Not to take anything away from your earlier comments about "conspiracies", but a conspiracy is really nothing more than a plan done with some degree of secrecy or discretion. Here you may be right about the timing and motivation; I heard a report the Russians had discovered these same potentials decades ago. Any number of resource become economically viable as prices increase. All those abandoned West Texas stripper (oil) wells always become valuable again whenever crude prices rise sufficiently.

As far as pesky Iranians, Marxists or whomever, ultimately being led by the invisible hand to do The Right Thing, the question is at what price can the US/Corporate World tolerate their involvment. Things always make more sense when we follow the economics with sufficient ruthlessness. How well were the US/UK able to tolerate the Iranians a cut larger than I think it was 16% (of net profits, using the sort of creative Hollywood Accounting that only chooses to allow a break-even), back in the good 'ole days before they got fed up and overthrew Mossadegh?

Guess I agree with all this, but with a lot more cynicism.

I never understand why states launch wars for natural resources. It's not rational. It's just not cost-effective and tenable these days considering you can buy what you need on the free market at much less cost than launching an expensive foreign (mis)adventure as Mr. Walt points out. The Iraq war for instance boggles my mind if it was really about oil. For the hundred of billions of dollars spent in Iraq, the U.S. will never recoup anywhere close to that. Anyways is thousands of soldiers' lives worth minerals you could easily purchase on the free-market?

If the answer is that American corporations want control of the resources to make a pretty penny and convince the state to launch wars then there is something very wrong with the political system.

The New York Times is trumpeting "Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan" -- which presumably would make everyone filthy rich -- especially certain foreign countries with interests in the region who just happen to already be there and shall remain unnamed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

It sounds like a clumsy justification for many more decades of "nation building" -- if that is what the US is doing, fumbling about in Afghanistan.

The Times quotes Paul A. Brinkley, "deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits."

This should also raise a few alarm bells. The Pentagon doing mineral [and, by extension, also oil] exploration?

As long as US continues to ignore Taliban’s Pakistani connections, problems faced by US in its Afghan mission will continue to not only persist but compound.

As Times of London reported yesterday (6/13/10) on Matt Waldman’s report titled ‘The sun in the sky’ from London School of Economics, “support for the Afghan Taliban is ‘official ISI policy’ and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign in Afghanistan.”

The ISI is said to compensate families of suicide bombers to the tune of 200,000 Pakistani rupees, claims the report. Thus US aid to Pakistan goes directly to finance the death of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal confirmed the existence of QST in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

Can American CIA not know what Matt Waldman knows? How come Obama administration is continuing Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan with such incriminating evidence against Pakistan’s double game? How can US mission in Afghanistan succeed if Obama administration continues to ignore such damning evidence against Pakistan?

A trillion dollars worth of minerals is worthless if it costs a trillion and one dollars to mine it and get it to market.

Pick any tract of land the size of Afghanistan and you will find an equivalent amount of mineral wealth. The problem is that you need to strip mine the living s**t out of somewhere to get at it. That requires countless tons of lead and mercury to get at the good stuff leaving the land poisoned and useless when you've finished.

Add to that the fact that there are no modern rail/road networks to take the ore to market and it rapidly becomes a pipe dream.

I am fed up with the fact that a supposedly free press in America is willing to print obvious PR pieces from the DOD without any critical comment. Is it laziness or incompetence?

USAToday is still referring to the 'City of Marjah' months after it became obvious no such place existed. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanistan/2010-06-09-marjah_N.htm)

Correct me if I am wrong, but Walt seems a bit too rational when he writes about politics. No doubt, most people can agree that we need more frugal people like Dr. Walt running our government.

However, when it comes to helping me understand politics, I feel Dr. Walt sometimes writes with a sort of naivety.

It is as if he is asking:

"Why are irrational things happening.. things that are opposed to the interest of the greater population (like spending massive amounts on war)..?

I though Dr. Walt is a political Realist !? I haven't read his books only his posts, but still, I would like him to a better job explaining outcomes that are caused directly by the politics of power and all that good stuff that too often eludes us.

"The new studies have increased estimates of the amount of oil in a series of deposits in Sunni territory to the north and east of Baghdad and in a series of deposits that run through western Iraq like beads on a string, and could contain as much as a trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The revised figures, though large, would not mean that deposits in Sunni territories could challenge the giant fields elsewhere in the country."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/world/middleeast/19oilfields.html

Prof. Walt, the main advantage of physical control of natural resources is that, for ex., American companies's control of Iraqi oil and gas will have an immense contribution to the US budget in the form of repatriation of profits (dividents) by the American companies. However, when you buy Iraqi oil from international markets you dont make a profit as such. Therefore, powerful nations are facilitating the interests of their transnational companies to work abroad esp. in the cash-rich petroleum countries.

I travelled in Afghanistan and neighboring countries in the 1960's, not long after the US and Soviet Union had each built half the Herat-Kandahar-Kabul highway in a remarkable cold war collaboration where each got to strut its stuff for the Afghans.

The first thing I noticed about the area is its geography-- steep, new mountains and large salty plains--just the sort of thing that suggests large mineral deposits. I also found for sale in the region's bazaars the most extraordinary variety of rocks and minerals, ranging from galena, through sapphire, copper and iron containing minerals, ruby (maybe), and on and on. Some of these I could find along the roads in the region.

The pentagon's discovery of the mineral wealth of Afghanistan is nothing new.

Oil off Vietnam's coast was touted as a US "interest" sometime in the early 1970's. Vietnam, of course, now exports a limited amount of oil to the world market. The only possible US interest in the subject is, therefore, well met. Steve Walt's point about any mineral sales from Afghanistan is confirmed by what happened in Vietnam. The Afghans will sell the loot to the world, if it can be extracted and exported at profit.

Let the American companies stay home this time. The US has done more than enough damage in southern Asia with our leaders' idiot fantasies of controlling religious revival and mineral riches there.

"If so, my off-the-cuff reaction is tax revenue from, for example, oil companies controlling Iraqi oil would fall far short of the cost to the US of gaining and enforcing that control. Not to mention the myriad other direct and indirect financial and non-financial costs of such control."

I would respectfully disagree, apart from the fact that US military control of Iraqi and Gulf oil has a strategic objective, US/UK energy companies making immense money and as well as their host governments. For. ex. during US control of Sauidi oil and Gulf oil from 1930th to 1980th and British control of Iranin and Iraqi oil till 1980th US and UK have earned trillions of dollars with little cost for the military and intelligence for the US tax-payers.

The main difference in case of Iraq was that US policymakers thought that they will win an easy victory and Iraq will be their cash asset which turned out to be wrong to a certain extent.

The first thing I noticed about the area is its geography-- steep, new mountains and large salty plains--just the sort of thing that suggests large mineral deposits. I also found for sale in the region's bazaars the most extraordinary variety of rocks and minerals, ranging from galena, through sapphire, copper and iron containing minerals, ruby (maybe), and on and on. Some of these I could find along the roads in the region.

The pentagon's discovery of the mineral wealth of Afghanistan is nothing new.

Oil off Vietnam's coast was touted as a US "interest" sometime in the early 1970's. Vietnam, of course, now exports a limited amount of oil to the world market. The only possible US replica omega nterest in the subject is, therefore, well met. Steve Walt's point about any mineral sales from Afghanistan is confirmed by what happened in Vietnam. The Afghans will sell the loot to the world, if it can be extracted and exported at profit.