Wars, Resources and Decentralization: How Haffner Breaks the Cycle (French version - FR)
Strategic Note — Éric Jacob, Engineer (Maths-Sup, DEA)
The Universal Mechanism of Resource Wars
For centuries, the same pattern repeats: 1. Centralization of a wealth — oil, gas, gold, rare earths, water — in a limited geographic area controllable by a small group. 2. Capture by an oligarchy or autocrat — the rent from this centralized wealth allows the leader to free himself from citizen productivity. He does not need his people to work — he needs them to obey. Democracy becomes useless, even dangerous. 3. Internal economic stagnation — deprived of incentives to create value, the population becomes impoverished. The leader captures the rent, redistributes just enough to avoid revolt, and consolidates his repressive apparatus. 4. External war as an outlet — when internal pressure rises, war fulfills several functions simultaneously:
- Justify national unity around the leader against an “external threat”
- Divert attention from internal impoverishment
- Seize new wealth that is no longer created domestically
This mechanism is documented, repeated, and predictable. It has a name in political economy: the “resource curse.”
Centralized Resources That Fuel Conflicts
Oil and Gas: The Ultimate Resource-War
Oil-producing states are 56% more likely to be involved in wars than others, and 94% more likely to initiate them.
The reason is structural: oil is geographically concentrated, highly transportable on a large scale, and generates colossal rent without requiring citizen productivity.
Between a quarter and half of interstate wars since 1973 have been linked to oil. No other resource has had such an impact on international security.
Emerging New Resource-Wars
The oil pattern is already repeating with other resources:
| Resource | Geographic Concentration | Current or Future Conflicts |
|---|---|---|
| Lithium | Chile/Argentina/Bolivia Triangle | Rising political tensions |
| Cobalt | Congo (70% of world reserves) | Permanent civil war |
| Rare Earths | China (60% of world production) | US-China tension |
| Freshwater | Nile, Mekong, aquifers | Ethiopia/Egypt, Southeast Asia |
| Semiconductors | Taiwan | Major military risk |
| Uranium | Niger, Kazakhstan, Canada | Coups d’état (Niger 2023) |
The logic is identical in all cases: centralized resource → capturable → source of rent → source of power → source of war.
Why Decentralized Biomass Breaks This Cycle
Residual biomass has a fundamental physical property that oil does not: It is everywhere, in small quantities, not easily transportable on a large scale.
It is impossible to centralize global biomass. No autocrat can seize the wheat straw of a French farmer, the dead wood of a Canadian forest, or the sargassum off the Caribbean coasts.
Contrast with Oil
| Criterion | Oil | Residual Biomass |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic concentration | Very high | None — everywhere |
| Transportability | Very high (tankers) | Low (local processing) |
| Capturable by an autocrat | Yes | No |
| Generates a centralizable rent | Yes | No |
| Creates local jobs | No | Yes |
| Requires citizen productivity | No | Yes |
| Can finance an army without taxes | Yes | No |
A country where every region produces its own energy from its own biomass has no “oil well” to steal, no pipeline to control, no rent to capture. The lever of war disappears.
Haffner and Water: An Additional Possible Sovereignty
The thermolysis of biomass produces water vapor at the process outlet. A fraction of this vapor, after condensation and filtration, could be valorized as local water — particularly in arid zones where water supply is a strategic issue.
If this hypothesis is technically confirmed, a Haffner module would become a simultaneous producer of energy, hydrogen, biochar, nitrogen fertilizers and water — making deployed territories nearly autonomous on all fundamental resources.
Water is the next major resource-war. The Nile between Ethiopia and Egypt, the Mekong between China and Southeast Asia, the fossil aquifers of the Sahara — these tensions rise every year with global warming.
Point to be confirmed with Haffner Energy’s technical teams.
The Wars That Haffner Cannot Prevent
Intellectual honesty requires us to say it: some wars have no link to energy resources.
Ethnic, religious, and identity conflicts follow their own logic, independent of oil rents. Haffner will not prevent them.
What Haffner can reduce: wars linked to centralized energy resources, estimated at 25-50% of interstate conflicts since 1973. That is considerable — not universal.
Decentralization as a Condition for Peace
A world where every territory produces its energy, fertilizers, fuel, and potentially its water from its own organic waste is a world where:
- Autocrats can no longer finance their armies through captured rents
- Great powers no longer need to secure fossil maritime routes
- Resource wars lose their main economic driver
- Farmers create local value rather than depending on imports
Additional advantage: energy will no longer circulate across the world, which will also lead to a reduction in pollution and entropic heat.
This is not a utopia. It is the logical consequence of deploying a technology that transforms local waste into local wealth.
Linkedin: Eric Jacob
Basic private research @ | Multiple Degrees in Physical Measurements | Energy transition advisor