Iran, Oil, and War: The End of the Carter Doctrine?

The "Oil Corridor," where the largest oil resources in the world are located. It was generated by events that took place during the Jurassic period. Those events can't be affected by politics, but they can affect politics.

For a while, the situation with the USA-Iran standoff looked like a scene in an old Western movie:  two drunken gunmen facing each other in the saloon. Fortunately, things calmed down and, for this time, it seems that no war on Iran is in sight, at least in the short term. Perhaps we have been lucky, perhaps some benevolent deity took care of the situation, or, perhaps, there is a logic in these events.

History often moves along the whim of leaders but even mad leaders must take into account reality. And this seems to be what happened in this case. It is possible that we are seeing the end of the "Carter Doctrine" that was stated in 1980. The idea was, and it is still today, that the control of the Middle East is of "vital interest" for the US. That was based on reality as it was in 1980, now reality is different and so there is a reason for the change. But let's see the whole story from the beginning.

It all started long ago, during the Jurassic period, when the slow sedimentation of an ancient sea created a strip of oil fields that goes from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, in central Eurasia, all the way South to Yemen, crossing Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other states of the region. It is there that most of the world's oil is. More than 20% of all the oil produced today goes through the narrow strait of Hormuz, a critical point of the world's geopolitical map.

So, back to the early 1980s, the US had been the dominant world power for nearly four decades after the victory in World War II. As usual, geography is the mother of empires, and it was because of its vast national oil resources that the US could come to play that role. But oil production in the US had peaked in 1970 and was declining. No oil, no Empire. It was necessary to find new resources and the Middle East region was the richest in the world. A natural target.

The struggle for the Oil of the Middle East had already started in the 1950s, when the prime minister of Iran, Mohamed Mossadeq, was overthrown in 1953 by a coup orchestrated by the United States. Then, there was the period in which the US more or less controlled the Iran government using the Shah as a proxy. Then there came the Iranian revolution in 1978-79 and the result was the toppling of the Shah. At that point, in 1980, President Carter stated his "doctrine" -- really nothing more than a description of what had been going on up to then.

You know the troubled story of the Middle East in the years that followed. The disastrous Iraq-Iran war (1980 - 1988). The US going "boots on the ground" first in Kuwait in 1991, then invading Iraq in 2003. At that time (and also later on) it was fashionable to say that "boys can go to Baghdad, but real men want to go to Tehran." Maybe it was a joke, but it could have been deadly serious. It is part of the logic of empires to expand.

Eventually, the invasion of Iran never took place and it looks like it never will. It is, again, the way Empires function. They are like a tide, they ebb and flow. The American Empire flowed into Iraq, now it is ebbing back. Most commenters of the recent events agree that we are seeing the first stages of the US bringing their troops at home. It will take time, but it is written on the walls of the Martyr Monument in Baghdad. 

Apart from the antics of the madmen in power, there is a logic in the US abandoning Iraq. Someone, somewhere in Washington D.C., must have asked the question: "why exactly do we keep troops in Iraq?" Yes, why? The typical answer up to not long ago would have been "to secure the oil." But things have changed. The once very abundant oil resources of the Middle East are unavoidably being depleted. Some producers, Syria and Yemen, are already in terminal decline. Of the others, none has the capability of significantly increasing production and all are expected to go into decline in the coming years (you may have heard of the recent discovery of "53 billion barrels" of oil in Iran. Yes, and they also found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow).

At the same time, the US really found a pot of black gold in shale oil, to the point that during the past few years they managed to increase their oil production to levels higher than the earlier 1970 peak. That shale oil is a good deal in economic terms is questionable, to say the least. But the US elites have become convinced not only that they are truly self-sufficient in terms of energy, but that this self-sufficiency will continue for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever because shale oil is seen as practically infinite. And they see shale oil as a strategic dominance weapon.

At this point, many things start making sense: the oil from the Middle East is not anymore a "vital interest" for the US as it was at the times of Jimmy Carter. So, why pay good money to keep troops there? Those troops are useful only to those spineless Europeans who still depend on oil imports, but why should America pay? Besides, in the current situation, American troops are just sitting ducks waiting for the next rain of missiles coming from those bearded fanatics. So, let's bring the troops back home. Then, we'll be able to assassinate anyone at will in the region without fearing for retaliation. 

And that seems to be how things stand, for now -- unless someone makes some mistake and the fireworks restart. But it is a confirmation that it is geography that creates empires and, also that the geography of oil keeps changing. We'll see more changes in the future, the only sure thing is that, unlike what some people believe, oil is not infinite.

The Profession of Arms: Of Vile Leaders and Courageous Ones

Above, you can see an amazing clip from the 2001 movie by Ermanno Olmi "The Profession of Arms". It is the story of the march on Rome of the German Landsknechts led by Georg von Frundsberg in 1526. They were faced by an army commanded by Giovanni de' Medici, known as Giovanni Dalle Bande Nere (Italian: Giovanni of the Black Bands). Giovanni was killed in battle near Mantua on Nov 30, 1526, while Von Frundsberg's army went on to sack Rome in 1527.

The movie has defects, like all movies, and the attempt to cast Giovanni de Medici as an early patriot means stretching the historical reality more than a little. But it remains a beautiful and intense movie. It manages to make you feel like you were in battle yourself in an age when firearms had just started to make armor obsolete. It was, possibly, the last period in history when leaders fought on the front line.

The scene of Giovanni's death summarizes the whole movie. It shows the two enemy commanders facing each other for a few moments and saluting each other before starting the battle where Giovanni will be mortally wounded. It may not be a completely realistic scene, but its intensity is unbelievable. It grips your attention from the first instant to the last. And it has a deep meaning that you can't miss.

Maybe Giovanni de Medici was not a hero, maybe he was just a mercenary, and he might have had plenty of human failings. But a hero is someone who does his duty when facing difficult tasks and the historical Giovanni de' Medici did just that, personally facing his enemies in battle. Just for this, we are authorized to remember him as a hero.

Things have changed from those ancient times and weapons are not the same as they were. But there remains a duty for a leader to take upon himself the risks and the consequences of is actions. If he does, he will be remembered and revered. If he doesn't, he will be considered a spineless coward, as he deserves to be.

The Effect of the Sanctions: Is Iran Cracking Down Under the Strain?

I have to confess that the title of this post is a little of a clickbait. In reality, I will tell you more about Italy than about Iran. But, perhaps, from the story of how Italy reacted to the international economic sanctions imposed on the country in 1935, we can learn something about what could be the result of the current sanctions on Iran. Above, a photo from 1935, it shows a stone slab with the engraved words. "On 18 November 1935, the world besieged Italy. Perennial infamy on those who favored and consumed this absurd crime." Most of these slabs were destroyed after the defeat of Italy in WW2, but some can still be found.

In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia, at that time the only remaining free African country. Why exactly that happened is a long story. Let me just say that, in part, it was a revenge for a defeat suffered long before, when an early attempt at invading Ethiopia had failed. In part, it also had to do with reacting to the financial crash of 1929: governments often tend to seek for external enemies to distract people from internal troubles. Then, in part, it was seen as a way to displease the hated British, seen as guilty of not providing for Italy the coal that the Italian economy needed. And, finally, it had to do with some nebulous dreams about rebuilding the Roman Empire. It may sound silly, today, but if you read what people wrote at that time in Italy, that idea of creating a new Roman Empire was taken seriously.

Whatever the reasons, in 1935 the Ethiopian army was overwhelmed by the modern weaponry deployed by Italy, planes and tanks, with the added help of poison gas bombing, a military innovation for that time. The final result was that the King of Italy gained the dubious honor of taking for himself the title of "Emperor of Ethiopia" and that Italy gained "a place in the sun" in Africa, as the propaganda described the results of the campaign.

A victory, yes, but a hollow one. From the beginning, Ethiopia was only a burden for the Italian economy and the costs of the military occupation were just too much for the already strained Italian finances. The final result was perhaps the shortest-lived empire in history: it lasted just five years, collapsing in 1941 when the Italian forces in Ethiopia were quickly defeated by a coalition of Ethiopian and allied forces.

An interesting side effect of the invasion of Ethiopia was the story of the imposition of economic sanctions on Italy by the League of the Nations. It was a half-hearted effect to stop the invasion, but the war lasted just 8 months and the sanctions were dropped just two months afterward. Their effect was nearly zero in economic and military terms but, in political terms, it was a completely different story and the consequences reverberated for years. Here are some of these consequences:

1. The Italians were not only appalled at the sanctions, they were positively enraged. According to the international laws of the time, for a state to attack another was not in itself a crime (unlike the use of chemical weapons, but that came to be known only later). So, most Italians felt that they were punished for having done something -- annexing an African country -- that the other Western Powers had done before without anyone complaining. The result was a burst of national pride and a strong wave of popular support for the war. That generated also a wave of personal popularity for the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, seen as the one who was making Italy great again (some things never change in politics).

2. The sanctions transformed a war waged on a poor and backward country into something epic and grandiose. Italians perceived the struggle against a coalition of the great powers of the world, Britain in particular. And, by defeating this coalition, Italy showed that it was a great power, too, on a par with the others. This idea had terrible consequences when it led the Duce, Benito Mussolini, to think that Italy could match the military capabilities of the major world powers in WW2.

3. The government propaganda in Italy used the sanctions to magnify the importance of the Ethiopian campaign, seen as a turning point in the quest for a new Italian Empire. As a result, Ethiopia became a national priority, to be kept at all costs. At the start of WW2, Italy had more than 100,000 fully equipped troops there. Without the possibility of being resupplied from Italy, these troops had no chances against the British and they were rapidly wiped out. What might have happened if they had been available in other war theaters? It is unlikely that the final outcome of WW2 would have changed, but, who knows? The battle for Egypt in 1942 could have had a different outcome if Italy had been able to field 100,000 more troops there and, maybe, taken the Suez canal.

This catalog of disasters is so impressive that we might wonder if the sanctions were not just the result of incompetence and idiocy, but of an evil machination. Could it be that the British had wanted Italy to engage in an adventure that was sure to lead the country to ruin, later? Of course, it is unlikely that the British had been planning for exactly what happened, but it is not impossible that they understood that the Italian military apparatus would be weakened by the task of keeping Ethiopia and that would make Italy a less dangerous adversary in case of an all-out military conflict. If the British had planned that, they truly deserved the reputation they had at the time (and that they still have) described with the name of the "Perfidious Albion."


That's the story of the sanctions against Italy, now let's go to the sanctions against Iran. First of all, a disclaimer: I don't claim to be an expert in Iranian matters and politics. I don't speak Persian and I visited Iran only once in my life. So, I can only claim to have read and studied about Iran for years and to have many Iranian friends and acquaintances. Yet, if I think of the idiocies that you can read on the Western Media about Iran, I feel I can do something better, maybe useful for the readers of this blog. So, let me take a look at the current sanctions on Iran on the basis of the assumption that Iranian and Italians are very similar people in terms of ideas, temperament, and beliefs -- which I think is true on the basis of my experience.

Then, we know that story rhimes, but never exactly repeats. So, there are many similarities in the story of the sanctions against Iran and those against Italy, but also considerable differences. The main similarity is, of course, that Iranians feel unjustly punished for doing something, starting a nuclear energy program, that other countries could do in the past without anyone punishing them. But note also that the current sanctions on Iran are harsher than anything that was imposed on Italy. When vice-president Pompeo said that the purpose of the sanctions is to starve the Iranians, you get a certain feeling that the matter is deadly serious in a literal sense.

So, what's happening in Iran and what might happen in the future? As I already discussed in a previous post, so far the effect of the sanctions has been limited. But inflation is biting hard the finances of the Iranian Middle Class and the government risks to be soon in trouble in maintaining the services that so far have been provided for free: instruction, health care, and more. In the long run, the cohesion of the Iranian society could be threatened and the recent street disorders could be a symptom of something like that.

The Iranian government is currently led by a moderate, President Rouhani, who stated more than once that he doesn't want to engage in any kind of retaliation. Some Iranians would want a more forceful reaction but, in general, they seem to recognize their weakness in front of the mighty US empire. Fortunately, nobody in Iran seems to be thinking of resurrecting the defunct Parthian Empire, unlike what Italians were trying to do with the Roman Empire in the 1930s. If Iran can hold on long enough, the storm may indeed end.

But what if the sanctions had a true evil purpose in the sense of having the task of pushing Iran to do something stupid, as it was the case with Italy, long ago? Under heavy strain, Iranians could decide that their best bet is for a strong leader who would "Make Iran Great Again." And what could happen if things really go from bad to worse? Iranians could go through the same chain of misperceptions that Italy followed, bolstered by some local success, becoming convinced to be a great power. Then, if an American president wants to obliterate Iran with a nuclear strike, who or what could stop her? Then, if evil has to be, could that be the real purpose of the sanctions?

Hopefully, these extreme scenarios will never take place but one thing is clear to me: sanctions are a bad idea. They are sold to the Western public as something "humane," actually designed to help the people they target to get rid of an evil and oppressive government. It is not like that. Maybe sanctions are not as bad as carpet bombing, but they are a tool to start wars.

Report From Iran: A Country we can't Ignore

Above, Ugo Bardi giving a talk at the University of Tehran, October 2019

Iran is a country that maintains something of the fascination it had in ancient times when it was both fabulous and remote. In our times, it remained somewhat remote but also a country that couldn't be ignored as it went through a series of dramatic events, from the revolution of 1979, the hostage crisis, the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988, and much more. The latest political convulsion was the "Green Revolution" in 2009 that quickly abated, but the country clearly keeps evolving, especially in its relations with the West. It is impossible for anyone, including perhaps the Iranian themselves, to evaluate everything that's going on in their country. For sure, Iran is complex, changing, varied, and fascinating, perhaps as much as it was at the time of Marco Polo when it was the hub of the merchant caravans carrying silk and spice from China. These are some notes from a trip to Tehran where I stayed for a week in October 2019.



The first impression you have when you arrive in Tehran is of chaos: heavy traffic, throngs of people, movement and noise everywhere. But it takes little time to understand that this is friendly chaos. Especially if you happen to be Italian, you find yourself rapidly at ease in the confusion. Tehran is appropriately exotic in the bazaars, but also quiet in the suburbs, and very modern in places such as the shopping center near the Azadi lake, where you could think you are in Paris.

One thing about Iran is that it is a remarkably friendly place. That's not unexpected: Most people everywhere in the world are naturally friendly if they don't feel threatened, or feel that they are being swindled or chided. They are also normally able to separate real foreign visitors from the image their TV presents to them. If, as a visitor, you approach the local people in a friendly manner, they will almost always reciprocate in the same way. In Iran, Western governments are often perceived (for good reasons) as evil entities, but that doesn't apply to individual foreign visitors.

Just to give you some idea of the Iranian attitude, let me tell you of when I was sitting with my wife at a local restaurant (by the way, if you happen to be in Tehran, try the Reza Loghme on the Mirza Kurchak Khan street: Iranian fast food, absolutely great!). There, we entered in a conversation with another customer who turned out to be a civil engineer. When he learned that we were heading to see the Abgineh (glassware) Museum of Tehran (again, a highly recommended place to visit), he accompanied us there and then he insisted to pay our tickets in order, he said, "to show us the traditional Iranian hospitality." That surely takes Iran several notches upward in the classification of friendly countries, but it was not the only example in our experience in Tehran. That friendliness may also extend to American visitors, the Iranians were friendly with them even at the time when the US was referred to as the "Great Satan," as Terence Ward reports in his book "Searching for Hussein" (2003).

This said, Iran doesn't seem to be just friendly to foreigners, it seems to be friendly also to Iranians -- at least these days. Of course, for a foreigner it may be difficult to detect social tensions brewing below the surface but what I can tell you is that in Tehran there is no heavy security apparatus detectable, unlike what you can see in many Western cities. We were taken to see from outside the residence of president Hassan Rouhani in a building in the Northern Area of Tehran: the security of the President seemed to require only a few policemen standing around the building. Of course, there may have been other, invisible, security measures. But it is impressive how they don't seem to expect serious troubles.

In terms of social tensions, the obvious thing that comes to the mind of a Westerner about Iran, just as for all Islamic countries, is the status of women. Iran and Saudi Arabia are probably the only states in the world enforcing by law the Islamic tradition for women to cover their heads. Yet, the time when women were harassed by the police if they didn't cover their heads well enough seems to be a thing of the past. In Iran, if a woman likes to wear a black chador that makes her look like a European nun, she is free to do so and many do. But most Iranian women, at least in Tehran, tend to interpret the rules creatively. The headscarf, the hijab, is worn halfway over the head and it is often light and brightly colored. The dress is also colored and decorated, women also wear jewelry and makeup. The result is often very elegant and lively. My wife reports that after a few days in Tehran she felt completely at ease wearing the hijab and that she even felt a little strange when she had to abandon it, coming back to Europe.

Of course, the impressions of a week may be misleading, but what I noted in terms of the social structure of the country seems to be consistent with the data. In Iran, women are still a minority in terms of being part of the workforce, but their role is important and larger than in other Middle-Eastern countries. Also, the gap seems to be rapidly closing. Iran also remains a relatively poor country: in terms of GDP per person (PPP), it ranks at about half that of Italy and one third the value of the US. Nevertheless, in terms of social equality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, Iran does better than the United States, although not as well as Italy. Iranians also have a good public health service. 

A country's educational system is a good indicator of social cohesion: dictatorial governments have no interest in an educated citizenship -- they rather tend to exterminate their citizens or use them as cannon fodder. Iran, instead, shines in this area with the state providing free of charge education for all citizens with impressive results. Some 4.5 million students enrolled in university courses, which is only slightly less than in the US in relative terms and much larger than in Italy. Iran has one of the largest ratios of students to the workforce anywhere in the world.

Of course, an evaluation of the Iranian education system would have to consider the scientific level of the universities and it is true that, right now, they don't score as high as Western ones. But the universities I visited seemed to be staffed by competent people and the research level was good. Here, one has to take into account the language barrier that often puts non-native English speakers at a disadvantage in the competition for space in the best scientific journals. I noted also that the research institutes I visited were massively staffed with women although, as it happens in Europe, the top-level positions are still mostly in the hands of men. That may rapidly change, though.

Islam is also part of the national Iranian culture: visiting Iran at the time of the Arba'een celebration gives you some idea of the importance of some religious traditions: you need not be a Shi'a Muslim to understand how deep the feelings for these traditions run and how fascinating they can be. Nevertheless, I would say that the current Iranian society is remarkably secularized. I can't quantify that, just take it as a personal impression.

And now something about the perspectives. The first question is population: It reached 80 millions and it continues to grow, although at a progressively slower pace. Iran is moving toward its demographic transition, but it is not there, yet. That may be a serious problem in the future: Iran is a large country but mostly dry and only a fraction of its land is arable. The result is that food must be imported from abroad. So far, this has not been a problem: globalization has made it possible to buy food anywhere and the result has been the near disappearing of hunger and famines worldwide. But things keep changing: globalization is on its way out and we may see a return of the old maxim that says "thou shalt starve thy neighbor into submission."

Recently, The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, seemed to suggest that starving Iranians was the objective of the US sanctions, although he later denied that. In any case, the food supply problem is recognized by the Iranian government, hence the emphasis on research on desalination and water management (incidentally, the reason why I was in Tehran). Desalinated water, so far, has been way too expensive to be used in agriculture, but that may change in the future and, in any case, water management is a vital element in the future of Iran.

Then, there is the question of oil production. Here are the latest available data for Iran. (From "peakoilbarrel.com" -- the Y scale is in thousands of barrels per day)

At its peak, around 1978, the Iranian oil production had reached about 6 million barrels per day making Iran one of the main oil producers in the world. After the revolution and the war, it reached a certain stability at near 4 Mb/day. But you see the effect of the economic sanctions: Iran's production was nearly halved and exports nearly zeroed. At the current prices of oil, it is a loss of revenue of tens of billions of dollars, not at all negligible for a GDP around 500 billion dollars.

The Iranian economy can survive the loss of revenues from oil: it is surviving it right now, although with difficulties. But, in a certain sense, the sanctions are not completely bad: they can be seen as a stimulus to move in a direction in which Iran has to move anyway. The national oil resources are not infinite and the gradual loss of demand worldwide is going to bring Iran to a point where it will have to cease to be an oil-based economy. These are the same challenges faced by all countries in the world: abandon oil and move to an economy based on renewable energy. It is a difficult challenge that won't probably be met without trauma and suffering, but it is not a choice. Willing or not, we all have to go in that direction.

One problem, here, is the evident lack of what we call "environmental awareness." Of course, university researchers and teachers in Iran are aware of climate change, but most people seem to think that it is just one more Western hoax concocted to force them into submission. Seeing the world from the Iranian side, I can't fault them for being oversuspicious. In recent times, Western governments have been doing their best to lose even the last shreds of credibility they had managed to maintain. And the results are easily detectable: I asked a group of about 30 students of the faculty of engineering of Tehran University what they thought of Greta Thunberg. It turned out that none of them had any idea of who she was.

Overall, though, I am not pessimistic about the future of Iran. Facing a difficult challenge, Iran has some advantages. One is that of being at the hub of the nascent Eurasian exchange zone. Another is to be a well-insolated country that makes it especially suitable for solar energy. In the end, I would agree with the idea proposed by Hamid Dabashi in "Iran, the Birth of a Nation" (2016) where he notes that Iran was a nation before it was a state. The Iranian nation is kept together by strong cultural traditions and linguistic ties. It has survived tremendous challenges in the recent past, it has a chance to survive the new ones that will come.



Acknowledgments: Ali Asghar Alamolhoda, Ati and Soroor Coliaei, Grazia Maccarone, Fereshteh Moradi, Mohammad Mohammadi Hejr,  Hossein and Samaneh Mousazadeh, Bijan Rahimi, and several others.

The West Fades. The Center Quietly Returns: The New Silk Road

An image from the workshop on desalination and mineral extraction from seawater organized by Sharif University in Teheran this week. In the photo, you can see people from Oman (3), Iran (3), South Africa (1), India (1), and Bangladesh (1). It was not only a multi-ethnical group but also a Eurasia-centered one. It gave me some impression of the shifting balance of power in the world, from the West to the Center, and inspired this post. 

If you think about that, it is funny that we tend to define ourselves as "Westerners." Most civilizations and cultures in history have tended to see themselves as the center of the world, just think of China: it is supposed to be "the Middle Kingdom". This idea that we are on an edge is something that we've probably inherited from the ancient Greeks, when everything west of them was seen as a land of mystery, peopled with savages, monsters, and Gods. 

But the fact that we call ourselves Westerners doesn't mean we think we are a periphery of the world, not at all. Most Westerners seem to cherish the idea that we are the real center, the most advanced, enlightened, and powerful area of the world. The rest of is, well, it is mostly inhabited by turban-wearing barbarians, savage tribes, or, at best, ancient and decadent empires on their way to dissolution. These Non-Westerners need our guidance if they have to attain the nirvana as defined here: democracy and economic liberism.

But the world is vast and things change. Empires are born, reach their pinnacle of greatness and then collapse while still claiming that they will last forever. That may be the destiny of that great world empire, the "Western Empire," that started with the British and continues with the Americans. The center of the world may well be returning to what it used to be up to a few centuries ago, gravitating around that "geographical center" sometimes said to be in Egypt, sometimes in Turkey, sometimes in Syria. It doesn't matter where it is exactly: it is at the heart of the gigantic landmass of Eurasia, somewhere in the region we call the "Middle East."

Chess players know how important it is to dominate the center if they want to dominate the game. Not for nothing, indeed, the game of Chess was developed not far from the center of the world: somewhere in Persia. But to dominate the center, you need to be able to move in and out of it and in the real world that takes roads. In ancient times, the center of Eurasia was crossed by the Silk Road: a long and winding road that went through mountains and deserts, including also coastal sea lanes. It was the realm of commercial caravans with their camels slowly marching from one edge to the other of a Eurasian supercontinent and to Africa as well, carrying gold, silver, ivory, spices, silk, and much more.

The Silk Road lost importance and then disappeared with the arrival of the Westerners who monopolized commerce with their ships and power with their armies. The concept of national borders had never existed before but it was the death toll for the old caravans, now confined within states. Commerce was taken over by Westerners with their container ships, crossing the oceans in a gigantic network that created the empire we call sometimes "Globalization." Not just a commercial empire but a military one as well, dominated by the mighty armies of the West.

Empires are run by a combination of commerce and military power and it is the balance of costs and profits that keeps them together. The old Silk Road never turned into a continental empire because it was just too expensive to move armies along it on long distances. But the agile camel caravans provided the link that was needed for the road to remain open: a low-cost system that didn't need a military governance system and couldn't afford it anyway, Instead, the modern sea lanes of the current World Empire are kept together and controlled by the mighty carrier strike groups of the American Navy: nothing and nobody would even dream of challenging their power, so far. But the carrier group is a behemot that needs to be fed, and for how long will that be possible?

Things keep changing, as they have always been doing. The old Silk Road is being revamped with the name of the "Belt and Road" initiative. It is the revenge of the land over the sea: the lanes of the new silk road are nearly invulnerable to the naval power of the Westerners if nothing else just for the sheer vastity of the territory it connects. Think about that: the population of Eurasia and Africa, together, make almost 6 billion people. The rest of the world is a periphery. 

So, the Western domination may be fading and much of what we are reading in the news nowadays is a reflection of this decline. With the depletion of the resources that created the Western Empire, first coal, then oil, the center is returning where it used to be and the great road that links Eastern and Western Eurasia is going to be again the pulsating artery of the world. Maybe Eurasia will be crisscrossed by fast trains powered by solar energy, or maybe the old camels will return: solid, resilient, unstoppable.

And the Westerners? They will return to their ancient role of seafaring pirates: coming and going like storms, leaving little trace. Curiously, though, they'll be leaving a reverberation of their presence with the English language, initially carried into Eurasia by the American Legions, now the tool of choice by Eurasians to understand each other.

Perhaps English is the true reason for the use of the term "The West" since it did originate on the extreme Western edge of Eurasia. But that's just a quirk of history: once, at least four languages were spoken along the old silk road: Mongolian, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, while Chinese and Greek were spoken at the two ends. English as the dominant language may make things simpler and continue being used during the 21st century, and even farther in the future. Or we may switch to some other language: perhaps "googlish" or some other pidgin language. Who knows? As always, life is a journey, not a destination.

Report from Tehran: What is the Effect of the Sanctions?

My wife, Grazia, in a supermarket in Tehran, today. No effect of the economic sanctions is visible. The shelves are full of goods from everywhere. You can find even Coca Cola cans

For this Monday post on Cassandra's Legacy, I can offer you just a very brief report from Tehran, Iran, where I am for a meeting. I arrived here thinking that the economic sanctions were bankrupting the country. Maybe, but if they do, it seems to be taking a very long time. The streets are full of traffic, all shops are full of goods, Tehran is alive and well and the Iranians I met seem to be in good spirits, not at all dismayed by the situation, engaged in the celebrations for this year's Ashura. My colleagues tell me that the only effect of the sanctions is the difficulty they have to buy electronic equipment when they need it -- it has to come from China and it is now more expensive than before the embargo.

That's surprising, considering that the Iranian oil production has dropped from nearly 4 million barrels/day to about 1 million barrels/day after the embargo. The oil revenues for Iran must have collapsed this year -- but it may very well be that more oil is produced and exported than it is reported in the official statistics.

I am here for a meeting on the desalination of seawater and I'll report some preliminary results of a study we are performing on the extraction of lithium from the sea -- the perspectives seem to be reasonably good. If our civilization collapses, it will not be because of the lack of lithium.

That's all for this Monday. Greetings from Tehran!

What were the real origins of the great oil crisis of the 1970s? Politics or depletion?

If you happen to be caught in a boat in a major storm, such as in this image by Hokusai, you'll surely think you experiencing a major shock. However, it is also true that no storm changes the average water level of the oceans. So, the oil storms of the 1970s were perceived as major shocks, but did they change the average patterns of the world's oil production? In this post, I argue that they didn't. Just like a sea wave has to crash on a shore, sooner or later, so oil production had grown so fast in the 1950s and 1960s that it had to crash, sooner or later. And it did. 

The oil crisis that started in the early 1970s is still widely remembered today and much of the interest in the vagaries of the present oil market is derived from a comparison with the events of that time. Yet, it may also be that the crisis was widely misunderstood while it was taking place and that it remains misunderstood even today; often reduced to the work of a small group of evil Arab sheikhs, perhaps the ancestors of today's Daesh. But, as it often happens, every question may have an explanation that is simple, obvious, and totally wrong.

Last week, there was a meeting at the University of Venice, Italy, dedicated to this issue: what were the origins of the oil shock and of the countershock of nearly half a century ago? The conference collected for two days experts in subjects such as political science, economics, communication science, history, and more and I won't even try to summarize for you all what was said. Suffice to say that even after you study a subject for 15 years (as I did with peak oil) there are always chances to learn something new that you didn't suspect before. I emerged out of the meeting with the understanding that there was an important political and human side to the great oil crisis. Yet, I remain convinced that there are deeper factors; those factors that people call "fundamentals." And, when dealing with a mineral resource, crude oil, depletion is the fundamental factor.

Not that I pretend to have "the" answer to the origins of the great oil crisis of the 1970s, but I can't avoid to note that the magic word "depletion" was almost never mentioned at the meeting. It is the usual problem: depletion remains a widely misunderstood concept. For the oil industry; as long as their books list "reserves" existing somewhere; then the problem is not considered to be of any importance. And, for historians, if oil production restarted after the crisis, then it means that there never was any lack of oil and, as a result, the crisis must have had political or financial reasons. But depletion doesn't mean "running out" of anything; it is a gradual phenomenon that was already strongly affecting the oil markets at the time of the crisis.

Here, I'll discuss a little only the case of Iran; examined at the Venice meeting by Abbas Maleki, former Iran's deputy foreign minister, and by Claudia Castiglioni, researcher at the University of Florence, Italy. Both of them appeared to see the history of Iran's oil as mainly the result of political and financial factors. Surely, these factors played a role in the crisis, but I thought they couldn't be the whole story. So, after hearing Maleki's talk, I looked for the data for the Iranian oil production; and here they are (image by Plazak, Wikipedia):

Looking at this graph, I was struck by a curious thought. There came to my mind Hokusai's famous "great wave" image, you see it reproduced here, on the right. Note the shape of the oil production curve for the period from about 1950 to 1980; doesn't it look like an ocean wave that grows and then crashes down? From 1955, for some 20 years, Iran's oil production doubled approximately every 5 years; something that corresponds to a yearly growth rate of about 15%. And now ask yourself: how long can anything double every five years?

If you think about that, it makes little sense to ask why Iran's production collapsed; it had to. Just like an ocean wave, it had to crash down sooner or later. Keeping oil production rising for a longer time would have needed not only to match investments to the rapid doubling rate, but also to increase them further in order to overcome the progressive depletion of the "easy" oil resources. Iran was not running out of oil; it was running out of the capital resources needed to extract it.

So, I think that the conventional explanation for the collapse of Iran's oil production is wrong: it is not correct to say that it collapsed because of the revolution. But it would be just as wrong to say that the Iranian revolution was caused by the production collapse. The two phenomena went together and reinforced each other; one more example of another misunderstood concept: that of "enhancing feedback". The same phenomenon affected the Soviet Union, but Iran turned out to be more resilient: the country survived the revolution, the oil shock, economic sanctions, and a major war. Slowly, Iran reached a new stability, the oil industry was rebuilt; and Iran became again an oil exporting country, even though it never reached the peak level of 1979 (and probably never will).

The interest in the great oil crisis of the 1970s-1980s is not just a game for academic historians; it is something that has deeply affected the world's history and it is still affecting our perception of the factors affecting the supply of crude oil that, today, we need as much, and even more than, we needed it at that time. So, there is a crucial question to ask: could we see another great oil crisis in the near future?

As always, the future is obscure, but at least not beyond all conjecture. Today, we don't see in any country (with a single exception) oil production growing so rapidly as it was the case for Iran and others before the great crisis. Hence, it seems unlikely that we'll see again an abrupt crash (apart from the above exception, which seems to be already crashing). Nevertheless, the problem of depletion remains, and it can only grow bigger as more oil is extracted and burned. So, we are heading toward a difficult future; we may not see another "oil shock", but an "oil decline", even a rapid one, very likely, yes.



H/T to the organizers of this excellent meeting, Duccio Basosi, Giuliano Garavini and Massimiliano Trentin.