Connect-the-Dots

Cornellians get free copies of the NYT and blazingly fast internet connections, so I've been able to keep up with the media's breathless coverage of the present developments in Georgia. The reporting has been uniformly bad, but I suppose that's par for the course when we're speaking of "All the news that's fit to print." What's unfortunate is that the reporters have been missing out on an opportunity for some great fun with this conflict.


Let's play a game. Let's play connect-the-dots.


We know that as of now, the ascendance of China and India has meant much greater competition for resources that were once primarily the domain of the US and Europe, i.e. food, water, metals, and fuel.


Metal is, to an extent, renewable. A given quantity of aluminum, used for one purpose, can be reused. The aluminum in a can becomes part of a battle cruiser and fuels a war. Copper on the bottom of cheap pans becomes invaluable wiring and fuels modernization.

Food and water, while often scarce, are rarely viewed in terms of Strategic Geopolitical Resources(tm). Shortages are instead viewed in terms of mundane trade policy and accidents of nature. I would argue that this view is flawed -- for Third World agricultural exporters, the difference between market-skewing subsidies and naval blockades is not all that different in terms of impact. But in any case, economics is seen as economics and geopolitcs as something separate. And food is most definitely renewable. You eat corn, you excrete it, at some point you die and are burried, and by the end of it, the soil is ready to support yet more corn.


Fuel is different, though. Six hundred million years ago, a vast sea monster died and drifted to the bottom of the ocean. Compression and heat broke it down into a hydrocarbon sludge locked deep within the earth. And now, six hundred million years later, we sucked it up and sold it to you for $4 a gallon. When you drove to work, blasting through a school zone at 65 mph, you incinerated that sea monster into oblivion. It is no more. It is gone from the face of the earth. And for this reason, oil is unique among the resources nations are competing over right now. Without oil, our entire economic system collapses.


Europe doesn't just love oil; it loves natural gas. Obviously, Europe does not produce large quantities of its own natural gas. Natural gas is shipped off to Europe from the Middle East through various pipeline networks. Here is the South Stream pipeline, a very important natural gas artery:





So our dots are connected, it would seem. We go from Europe and head toward.... uh, oh. Something's very wrong with this picture. We're headed toward Russia! Russia is connected to natural gas pipelines, with both Russian producers and Middle Eastern producers in on the game. But you see, even though the EU loves natural gas, it doesn't love Russia. This is unfortunate, because most of the EU's natural gas comes from Russia. This is good for Gazprom and Putin, but not so much for Exxon and BP.

Exxon? Yes, Exxon. It may be a US company, but if the US has mastered any skill as a nation, it's market destabilization. We're simply the best in the world at it, and we aren't about to lose that distinction. Oil markets are especially important to us. We hold the Saudis' hands at Crawford and help them fund anti-American terrorist cells. We call Putin, who we are supposedly all touchy-feely, BFFs with, by his surname. So when the dots in our natural gas pipeline lead to Russia, we reconnect them.

So remember that South Stream, our old friend? Let's draw some new dots, and....


WOWZERS! Our new Nabucco pipeline makes everything so much simpler! "Nabucco" is how you say, "Fuck you, Putin, fuck you so hard up the ass" in English (and French, and German, and... well, you get the idea).

So where are all our new dots, anyway?

I'll start off with the easiest one. See Georgia there? See which part of Georgia we're headed through? Pretty neat coincidence, huh?

Uht, oh! See that little greenish region we have dots in, right above Georgia. That's Russia! "Liv, Liv, I thought we were AVOIDING Russia!" You big silly, that part of Russia is Chechnya. I hear there's a war going on there as well, but I'll bet it's unrelated.

"OK, Liv, but we have dots in Iraq! We'll never get them all connected if we're trying to draw the line through war zones!" Well, that's the Kurdish North of Iraq. You probably haven't heard much about it, because right after the US invaded Iraq, we made sure it was as secure and stable as can be, economically and politically. It's pretty wonderful... well, except when Turkey invades it...

The only problem is that while we draw our picture, the Russians are drawing theirs, and they're a little faster than us. They have dots that go into South Ossetia too, and they want to connect them all up, just in case our lines get accidentally broken a few hundred times and Georgia doesn't get to be a part of anyone's picture. But at least Turkey and the other downstream countries will have that line to pump through.

Fuck the NYT Daily Crossword. Connect-the-dots is a lot more exciting!