War, Peace and Oil in Iraq
James D. Hardy, Jr. Ph.D.
Leonard J. Hochberg, Ph.D.
Senior Fellows, New Mexico Independence Research Institute, Inc.
www.zianet.com/nmiri
Received: May 28, 2003
Posted to the NMIRI Website: Wednesday, June 4, 2003
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has claimed emphatically that the war in Iraq
has (or had) nothing to do with oil. He has repeated this position many times,
to anyone who would politely pretend to listen and to some who would not. It
is safe to say that few believed him. Still, ignoring nearly unanimous skepticism,
Rumsfeld has not altered or even modified his stance. The Iraq war, 2003 version,
is (or was) not about oil. That’s his story and he’s sticking to
it.
The Causes of War, Alleged and Real Universal incredulity aside, the war in
Iraq was not about oil, or to be more precise than the Secretary, only marginally
about oil. It was primarily about national security, but not in the narrow and
limited sense of the danger, however defined, of weapons of mass destruction.
Nor was the national security issue the remote possibility that Iraq, burdened
with international inspectors and domestic terror, might be a military threat
to the United States. Nor was the national security issue the distant possibility
that Iraq could be again a serious military threat in the region. The presence
of American forces in the Gulf region, the enmity of Iran, and the substantial
armies of Turkey (as well as Israel) effectively surrounded Iraq. Nor was the
national security issue the even more remote possibility that Iraq would become
a major state sponsor, along the lines of Syria, the Palestinian Authority,
or Iran, of international terrorism. Iraq contributed its bit, of course, particularly
in support of Palestinians, but the balance of terrorist threats was tipped
against Iraq which had more to fear from Shiite fundamentalists than the West
did from Iraq. The pre-war Iraqi government (and people) cheered blowing up
Americans, that goes without saying. But Iraqi support for Al Qaeda appears
to have been more on the margins of policy than at the center.
None of this escaped the notice of European, Arab or American observers hostile
to the Bush administration’s plans to wage war on Iraq. Victory did not
diminish critical comment, nor render it less bitter and derisive. There are,
of course, no more dire predictions of massive American casualties in an urban
guerilla conflict in Baghdad, since this did not happen – much to the
disappointment of the French. But criticism has increased, exponentially it
seems, over the issue of weapons of mass destruction, only hints, indications
and traces of which have yet been found. Aha! There it is! The Americans were
lying, the critics now say, about national security and weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, victory had been easy and rapid, exposing Iraqi weakness. Rumsfeld
did not make the national security case before the war, and victory, itself,
did not make the national security case about the war.
We suggest the national security issues at stake in the war involves, in general,
the geostrategic stance of the Islamic world from Pakistan to the Maghreb, and,
in particular, the geopolitics of the Islamic Arabic core – the Fertile
Crescent and the Peninsula – as well as Turkey and Iran. The American
vision, or the Bush Doctrine, was, (and is) in brief, that the entire range
of geopolitical relationships in the Middle East must be changed, that former
piecemeal efforts, such as the “Peace Process” or the Gulf War of
1991 had failed, and that this involved the national security of the United
States. The Bush Doctrine consists of three things.
1. In order to win the war on terrorism, not just try to contain it, the United
States must force the Islamic states to abandon their involvement with terrorism,
whether sponsoring (Syria, the Palestinians, and the Taliban), supporting (Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen), sheltering (Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon), or tolerating
(all countries mentioned) it. If Islamic, primarily Arab, states can be severed
from any connection to international terrorism, making terrorism a private enterprise
operation, the United States will have won a major victory. At this point, but
not before, the United States can expect Islamic state and religious support
against terrorism, which would then be a threat to believers and infidels alike.
2. A second result of disassociating Islamic states from terrorism will be a
relatively secure truce (not peace) between Israel and the Palestinians. Deprived
of its standard political practice, which is terror, the Palestinian Authority,
while continuing to preach hate, would also be forced to try to create a stable
domestic community.
3. The war in Iraq in 2003 ought not to be seen as a consequence of an unfinished
Gulf War in 1991, but rather as the second, Afghanistan being the first, war
as a consequence of 9-11. There will, therefore, be others. Syria, misgoverned
by the Ba’ath party, comes to mind as one possibility. We have already
witnessed the beginning of this war with the shutting down of the illegal shipments
of Iraqi oil to the Syrian regime. Iran, accused of harboring al Qaeda terrorists,
comes to mind as another. Already facing American troops stationed in Afghanistan,
the Iranian regime now must defend against the possibility of a two-front war.
Future conflicts mean that there will be continuing hostility from the Europeans,
which America must again ignore.
The problem with the national security claim, therefore, is not that it did
exist but that the Bush administration did not choose to state it. The Bush
administration, it appears, decided that the critics were too hostile, too narrow-minded,
too biased to be worth engaging in debate. If told the truth, they would neither
have believed it nor altered their criticism. Better to stay on message and
talk about the frightening consequences of weapons of mass destruction as enunciated
in the press with great vigor.
The Consequences of Peace: Oil and Geopolitics
But what about oil? After all, in the Near East can oil ever be completely absent
from consideration? Are the Bush critics, who have claimed, both at home and
abroad, that the war is about oil, completely wrong about everything? The answer
to both questions is no. Oil is a major factor in the events in the Gulf, and
the Bush critics were also right in pointing out the importance of oil. But
oil is important not as a cause for war but as a consequence of the war. The
role of oil is in the reconstitution of Iraqi oil export patterns and price,
i.e., in the reconstruction of the geopolitical relationships in the area as
called for in the Bush Doctrine.
As things now stand, the states surrounding the Persian Gulf dominate the international
oil market. They set the price and the amount marketed. Amongst these states,
Saudi Arabia plays the dominant role. But things do not always have to stand
as they do now. It is entirely possible, and we suggest, more likely than not,
to move massive oil investments from the volatile Persian Gulf to an area not
yet quite as volatile, the Caspian Basin, which is also a location of major
oil reserves. Indeed, this has already been done with the opening in 1999 of
the Baku-to-Supsa pipeline. It could be expanded, and extended to the Mediterranean
in Turkey, and there are plans to do both. The Kirkuk oil fields in northern
Iraq, the most efficient currently producing oil field in the region, could
be modernized technologically to increase production and then the product could
be transported via new pipelines through Turkey to the Mediterranean, or through
Jordan to Haifa. Geopolitically unthinkable in March 2003, the latter is now
a distinct possibility, and becoming ever more so. All of this would be under
the control of America and her allies, not France and Germany, but Britain,
Israel and Turkey.
The winners in this round of Near Eastern oil politics would be a new Iraqi
regime indirectly influenced by America, and also by Britain, Israel, and Turkey.
The losers would be Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, and Saudi Arabia which
needs a higher oil price than Iraq since it costs more than twice as much (i.e.,
$2.50 vs. $1.00) to pump a barrel of Saudi oil. With unemployment running at
about a third of the working population and with a per capita income that has
dropped by nearly half (i.e., $15,000 to $8,200) in the last twenty years, a
record comparable to Russia, Saudi Arabia needs all the money it can get. It
is not too much to say that post-war American oil policy will determine the
survival of the current Saudi government and quite likely the survival of the
current regime in Iran as well. The modern “oil weapon” is now in
the hands of the Bush administration, and Bush does not hesitate to use the
weapons at his disposal.
There seems little doubt that America is going to implement at least part of
the oil policy we have suggested. American policy, already repeatedly stated,
looks to the modernization and expansion of Iraqi oil, if only to pay for the
war and the liberation (or occupation). Vice President Cheney, who may be presumed
to know something about oil, has said that Iraqi oil production ought to rise
to 2.56 to 3 million barrels a day by the end of 2003. Since most of the Iraqi
oil fields are as yet underdeveloped, a three million barrel production rate
could easily be, in five years or so, a six or seven million barrel rate. There
seems little doubt that the United States, now and for the foreseeable future,
occupies and will occupy the dominant position in Iraq and an influential one
in the Caspian Basin. Therefore, it could break OPEC into its constituent elements
of mutually hostile and desperately needy pre-industrial states. Such a maneuver
may have an unintended, but not necessarily an unanticipated consequence; exacerbating
the cultural divide between Islam and the West.
In view of the foregoing, we suggest that oil is one reason why post-Iraqi wars
will be fought. Though incidental to pre-war considerations, oil assumes its
accustomed place near the center of things as the United States tries to build
a more satisfactory post-war Near East. Even acknowledging the centrality of
oil in the politics of the Near East, the problems remain fundamentally geopolitical,
at least from the American perspective. Oil is, therefore, “the near occasion”
for American intervention.
NMIRI Senior Fellows for 2003 – www.zianet.com/nmiri
James D. Hardy, Jr., Ph.D. ,Associate Dean, Honors College & Professor, Department of History, Louisiana State University
Leonard J. Hochberg, Ph.D., Associate Professor – Research
Honors College,
Louisiana State University
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