With global demand for energy constantly rising and supplies contracting (or at least failing to keep pace), the world is being ever more sharply divided into two classes of nations: the energy haves and have-nots, says Michael Klare.

Not “Islamo-fascism” but “Energo-fascism” — the heavily militarized global struggle over diminishing supplies of energy — will dominate world affairs (and darken the lives of ordinary citizens) in the decades to come. This is so because top government officials globally are increasingly unwilling to rely on market forces to satisfy national energy needs and are instead assuming direct responsibility for the procurement, delivery, and allocation of energy supplies. The leaders of the major powers are ever more prepared to use force when deemed necessary to overcome any resistance to their energy priorities. In the case of the United States, this has required the conversion of our armed forces into a global oil-protection service; two other significant expressions of emerging Energo-fascism are: the arrival of Russia as an “energy superpower” and the repressive implications of plans to rely on nuclear power.

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Is Energo-Fascism In Your Future?

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books). This is the first of a two-part series; the second part will be posted on Thursday. This piece originally appeared at TomDispatch.

It has once again become fashionable for the dwindling supporters of President Bush’s futile war in Iraq to stress the danger of “Islamo-fascism” and the supposed drive by followers of Osama bin Laden to establish a monolithic, Taliban-like regime—a “Caliphate”—stretching from Gibraltar to Indonesia. The President himself has employed this term on occasion over the years, using it to describe efforts by Muslim extremists to create “a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.” While there may indeed be hundreds, even thousands, of disturbed and suicidal individuals who share this delusional vision, the world actually faces a far more substantial and universal threat, which might be dubbed: Energo-fascism, or the militarization of the global struggle over ever-diminishing supplies of energy.

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