The Revenge of Oil

When First Lord of the British Admiralty John Fisher decided to replace the British power’s fuel, changing their fleet from coal to oil, he shaped the world in which we live. Oil has, in many ways, been avenged by becoming the determining factor for the 20th century, and, from what we can see, a critical driver of the 21st. The unlucky countries discovered this quickly.

Latin America has an endemic and historical institutional deficit. We have spent our lives explaining what we wanted to do, and then never actually doing it. For example, Venezuela was a normal country until it had the misfortune of discovering the world’s largest oil reserves under its soil. Mexico was a poor country, bled dry and with problems, but it had a future that was based on dignity and territorial expansion that had not been stolen from it during the U.S. invasion — the war from 1846 to 1848 — when the black gold was discovered. At what point did Mexico’s history become twisted, and when did it stop being a country of normal development? Wasn’t it when former President Lopez Portillo proclaimed that “we will administer wealth?”

Again and again, petroleum has served to postpone, by the collective political irresponsibility of Spanish-speaking America, the problem of tax liability. Currently, the states are worth little, dictators worth more, and pressure groups worth even more still.

A stable tax system, like that imposed when a country has no oil, or even when it has, as in the case of Norway, and in a sense — although it is not comparable — Brazil, where the state is strong, there is not a problem. But if oil is discovered in a weak country, it will be transformed into an area where many atrocities are committed, poverty and inequality are allowed to run free, and the country will sail the black liquid oceans, which serve to make a few people extremely rich, but many others miserable.

Since 1900, oil has been a strategic weapon. Once more, this is the case, but this time in reverse. The first time oil’s effectiveness was demonstrated as the “great maker” of the modern world was on the back of Japanese ships when, in Port Arthur, in 1905, they ended the dream of the Russian imperial navy; and, of course, that was an operation undertaken by and for the greatness of Her Majesty’s British government.

Religion, forever present in the wars between Arabs and Christians, has also permeated the West’s relations with oil-producing Arab countries. The twin towers, the beheadings of the Islamic State, and the attack in Paris against the Charlie Hebdo magazine are all part of the same story, fueled by oil. Now, for America — for the whole of America — either as a result of action — Mexico, Argentina, Brazil — or reaction, which serves to weaken or strengthen great strategic interests — Chinese and Russian — this fuel is once again the determining factor set to shape the map of the new world.

The winner is the United States of America because its policy has been savage. The origin of the financial crisis was in the United States, which, furthermore, has slain — without any pity — the middle class. The Great Republic of America has broken the model it has been dragging along since the end of World War II: the welfare state. Now U.S. success and competition are based on such an aggressive and intelligent policy implemented with energy — energy costs — a conversion to robotics, and treatment of the working majority in a way that seems more like the mid-18th century, rather than the first decade of the 21st century.

At the same time, the United States does not have to negotiate with its indigenous population — because they are almost nonexistent in its territory — like they do in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador, which gives the United States a great advantage, because the indigenous people are the owners of large tracts of land where deposits of strategic minerals and oil itself are sometimes located. Oil has not only appeared, but has been transformed into the great tide — along with climate change — that is sculpting the world’s future.