I used to think this was more like a conspiracy. It's very far from it, though. Years ago, even one of the most powerful US Government officials, who used to be labelled the most powerful man in the world, and the US's highest ranking technocrat, Alan Greenspan, wrote that the Iraq War was largely about oil.

Greenspan was an economist, and economists sometime us an analogy of looking at macro topics through the framework of a household, i.e. a national budget vs a household budget. Using that same framework, if one neighbor went to war with another over natural resources on their block and declared "he had a gun, a very big gun," as the reason -- and conveniently after the house was broken into but with nothing connecting the perpetrators to the victim, that would be clearly illegal, and probably viewed as insane.

I think those of us from America are very lucky to live in a country that places high relative value (though far from perfect history) on human rights and civil liberties, and it's likely a large reason we are so successful. I want us to keep improving on it instead of devolving into something less.

Looking down Wikipedia's list of active conflicts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...), it's hard to believe that money is a primary cause of any of them. I'm sure someone somewhere is making a profit, but that's different from the conflict being "about money".

Marx said of history that war is always about an economic motive. He wrote that even going back through evolutionary history, wars are a struggle over control of resources.

I don't agree with Marx on a lot, but I think a sad fact is that he was right about that, at least over 90% of the time. US independence can be largely seen in this way, Germany's aggression in WWII after the league of nations crippled the German economy, Japan's aggression in WWII, Korea, Vietnam...

Worst thing about this is the scarcity problem--what economists regard as a problem of having enough resources--today is pretty much solved. For example, already enough food is produced for everyone on earth. We don't have a pressing need to go to war over resources. We do drive large cars, trucks and SUVs, and live in oversized houses that we don't need. A person looking at this from another planet would shake their head and ask what will ever be enough for us to stop bloodshed.

It would be poor press to announce that a war is about money, but the veneer of pretense is thin. The Syrian war, especially given Russia's involvement is almost certainly about securing passage for natural gas pipelines.

Who thinks the Iraq war was actually about Freedom? That might have been the rallying cry but it was about securing access to oil and securing massive re-building contracts and/or reparation money. Many argue that the 1990s stock market boom was a direct result of the US getting $10/barrel oil via the Iraq war reparation deal, where they repaid the US for the costs of having to attack the US.

Any war where people suddenly have an interest in saving humanity should be viewed very skeptically, since there are hundreds of crises of freedom around the world. If the crisis happens to be on top of a giant oil field, well, then there may be some conflating variable.

Oil and Money are definitely on the minds' of the higher ups regarding the wars in the Middle East. So much so, private groups with oil interests hold tight court with governments officials and do not hesitate to strongly suggest foreign policy strategy.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26083

"The Syrian war, especially given Russia's involvement is almost certainly about securing passage for natural gas pipelines."

Do you have a cite for that? No one on any side is building pipelines in Syria anytime soon, because, well, war. Also, pretty sure if I told Suheil al-Hassan or Abu Mohammad al-Julani they were fighting for natural gas pipelines, they'd knock my teeth out.

July 25, 2011 'Islamic pipeline' seeks Euro gas markets

>ASALOUYEH, Iran, July 25 (UPI) -- Iran, Iraq and Syria say they're set to sign an official contract to construct a natural gas pipeline connecting Iran's South Pars field to European customers.

>Iran's state-run Press TV announced that a deal between Iran's interim Oil Minister Mohammad Aliabadi and his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts -- the biggest of its in the kind in the Middle East -- would be signed at Asalouyeh, Iran.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Industry/2011/07/25/...

Something tells me the US is not too keen on Iran-Iraq-Syria joining forces for much of anything, and I do not believe the Russians are too keen on the idea considering their existing natural gas pipeline to the EU and the just proposed one between Russia and Turkey

I have no idea if or how much this factors in, or even if it's true, but the story I've heard is that several years back, there was a plan for a pipeline that would go from Qatar and Saudi Arabia through Jordan, Syria, and Turkey to Europe. This would be a significant economic threat to Russia, since gas exports are about $25 billion/yr, about 2% of Russia's GDP, and a big source of hard currency, but also important is Russia's use of its gas pipelines to Europe to threaten to cut off supplies to countries in Eastern and Central Europe, which would not be possible if there were a gulf source of gas available. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have a lot of gas that is going to waste or is staying in the ground, so they could easily supply the European market. Supposedly, Assad turned down the deal, and the civil war started shortly after.

The main Russian alternative pipeline I'm aware of is Nabucco, which would be from Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany. I've not been aware of any pipeline projects from Qatar and Saudi Arabia--their natural gas is exported mostly via LNG. Considering that, unlike oil, natural gas prices are not priced equally around the world, and that the price for natural gas is much, much higher in Asia than elsewhere (Europe is about 20% the price of Asia and the US about a third to a half that of Europe (yay fracking!)), it's much more profitable for them to export to Asia.

Edit: After doing some research, I did find that there was a proposal for a Qatar-Turkey pipeline in 2010 (see https://web.archive.org/web/20120228125310/http://pipelinesi... ). It was proposed to connect to Nabucco, which hasn't been built. The articles that link the Syrian civil war, or more specifically Qatari involvement in said war, contend that Qatar wants a Muslim Brotherhood government to build the pipeline, which ignores Saudi coolness to the idea of the pipeline (Saudi Arabia also funds rebels in the civil war) and the fact that Qatar also funded the uprisings in Libya and Egypt, in the path of no contended pipeline.

In other words, the idea that the Syrian civil war is mostly about gas pipelines looks rather like people trying to find some resource that the war must be about because they can't believe war is about anything other than resources.

Lets be serious here. Do you think the US or Russia will announce on their newspapers their actual interests and actually note money/commodities/whatever? This is big business on a global scale with decade-long goals. The pipelines can wait some years.

But lets say you are right -- do you think Russia is suddenly interested in some far-away humanitarian conflict or...perhaps there is something more?

Also, given the vast injustices around the world, any opinions on why the US decided to suddenly instill freedom in Iraq in 1992?

Yeah, there is a reason some highly wealthy people are bank rolling both sides in wars. It's not only about the war but the aftermath is ripe for shady stuff as you can read from history books including power, rebuilding, contracts, natural resources to name few.

Also a Russian warm water port in the Med. And just extending their influence because Assad father and son have traditionally been allies.

The vast majority of the money made from war (or the entirety of the money, depending on the war) comes from supplying war materiel. If some actors can figure out how to make money from the subject of the war, fine, but the money is being made from feeding, clothing, and arming the belligerents - so the important thing is their respective bankrolls. US military aid, for example, is not given to Egypt or Israel or the Saudis or Bahrain as dollars, it's given as dollars to US companies to send goods to those countries (to suppress their own populations.) US corporate lobbyists have a multi-billion dollar interest in Bahrain using full military force on peaceful protesters.

edit: There are versions of the theory of "imperial overstretch" that say that empires are forced to expand by the influence of internal elements that are enriched by the process of making war, thus increasing the influence of those elements, forcing more expansion, requiring more taxation and privation from the citizens of the empire, until eventually the entire empire collapses from the strain.

I'd say it's the primary cause of the Mexican drug war. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule on that page.