War and energy

Summary: Energy and warfare are fundamentally and historically interrelated. Since the Industrial Revolution and the mechanization of warfare, energy resources have become one of the central factors in both the sparking and the waging of war.

The relationship between energy and warfare is as old as civilization. Somewhere between the sixth and the second centuries BCE, the Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu’s philosophical tract The Art of War devoted a whole chapter entirely to energy. Even beforehand, however, the tools used to build civilization would also have been used in the earliest of conflicts. Since most tools involve the direction and concentration of energy to achieve what the human body cannot manage alone, energy and warfare have always been inseparable.

Initial examples of this interrelationship can be found in the handheld weapons and battering rams that employed both kinetic and gravitational potential energy (KPE and GPE) to concentrate force in one specific area. The development of bow and catapult technologies saw the utilization of elastic potential energy (EPE), with the long bow leading to significant victories for the English against the French during the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). Following this conflict, the development of guns and munitions-based weaponry utilized chemical potential energy (CPE) and marked a revolutionary turning point in the development of warfare, allowing armies to overcome potential weaknesses in manpower, provided they had superior weaponry and tactics.

Alongside the development of munitions came the industrialization of society and consequently of warfare. With this, the importance of manpower and horsepower declined further still, as nations were able to feed soldiers and supplies to the front under mechanized locomotion. On the battlefield, too, the deployment of gasoline-powered tanks near the end of World War I marked a turning point that led to the obsolescence of cavalry. Similarly, in the British navy, the decision by then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill to switch from Welsh coal power to what was at the time Persian oil was seen as a crucial development. The switch in energy source was considered controversial at the time for its potential to leave the British navy vulnerable to disruption in globally distributed energy supply lines. The tactical gamble paid off, however: Because oil is a denser carrier of energy than coal, the British naval vessels that ran on oil had greater speed, mobility, and radius of action. Subsequent British naval ships could refuel at sea and did not have to dock at port as often as the German fleet, which was still dependent on coal; thus, the necessity to dock one-third of the fleet for refueling at any given time was avoided. On land as well as at sea, World War I was determined by questions of energy, with Germany and Britain both seeking to cut off oil supply lines throughout the war. A turning point came when the Allied forces managed to cut off German access to Romanian oil fields, which in turn starved industrial, civilian, and eventually military energy supplies. By the time Germany surrendered on November 11, 1918, its army possessed only a few days’ worth of fuel.

World War II was equally dominated by tactical attempts on all sides to disrupt and maintain energy supplies. Although Germany’s invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union was in part driven by the strategic prize of their native oil fields, the decision by Japan to attack Pearl Harbor preemptively in 1941 has been similarly attributed to energy concerns among the Japanese high command (the United States had cut oil exports to the country in an effort to contain Japan’s ambitions in the Far East—not least its objective of controlling the oil-rich fields of the Dutch East Indies).

Another notable energy event during World War II was the deployment by Germany of the Fischer-Tropsch refining process (invented in the 1920s and commercialized in 1936). This involved the conversion of coal to a petroleum substitute in case of disruptions in oil supply; it is of historical significance for today’s military planners, who are again turning to questions of supply security. Toward the end of World War II, the world was faced with the ultimate example of the role that energy plays in warfare. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US Air Force stood as a demonstration to the world of the technological development of nuclear potential energy (NPE); the immense capability of that energy for destruction shaped the history of warfare, as evidenced by the start of what came to be known as the cold war. In the 1950s, the US military also developed nuclear power plants for ships, particularly submarines and aircraft carriers, and also studied small-scale nuclear heat and power plants for remote military bases.

A decade later, in 1956, M. King Hubbert published his now famous paper on peak oil, in which he outlined the decline of oil supplies and its impact. The implications of this scenario were that a peaking of domestic oil production in the United States in the mid-1970s would inevitably force the country to turn toward global supply (especially from the Middle East) to make up for the deficit. This in turn required ensuring the security of supply routes for this energy supply, primarily crude oil passing through the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. Much debate has subsequently taken place over the role of oil and energy in warfare, notably in recent geostrategic decisions to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq. Many analysts have asserted that the United States, Europe, Russia, and China are involved in a twenty-first-century rerun of what is known as the great game, the term originally used to describe the strategic rivalry between the British empire and the Russian empire for supremacy in central Asia. Similar claims have been made for a new “energy cold war,” with the US energy secretary warning in 2010 of a “Sputnik moment” for America if it does not drastically increase its investment in a green energy technology race with China.

By the same token, an analysis of global energy trends by the US Army Corps of Engineers, issued in September 2005, warned that, in light of an approaching medium-term shortfall in global energy supplies, “oil wars are certainly not out of the question.” In this context, the report argues that the military should transition to renewable energy technologies, not least to mitigate the extreme costs of supplying petroleum through vulnerable supply lines to relevant units in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a similar policy shift, the US Air Force has started using synthetically blended jet fuel using the same Fischer-Tropsch process deployed by Germany in World Wars I and II. The Air Force encouraged European military planners to do the same to ensure uninterrupted supplies of aviation fuel to aircraft following disruptions or a peak in oil supply.

Starting from a situation in which energy was embodied in the capacities of human and horsepower, the industrialization of warfare in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries heralded a new paradigm. Fuel energy has become a central preoccupation of military and civilian planners. This dependence on fuel has led some energy commentators to warn of the possibility that future wars may break out to ensure security of supply, with the ironic result that such action would diminish remaining supplies even more quickly than they are now declining.

In addition to nuclear power, military needs have resulted in the development of several other energy technologies, including improvements to the reciprocating engine, jet engines, rockets, batteries, and more recently the introduction of the electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) on the Gerald R. Ford class of carriers. Unlike steam-driven catapults used on previous carriers, the EMALS use a linear motor drive, which reduces stress on airframes and has a lower weight, cost, and maintenance requirements than those of steam systems.

Waging War on Civilian Populations

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Though the battles played out on the ground and in the air over Ukraine, the impact was felt well beyond the war zone. Russia was a major supplier of energy to European countries. Its share of total European Union (EU) gas demand had increased from 26 percent in 2010 to about 40 percent by 2021. On March 11, Russia attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine. From March to June 2022, Russia cut gas supplies to five member states of the EU and cut gas supplies to Europe using the Nord Stream Pipeline by 60 percent. The International Energy Agency and the European Commission helped EU countries find alternatives to relying on Russian energy in the following months to prevent shortages and gas rationing during the winter. Many countries increased spending on renewable energy, while the United States and other countries made up the fuel shortfall in 2022. Russia continued to target the energy infrastructure in Ukraine.

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