Chaco War: The War of Imperial Forces for Resources

In the process of human changing and adapting to the environment, rivers can be said to be the most important geographical factor. There will be a "mother river" in most areas, especially in plain areas. Paraguay's name comes from the "Paraguay River" flowing through its territory.

However, even when Paraguay became independent in 100, the mother river of Paraguayans could not be said to reflect the continuity of Paraguay's territory on the geometric level. The reason is simple, because the northern Chaco area west of the Paraguay River was not sure to be Paraguay's territory at that time.

During the period of "the Governor's District of La Plata", there was no clear boundary between colonial provinces, and no one was interested in competing for areas that were neither sparsely populated nor had any economic potential, such as the northern Chaco area.

Judging from the political legacy of Spain, it should belong to Bolivia. Because according to the original administrative design concept, as a member of the "La Plata Governor's District" (including its predecessor), Bolivia needs to own a piece of land on this plain as its identity. The problem is that, for whatever reason, Bolivia, which has the status of "Upper Peru", is bound to Argentina (not Peru), and its geographical center of gravity has always been in the Andean region, and it has not moved to the North Chaco region for a long time.

On the surface, the change of geographical attributes of a region depends largely on the attributes of local residents. From this perspective, Paraguayans have reason to believe that they should own the North Chaco (at least the South Chaco). As mentioned earlier, before the dispute, it was mainly Paraguayans who were able to use the resources in the northern Chaco area across the river.

Paraguayans entering the North Chaco region are mainly herders. This extensive economy itself cannot feed too many people, and even most Paraguayans who go to North Chaco to graze are not settlers in essence. So this change did not affect the relationship between Poland and Pakistan for a long time.

It was not until one day that a discovery that seemed to have greatly changed the geographical value of North Chaco was known to all parties that the situation began to become complicated.

No piece of land is worthless, but whether human beings have the ability to discover and use it. Humans have only entered civilization for about 300 generations, which is not enough to cause any qualitative change in the history of biological evolution. Suppose there is a child more than 6000 years ago, who has traveled to today and received an education. His physiological indexes and learning ability will not be different from those of modern people.

However, "man" has become the spirit of all things because he has higher creativity than other creatures. In this short period of 300 generations, mankind has experienced several technological revolutions. Every revolution has had a great impact on the geo-ecology of this planet and changed the weight of every geographical unit in human society.

In the history of human civilization, the agricultural revolution is regarded as the first "technological revolution". "Agriculture" covering planting economy and animal husbandry economy has replaced the gathering/fishing and hunting economy relying solely on the weather. This revolution has not only greatly increased the population carrying capacity of each land, but also made some land suitable for developing agriculture stand out and become the center of human activities, pushing the whole mankind to the stage of civilization.

This revolution that has changed the destiny of mankind is not a single starting point. At least, people in the New World didn't get any help from the Old World when they raised corn, potatoes and domesticated alpacas. However, this does not mean that communication is meaningless. On the contrary, only through communication can human beings better develop the geographical potential of each piece of land.

At least before the "Columbus Exchange", Americans had not found a good way to effectively use the La Plata Plain. Whether it is the tropical grasslands and shrubs in the North Chaco area or the pampas grassland with the nature of high grassland, the impact on American civilization and indigenous population can be ignored. After the introduction of domesticated animals and plants in the old world, the whole La Plata region began to glow. From this point of view, Spain's colonial development can be regarded as a lesson of the "agricultural revolution" for the "La Plata region" including Paraguay.

When Latin American countries began to become independent from Spain at the beginning of the19th century, history actually pulled them to the threshold of another technological revolution-the industrial revolution. If the previous agricultural revolution was only a natural economic revolution related to "water, soil and sunshine", then the industrial revolution is undoubtedly a revolution dominated by science and technology.

With the strengthening of human's ability to know the world, some land with low or no value in the natural economy era began to show its value potential because of the discovery of special resources, and even became the focus of geopolitical games.

The situation of increasing the weight because of resources also exists in the era of natural economy. According to the technical level of human beings at that time, mineral resources such as gold, silver, copper, iron and salt have become important resources affecting social development. In the era of great navigation, precious metals such as gold and silver can best arouse the enthusiasm of explorers.

However, not every piece of land has these resources that can be directly used as natural currency, and these resources themselves are non-renewable (will be exhausted). The focus of colonial economy gradually shifted to sustainable agricultural development.

The industrial revolution has given "resources" more meaning. In the redefined concept of resources, the most important thing is oil, which is called "industrial blood".

I believe there is no need to say much about the importance of petroleum products in human life and their influence on the global geopolitical pattern. Without this kind of resources, the Gulf region, which could only breed oasis economy, could not become the focus of global attention, let alone trigger so many political games.

More than 90 years ago, the industrial resource that led the North Chaco region to the brink of war was also oil. In order to compete for this important resource, Bolivia and Paraguay launched a cruel war in the northern Chaco region during the period of 1932- 1935, which was called "Chaco War" in history.

In order to understand the cause and effect of Chaco War, we need to understand the background of the times, especially the great influence of "industrial" factors. If the Paraguayan War in the 1960s of 19 was the first concentrated expression of the achievements of the industrial revolution in the war, then the "World War I" in the 1960s of 10 was the first full-scale outbreak of industrial power.

This war in Europe, the main battlefield, not only produced modern military equipment such as tanks and planes, but also had a far-reaching impact on all aspects of the participating countries.

For example, this industrial war eliminated the monopoly of nobles on the army and changed the form of war from a controllable "limited war" to a "all-round war" in which national strength and resources competed in an all-round way.

Of course, for China people, this transformation was completed with the failure of Song Xianggong more than 2,600 years ago. The war in the late Warring States period, especially the extremely cruel "Battle of Changping", made China people clearly realize that war was actually a struggle for resources. Only in view of the industrial revolution initiated and led by Europeans, in this new era, their cognitive transformation will become more critical.

With the outbreak and end of World War I, the role of oil has been strengthened unprecedentedly. Without oil, the military equipment that benefited from the industrial revolution would become a pile of scrap iron. Taking this as an opportunity, from the 1920s, led by oil companies from all over the world, it triggered an upsurge of searching for oil all over the world. It was during this period that the oil potential of the Gulf was discovered (oil was first discovered in Kirkuk, Iraq in 1927). China was not absent in this upsurge of searching for oil. Only the leader is not China, but the Japanese who have been coveting the northeast of China.

As early as the late 1920s, the Japanese began to secretly search for oil resources in the northeast of China. With the outbreak of 9 18 incident, the Japanese army in Northeast China was fully controlled and more detailed prospecting work began. However, although Japan has obtained a lot of strategic resources from the northeast of China, it has never found oil in this black land.

Daqing Oilfield was discovered in New China 1959, and once Japanese drilling was only a few kilometers away from the edge of Daqing Oilfield.

Therefore, many people think that if Japan could find the "Daqing Oilfield" in the northeast of China at that time, it would probably not risk going to war with the United States and Britain and choose the strategy of "going south" to trigger the Pacific War. If history goes on like this, what the geopolitical pattern of East Asia will look like today is still unknown.

There are many factors that affect the historical process. Even if Japan discovered oil in the northeast at that time, it is hard to say that it will not launch the Pacific War. Aside from other factors (such as the dispute between land and sea within the Japanese army), it is difficult to establish this view from the perspective of resources alone. You know, Japan, a small country, lacks more than just oil. For example, rubber in Southeast Asia is also an important strategic resource.

However, in any case, it is an indisputable fact that oil became an important resource (even the most important) at the beginning of the 20th century. In this crazy battle for resources, there are "regrets" that Japan passed by Daqing Petroleum. There are also British people who mistakenly believe that there are oil resources in the North Chaco area.

Yes, you are not mistaken. This war, which triggered the war between the two countries, caused hundreds of thousands of soldiers to die and changed the geopolitical fate of the North Chaco region, actually originated from a wrong investigation report.

However, you don't have to dwell on an assumption that if there is no "oil", the fate of the two countries will change.

As far as a war is concerned, the fuse is not the whole problem. As far as North Chaco was concerned, it was almost inevitable to solve the problem through war at that time. Britain's mistakes are more like catalysts. The reshaping of regional geopolitical pattern by this war and the performance of relevant countries are the focus of our next section.