Issue No. 608
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17 - 23 October 2002 Issue No. 608 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
War for oil?
Time -- and war -- will show just how much the Bush administration's campaign against Iraq is about oil, writes Roger Owen*
Americans who do not think that President Bush has made a coherent and convincing case for going to war with Iraq have begun looking for what they take to be the real and unspoken reasons behind his proposed campaign. For some it is a question of his personal antipathy to President Saddam Hussein, the man who, he said, "had tried to kill his father" when he visited Kuwait after the end of the Gulf War. For others it must be oil.
One of the reasons for this assumption is that talk of oil is very much in the American air at the moment for one reason or another. There is the very real fear of an oil price explosion once hostilities begin which could have damaging consequences for America's hoped-for economic recovery. There is the speculation that a deal has been done with President Putin of Russia safeguarding Russia's existing concessions and other oil-related interests in Iraq. And then there is the obvious fact that it is not just Russia but three of the four other permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain, France and America -- which have significant commercial oil interests there too.
If this was not enough, for those trying to understand the Bush administration's plans to use a victory in Iraq to try to redraw the political map of the Middle East, there is a number of official and off the record statements pointing to a belief that control of Iraqi oil resources would be a good way to side-line Saudi Arabia as America's main Gulf region ally. And for those who try to probe a little further, there is the sneaking suspicion that the White House's fine talk of bringing democracy to Iraq is just a cover to divert public attention from policies based on a much more material and narrow notion of America's national interest.
Nevertheless, there is plenty of historical evidence to suggest that oil is only part of a much larger United States concern with the Gulf as a vitally important region of the world in its own right. Ever since America's foreign policy towards the Middle East was first enunciated after the Second World War, Gulf security has always been one of its major pillars. Later, after the British withdrawal in the early 1970s, US Central Command (CENTO) was created specifically to be the military force responsible for blocking any Soviet thrust south through Iran towards Abadan and Kuwait. Much the same logic explains the American policy of trying to use Iran and Iraq to balance each other's aspirations for power and influence over the smaller Arab states along the Gulf littoral.
It is also clear that each major Gulf crisis has left more and more American forces in bases in and around the region. At first it was the "blue water" doctrine of the Carter administration with the bulk of the troops and aircraft on ships cruising just over the horizon. But from 1990/1 onwards bases on land have begun to grow in size and importance. It is no great jump from there to the present consensus in Washington that, perhaps more than ever before, the Gulf is a major United States interest which needs to be defended come what may.
How did all this come about? As is the case with most large strategic doctrines the significance attached to Gulf security stems from a number of overlapping national interests. One is the long held view that the Middle East, and more specifically the Gulf, is vital to global communication. A second is the close proximity there of a variety of states, some allies of the United States like Saudi Arabia, others which have, over the years, confronted western interests in a variety of ways. A third, clearly manifest since the late 1970s, is the fact that events in the Gulf, such as the Iranian revolution and Iraq's drive to obtain nuclear weapons, made the region a focus for Israeli security concerns as well.
And then there was oil. Long before the United States became a major importer of Gulf oil in the early 1970s, it had significant commercial interests there. More importantly it conceived of itself as a defender of the oil supplies so vital to the economic well-being of its allies in Western Europe and East Asia. In times of peace it was usually assumed that whatever regime controlled the supply of oil would have to sell it to its regular customers in the West. But in times of crisis the threat of an oil-boycott or some other interdiction of supplies was taken seriously enough to demand a more proactive response.
All this should be enough to demonstrate that although oil has always been an important factor in US policy towards the Gulf it has not been the only factor. And that worry about the oil supply itself has always had many more dimensions than a straightforward concern with America's own commercial interest. It can also be used to argue that, for all the ties that link President Bush and his principal lieutenants, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, directly to the American oil business, their ties both with the previous Bush administration and with larger American concerns about the Gulf over at least two decades are just as important when explaining their present obsession with Iraq.
Wars, as we know, are unpredictable events and often have a way of redefining the goals as they go along. It is possible that, in the aftermath of an attack on Iraq, the Bush team's policies will, indeed, provide important clues as to why it started the campaign in the first place. If so, the exact role now assigned to control over Iraq's oil resources will stand out more clearly.
Nevertheless, many post-war developments are likely to muddy these waters. On the one hand, there is the potential political fallout from any prolonged military campaign in the rest of the Middle East. On the other, there is the assumption that Iraq's much-coveted oil is supposed to pay for the cost of its own political reconstruction. These and many other unpredictable developments could well render the pursuit of the war's initial aims redundant.
* The writer is professor of history at Harvard University's Centre for Middle Eastern Studies.
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