Epicenter of world energy crisis will be China Rim

Scared yet?

Read this.

From the summary to, Crisis on the China Rim: An Economic, Crude Oil, and Military Analysis (Kevin B. Skislock, Partner and CEO, Laguna Research Partners LLC, 2005.04.14):

There is a crisis rising on the China Rim, a crisis made of economic imbalances, energy insecurities, ancient hatreds, and unsettled scores. The catalyst for this crisis is success itself, the success of the People’s Republic of China (China) (PRC) in its de facto rejection of a failed experiment in communism and its rapid transformation into a thriving market economy.

The inseparable companion of this success, though, is an insatiable hunger and thirst for precious and scarce resources... most important among these, crude oil. In a world that has been frozen in denial over the impending depletion of crude oil reserves, the emergence of China’s 1,298,847,624 citizens as a vibrant global economic force is thrusting every net importer of crude oil—particularly those on the China Rim—into an urgent quest for energy security. And it is thrusting every net exporter of crude oil—particularly those on the China Rim—into a rare concern over national sovereignty. Simply put, there will be far greater demand in the China Rim region for crude oil over the next five, ten, twenty, and fifty years, than there will be supply. And the China Rim is already deep in a fierce competition for energy security that the quick and strong will win, while the slow and weak succumb....it is our opinion that the ``likely direction of surprise'' in crude oil prices will continue to be to the upside....

Then read this. (You'll need a subscriber login to The Atlantic Monthly, or access to the printed version). I read most of this article in the college library a couple of days ago. Do not expect peace in our time. Planning for Cold War II, World War III, and beyond is already well underway. Kaplan begins the article thusly:

For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacific—and when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland. It's not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when the Marines stormed them in World War II....

Mothers, and Fathers, what will you do now to stop it so your children and yourselves will not perish in the rapidly approaching imperial energy war?