. It recently suffered a major defeat in the Caspian Sea area as Russia’s Gazprom outfit bought most of the region’s exportable oil and gas resources. This effectively killed the West’s projected NABUCO pipeline to transport oil and gas from this area to Europe, bypassing Russian territory.

Now, because of its Georgian military victory, Russia can shut the only pipeline that bypasses the Russian Federation, the BTC (from Azerbaijan to Georgia to Turkey), or achieve this through clients like the Turkish Kurds. Recently, during repairs following a Kurdish attack, the million barrels of oil BTC transports daily to Europe was rerouted through the Russian network. Given this, the deputy vice-president of Azerbaijan’s State Oil Co. said, "his company is considering an offer by Russia to buy all of the firm's natural gas production for both domestic use and export to Europe." (LA Times, 8/18/08)

Thus, U.S. rulers’ dreams of using Central Asia’s energy resources to break Russia’s stranglehold on Europe’s energy supplies — to maintain the NATO alliance for geopolitical reasons and eventual global war against Russia and/or China — have temporarily being dashed. Thus, gaining control of Iran — the world’s third largest oil and second largest natural gas reserve — has therefore become more crucial than ever to an ever more desperate U.S. imperialism fighting to maintain its world hegemony, with very few options left but war. Iran is also the perfect land bridge to transport Caspian Sea’s energy to Europe.

All this will require a war of unpredictable consequences. That’s why Holbrooke states, "The next U.S. president will inherit a more difficult set of international challenges than any predecessor since World War II." A challenge either Obama or McCain will dutifully undertake.

Capitalism/Imperialism breeds war under either nationalized or privatized means of production. Eighty percent of the world’s oil/natural gas resources have been nationalized but it’s only sharpened the inter-imperialist rivalry and moved the world closer to global war. Whether Saudi Arabia’s Princes, Iran’s Ayatollahs, Venezuela’s Chavez or Mexico’s Obrador, nationalization serves the interest of one sector of the local ruling classes and whichever imperialist they are allied with.

Our class should never support any of these butchers or participate in any capitalist electoral circus. Our interests lie in building a mass revolutionary communist PLP to fight for a communist world, where our class will decide how to best use and allocate the world’s natural resources to meet the needs of the world’s workers.