The episode is taken from the analysis released by the United States Joint Forces Command in the spring of this year. There is no need to resort to any kind of filtering or extravagant blog, you can download the Joint Operating Environment document in PDF format from the Internet. It's from the official military manuals with quotes from the Chinese classic Sun-Tzu: War is of vital importance to the state. It is the region of life and death, the path that leads to survival or disaster. It is imperative to examine it

thoroughly.” In addition to the decline in oil, the military has addressed future strategic issues one by one: demographics, economy, food, water, pandemics, natural disasters, etc. In the field of energy, specifically oil, which is the main fuel, the areas that will have to be preserved in an increasingly scarce period have been studied. Predict, for example, the effects on agriculture and the environment of the enormous quantities of water needed to extract oil from asphalt sheds.

Special importance is attached to what the U.S. military can do for the OPEP oil producers’ association. They don’t hide the fact that OPEP states will be interested in limiting oil production and keeping prices high, and they make it clear with little disguise that wealthy consumer countries can today turn what is an “unstable zone” into a “chaotic zone” with their attacks. The reluctant reader may wonder whether this suggests that the U.S. military is making threats, or whether it implicitly acknowledges that it has done so much in Iraq, creating chaos for oil control.

As these military tensions will occur, the U.S. military is concerned about its enemies who are small but rich in energy. Oil producers can easily accumulate advanced technology weapons. On the other hand, it literally says: “Some of OPEP’s profits could reach the pockets of terrorism or the hands of movements with deeply anti-modern and anti-Western objectives.” Is it enough to be the opposite of modernity or the West for the U.S. aggression to come on top?

To tell people who to dare?

From the important geostrategic avatars of the field, it is striking how the American military has assimilated the idea of Peak Oil. We know for sure that in the next 30 years the demand for oil and the competition to acquire it will continue to increase. But don’t wait until the oil is depleted: “Markets will be complicated long before oil runs out.” More and

more documentation is being published in the United States of America along the same lines. This fall, the Center for a New American Security released the following report: Fueling the Future Force. Preparing the Department of Defense for a Post-Petroleum Era. I mean, how to prepare the U.S. military for times of oil shortages... without forgetting that the military itself is a huge consumer.

All this has gained a special echo in Europe when recently Robert Hirsch was interviewed by the journalist Matthieu Auzanneau, who makes Oil Man, chroniques du début de la fin du pétrole, among the blogs of the Parisian newspaper Le Monde. Here are the titles of the two parts: “Peak Oil, Jimmy Carter’s energy minister, has sounded an alarm call,” and “Robert Hirsch says there is a conspiracy to silence the truth in Washington.” The former Minister

of Energy, James Schlesinger, is quoted by the Chief Executive Officer as a foreword to the new book published by Hirsch: The Impending World Energy Mess, the energy nightmare that comes to the world. They're not just anyone, like one another. Schlesinger was Minister of Defense with both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and with Carter of Energy. Assisted by Robert L. Hirsch, for his part, led oil searches at the multinational Exxon, a member of the Rand Corporation that is very effective in framing the strategy of the army and in charge of the commission created by the government to obtain fusion energy.

Hirsch published a study in 2005, commissioned by the administration, which described the decline in oil as the most pessimistic forecast ever made by a U.S. administration. That’s when the commissions for Hirsch ended; in return, that’s when he managed to become the man of reference in the world.

The comments of Hirsch Matthieu Auzanneau, as in French, are easily accessible online in Spanish. He's making rough predictions.

To begin with, for Hirsch, oil production has reached its peak, since 2004 we are on a similar plateau, the tension of demand has been eased with the global crisis for a short time but it has hardened again and it is estimated that in two to five years the decline of production will begin. At what speed? Here's the key.

If 2% less is produced every year, the world will not be shaken, but if 4% less is produced, a catastrophe could occur. Listen to this: the Gross Domestic Product of the whole world will fall by 20%-30% in the ten years after the start of the decline. This catastrophe cannot be swallowed without war.

Hirsch barely sees any room for reaction. The world’s dependence on oil is so great that in such a short period of time it will not be able to organize a substitute. Wind, solar and biomass will not provide enough. Knowing where both Hirsch and Schlesinger come from, with hopes in fusion in the field, they will be thinking, on the one hand, of the nuclear and, on the other, of the energy that remains in the world, bringing it home with military force.

Hirsch has no hope with government officials and politicians, they say they are plotting to keep the cake hidden in the hope that it will be difficult for the citizens to respect it. Instead, the Pentagon military sees them much more prepared. For example, military exercises on a major oil crisis were said to have taken place in 2005.

“We are talking about great damage, a huge change in our civilization: chaos, economic catastrophe, wars...” he concludes.

For more information:

- The bitter chronicle of David Sharrock in The Guardian: “Ireland's young flee abroad as economic meltdown looms”

- French analysis of Renaud Lambert at Le Monde Diplomatique

- A protest march to the farm of the former head of the Anglo Irish Bank, narrated in The Independent

- Economist Morgan Kelly at the TV debate in Eire in September 2008, announcing the brutality of the crisis, still being a minority voice

- Article in the Irish Times of April 2010 on the predictions of Morgan Kelly