UK government's former chief scientific adviser: Iraq was the first 'resource war' of the century

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


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

UK government's former chief scientific adviser says Iraq war was about oil, not weapons of mass destruction – and warns there will be more 'resource wars' to come


The Iraq war was just the first of this century's "resource wars", in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities for themselves, according to the UK government's former chief scientific adviser.

Sir David King predicted that with human population growing, natural resources dwindling and seas rising because of climate change, the squeeze on the planet would lead to more conflict.

"I'm going to suggest that future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind – the first of the resource wars," he told an audience of 400 in London as he delivered the British Humanist Association's Darwin Day lecture.

Implicitly rejecting the American and British governments' argument that they went to war to remove Saddam Hussein and search for weapons of mass destruction, he said that the US was very concerned about energy security and supply because of its reliance on foreign oil from unstable states. "Casting its eye around the world – there was Iraq," he said.

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"It was certainly the view that I held at the time, and I think it is fair to say a view that quite a few people in government held at the time," he said, "but … the chief scientific adviser's view on that matter was not sought."

King, who is now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, said he had previously tried to persuade the Bush administration to adopt more climate-friendly policies. "I went into the White House in 2001 to persuade them that decarbonising their economy was the way forward – I didn't get much shrift at that time," he said ruefully.