- "...the global economy built over the last 50 years
rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil, and if that foundation
were removed, the global economy would collapse."
-
- The U.S. government has mustered a dizzying and often
shifting assortment of "reasons" for invading and occupying Iraq.
At one time or another -- sometimes in the next breath -- it cited weapons
of mass destruction and imminent threats to America, links to terrorism
and al Qaeda, liberating the Iraqi people, and transforming the entire
Middle East. Yet, as it was going on ad nauseam about such nonexistent
threats, phantom connections, and hollow promises, there was one real issue
that the Bush team adamantly refused to discuss at all: oil. Before the
war, Rumsfeld even told CBS News that the U.S. conflict with Iraq "has
nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil."
-
- Bush II officials studiously avoided even mentioning
the 'o-word.' At one White House briefing on October 9, 2002, a reporter
asked press spokesman Ari Fleischer, "how much does oil have to do
with the assessment of the threat from Saddam Hussein? President Bush didn't
mention it." Fleischer first claimed not to "follow" the
question, then said it was "not a factor." He wouldn't even utter
the word "oil" in the back-and-forth. Two days later, The New
York Times reported that the Pentagon had plans to occupy Iraq and take
control of its oil fields.
-
- Behind closed doors, Bush was giving top U.S. corporate
heads and financiers a different message: according to Bob Woodward's recent
book Bush At War, in October 2001, on the eve of war with Afghanistan and
as planning was beginning for invading Iraq, he told a private New York
meeting of business leaders, "I truly believe that out of this will
come more order in the world-real progress to peace in the Middle East,
stability with oil-producing regions." In his paean to his former
boss, Bush speech writer David Frum laid it out more directly: America's
new global "war on terror," he wrote, was designed to "bring
new freedom and new stability to the most vicious and violent quadrant
of the earth-and new prosperity to us all, by securing the world's largest
pool of oil."
-
- Overthrowing Saddam Hussein, creating a client state
in Iraq, and opening up Iraq's economy are key components of a much larger,
multi-faceted global agenda in which energy resources play a crucial role.
The point is not that the Bush inner circle waged war simply to secure
Iraq's oil for American profit or consumption. Yet petroleum was a central
and major objective -- if understood in the larger context of global empire.
Most broadly, the 2003 invasion and occupation were designed to solidify
American political/military domination of the energy heart of world --
the Middle East/Central Asian region, and are part of broader efforts to
secure control of global energy sources and use that control to ensure
the smooth functioning of U.S. capitalism, strengthen its competitive position
in world markets, and increase U.S. leverage against potential rivals.
In short, oil is a powerful instrument of hegemony, which is what the new
Bush II National Security Strategy is all about.
-
- Controlling Persian Gulf oil and dominating world energy
markets has been a prime U.S. strategic objective for over 60 years, as
examined in previous chapters. However, the global energy picture does
not remain constant: the tension between supply and demand evolves, and
new dynamics and problems arise. Two trends stand out today: the precarious
nature of the global economy and the possibility that growing energy demand
will outstrip the global capacity to meet it.
-
- A look at these concerns and how the capitalist political
elite is approaching them opens a window on some of the deep compulsions
and potential opportunities that drove the 2003 war on Iraq and continue
to drive the Bush II global agenda.
-
- U.S. Strategists Declare: "It's the Oil, Stupid"
-
- A key element of the new Bush doctrine is leveraging
current U.S. military supremacy into economic supremacy and dealing with
various difficulties confronting the global economy. Oil and natural gas
play an important part in this grand design.
-
- The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical
earthquake, but it did not lead to U.S. economic dominance. In his 1995
brief for global supremacy, current Bush II official Zalmay Khalilzad worried
that rivals were gaining ground: "economic growth under way in Asia...
will produce important changes in relative economic power-with important
potential geopolitical and military implications" and "intensified
international economic competition."
-
- Nor did the fall of the Soviet empire usher in an era
of sustained economic growth; instead, the global economy has remained
fragile. "The world economy is in trouble," wrote Jeffrey Garten,
a former government official and now dean of the Yale School of Management,
in early 2003. "Corporate investment and trade are slowing, factories
are producing more than they can sell, and deflation is threatening many
regions. The two potential economic engines besides the United States -
Germany and Japan - are stagnating. Big emerging markets, from Indonesia
to Brazil, are in deep trouble."
-
- The new National Security Strategy promises to ignite
"a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free
trade," and to use American preeminence to promote an "efficient
allocation of resources, and regional integration." In other words,
the U.S. seeks to use its military power to secure favored access to markets,
raw materials, and human labor across the planet.
-
- Joseph Nye, dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard, compares
the Bush II strategy to a three-dimensional chessboard: "The top board
is the military and we can do pretty much what we want. The middle board
is economics, and is not a world America controls." Cheney and Rumsfeld
are focusing on the "top board," he argues, in order to parlay
U.S. military power into greater economic and political power. Nye's "bottom
level" consists of factors beyond Washington's control -- anti-U.S.
movements, weapons proliferation, the spread of infectious disease, etc.
He warns, "The Cheney-Rumsfeld focus on the top board may win in the
short run, but will cause lots of problems in the long run."
-
- This is where oil ties in: global capitalism remains
dependent on a steady flow of low-priced petroleum, making oil both vital
to the health of the world economy and key to the competitive position
of rival nations. "The single best cyclical indicator for the world
economy is the price of oil," one economist told The New York Times,
"Nothing moves in the world economy without oil in there somewhere."
-
- Despite a shift from manufacturing to services and increases
in energy efficiency, the U.S. still relies on petroleum products for 40
percent of its energy needs and remains the world's biggest energy glutton,
devouring 19 million barrels of oil a day. With a mere three percent of
the world's population, it consumes over 25 percent of the global output
of crude. "The price shocks from a serious disruption in oil supplies
would course through every quarter of the United States economy,"
The New York Times notes. "The drain on people's incomes and companies'
revenue would further sap a weakened economy." One Goldman-Sachs analyst
told Forbes Magazine, "Any [oil] price increase has devastating effects
on the U.S. economy."
-
- On the other hand, in 1991 economics lecturer Alan Freeman
estimated that each $1 fall in the price of a barrel of oil transferred
roughly $5 billion a year from Third World producing countries to North
America, and the difference between oil at $20 and oil at $25 a barrel
meant the transfer of $70 to $100 billion from the impoverished south to
the industrialized north. These figures are no doubt even more staggering
today given the rise in world oil consumption.
-
- Former Clinton official Kenneth Pollack, echoing Kissinger's
words from two decades earlier, is blunt about the oil connection:
-
- It's the Oil, Stupid -- The reason the United States
has a legitimate and critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil
continues to flow copiously and relatively cheaply is simply that the global
economy built over the last 50 years rests on a foundation of inexpensive,
plentiful oil, and if that foundation were removed, the global economy
would collapse.
-
- - Oil, Power and Empire is now available at bookstores
(distributed by Consortium and Ingram) or through Common Courage Press:
800.497.3207. To purchase online or contact author Larry Everest: www.larryeverest.com
-
- http://www.counterpunch.org/everest12062003.html
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