EUtopia: Will Fight Wars for Oil

With imaginary robot soldiers, little shame, even less pride, and some psychotropic compounds that can shorten their memories:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU defence ministries are going to have to contend with a shrinking recruitment pool for soldiers, a public that is more cautious about interventionist operations and 24/7 media scrutiny,

The 28-page study looks to a future where Europe will be externally dependent for 90 percent of its oil and 80 percent of gas by 2025 and where "strong migratory pressures" due to the fast-growing populations in Africa and the Middle East offset by stable and ageing European population are set to cause "direct or indirect challenges" to Europe's security interests.

Methinks someone is smoking some good kaka. Big markets like the U.S. and the E.U. are more dangerous than the sellers in the energy market since all you need to bankrupt the seller is to change sources and release strategic reserves.

Remember that most of the “No War for Oil!!!” mob failed Econ 101, and have no idea what a monpsony is anyway, even if they do see thing through the “Us ‘n Them” prism.

One major buyer (the west) and one seller (an imaginary OPEC where they actually act in unison) makes for a kind of balancing of power that would make the greenie notion of energy independence an act of war in itself that would impoverish the populations that export petrolium. After all, because we all implicity trust every leftist theory, we all know how unemployment causes terrorism, right? Imagine all the terrorist pouring out of Alberta for every PV panel you install on the roof of your house.

Have you no soul, man!?!

However, Europe's possible need to act in any of these regions or situations will be tempered by a more clued-up, risk-averse society.

Risk averse? More like narcoleptic.

Here’s one of the gems, though:

"Military action, not explicitly authorised by the UN, may become increasingly controversial," states the report, adding "military operations will be subject to ever-increasing scrutiny by elected officials, media and populations."

The sketchiness the public has about being a nation (or nations), or being worthy of pursuing a public interest is patently obvious. Circumspect to the point of indecision and such incredible fearfulness that they need the barbaric kmajority of the U.N. to tell them it’s okay to fight at all, even if it weren’t for oil, but about the stability of global society and even their own security. The question, like many in the Holy Land is entirely academic anyway since the potential manpower figures are dwindling, and assume pacifists and people with no particular affection for their “continent” will not find any personal irony in being conscripted.

As well as the social perceptions, defence ministries will also have to deal with the fact that less and less people are likely to become soldiers, with the armed forces recruitment pool (16-30 years) to fall by over 15 percent by 2025.

"As armed forces professionalise and the falling birth-rate increases competition in the labour market for young men and women, personnel costs will, in practice, pre-empt more and more of defence spending unless manpower is reduced," says the report.

With some 2 million people currently in uniform in Europe, "there is plenty of scope to do this," it highlighted.

One way of overcoming this problem would be to "outsource" and to resort to "increased automation, from warships to robots," the report suggested.

2 million largely worthless meatbags in uniform, whereas the estimates of combat ready forces hasn’t exceeded 100 000 in the past two decades.

No-one fears the marching band, so bring out the Roombas with rifles. Don’t forget that at the time of the Kosovo conflict, the European participants agreed to provide 50 000 deployable troops and came almost 10 percent short. That with no other major goings on for them to be distracted by. Forget win-hold-win, this is a case of hold-maybe-hold.