Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources
Philippe Le Billon, Liu Faculty, UBC
January 17, 2012
From Angola and Liberia to Iraq and the DRC, wars have taken place in resource rich countries full of poor people. In Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources (Hurst & Columbia UP) Philippe Le Billon explores how resources have shaped recent conflicts, and what the international community has tried to do about it. Focusing on key resources — oil, diamonds, and timber — he argues that resources and wars are linked in three main ways: through conflict resources that directly finance belligerents, resource conflicts that pit communities against local authorities and mining multinationals, and governance failures that leave countries exposed to the resource curse. Not all resources are the same, however, and effective responses are at hand. Sanctions, military interventions and wealth sharing have helped bring an end to conflicts, yet only deeper domestic and international reforms in resource governance can stop the plunder. The book “does a remarkable job of summarizing a multifarious, and often complex, body of literature without oversimplifying it”. Philippe Le Billon is associate professor at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia.
