"Invading Iraq wasn't about the oil". Yeah, right.
The abiding memory I have of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was how US forces swiftly secured the Iraq's Oil Ministry in Baghdad but stood by as looters pillaged other government offices and museums.
It's unfair, of course, to seize upon one incident among many and draw a general conclusion from it. In this article, journalist Dilip Hiro lays out the evidence for the argument that Iraq's oil was a big factor, even the primary factor, in the invasion calculations of the Bush administration. His article follows a recent comment by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who said that "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Hiro's analysis is consistent with that of David Strahan, a British journalist and author of The Last Oil Shock (2007), a book about peak oil. Of the US game plan, Strahan notes that
"The idea seems to have been to prise open Iraq and the wider Middle East for Western investment - not only for the sake of profit, but in order to raise oil production. The invasion was not just 'all about oil'; it was about peak oil."
Then there was the embarrassing gaffe by Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, who in July admitted that oil is a key reason for Australia's military presence in Iraq. Prime Minister John Howard moved swiftly, and unconvincingly, to contain the damage:
"We are not there because of oil and we didn't go there because of oil....the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy."
What puzzles me is why the Bush administration continues to maintain the charade that oil had nothing to do with the invasion. Empires run on energy, as Thomas Homer-Dixon noted in The Upside of Down:
"Acquiring and protecting the sources of this energy, the routes along which it's carried, and the people and organizations responsible for generating and transporting it becomes a key job of an empire's security and military forces."
A Bush functionary once said that the US is "an empire now, we make our own reality". For an empire which makes its own reality, there should be nothing embarrassing about coming clean on the real reasons for invading another country. Can you imagine a Roman emperor, such as Trajan, claiming that he invaded Dacia to free its people from their tyrannical chieftains?
The Bush administration defines 'energy security' as securing foreign oil reserves, sea lanes, and the interests of US oil companies. In truth, this is a way of insecurity. It ignores what energy security is really about - having courage, integrity and foresight to break the foreign oil addiction (and, as Adrian points out, reliance on rickety Middle East regimes like Saudi Arabia) by investing in public transport and long distance rail, implementing tough fuel, energy and building efficiency standards, and switching to clean and renewable energy sources.
Recent Comments