Rakesh Bhandari asked that I forward this:
>________
>
>Brad deLong wrote:
>
>I still can't figure out whether such an extraordinary degree of
>willed obtuseness is the result of pure stupidity, or of something
>more sinister.
>
>If Osama bin Laden were on Saudi soil and in the control of the Saudi
>government, if Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia were to announce
>that he would not hand him over to the United States because it was
>his duty to give 'panah' [shelter] to a Brother Muslim, if such an
>announcement were not accompanied by strong diplomatic
>representations that every member of Al Qaeda within reach of the
>Saudi government would shortly lose his head...
>
>.then the United States would be bombing Saudi Arabia now.
>
>
>__________
>
>Oh, no Brad, you're quite possibly wrong. If bin Laden had sought cover
>somewhere on Sa'udi soil, it's probable that not only would he not have
>been
>handed over to the US, the US would not then have bombed a 'recalictrant'
>Sa'udi Arabia. It's possible that the US would have accepted an offer to
>hand
>him over to a a muslim court or third party. Neither the US nor the House
>of
>Sa'ud has any interest in pulling the curtain down to reveal the royal
>family
>to be the lackeys of US economic imperialism. That is, there well could
>have
>been a great show of how independent the House of Sa'ud is. In short,
>neither
>the US nor the House of Sa'ud would have risked the possibility of a mass
>uprising in response to the appearance of those compradorial elites
>kow-towing
>to their masters. After all, the toppling of the House of Sa'ud would be
>an
>economic disaster to our American capitalist masters.
>
>US and UK companies could lose all those sweet deals, e.g., "our" royal
>ministers ordering jets or technical petroleum services at 2-3x their
>market
>rate from Anglo American companies which then reward them (see the 1997
>expose
>of the House of Saud by the Pulitzer prize winning Charles Hanley). The US
>could lose the support to its Treasuries and currency that has been
>faithfully
>provided by its client (see David E. Spiro The Hidden Hand of American
>Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets). The priviliges
>of
>oil being priced in dollars would be endangered--don't forget that the
>pricing
>of oil in dollars is basically an interest free loan as long as the clients
>don't use the dollars for the purchase of goods and services (again see
>Spiro). And of course those tens of billions US dollars in arms contracts,
>security services and subsidizations of US foreign policy adventures could
>be
>threatened.
>
>Basically the US keeps the royal family in power (and in the lap of luxury)
>so
>that it will disburse oil rent in a way that suits US capitalist interests
>(see
>Cyrus Bina in Arab Studies Quarterly on the objectives of foreign
>policy--the
>article can be downloaded via melvyl).
>
>The threats of a cut off of Sa'udi oil and putative Sa'udi 'monopoly" power
>falling into the "wrong" hands are simply ungrounded fears that Bina's
>dispassionate economic analysis dissipates. The US need not worry about the
>supply of oil at prices that the competitive market will ultimately
>determine
>and enforce; the US does however have to worry that it could lose indirect
>control of the rent generated by the most productive fields which rest in
>the
>geological formation on top of which Sa'udi Arabia sits.
>
>So Prof. Brad, the Bushies will do nothing that risks the toppling of the
>House
>of Sa'ud which as Michael Klare has shown depends on the US for weapons,
>intelligence and military training. That is why the US has not demanded
>that
>its clients allow for military operations on its soil since that could
>inspire
>a popular uprising the risk of which authoritarian, irrational Wahhibism
>after
>all attempts to reduce. The US is only being apparently obsequious to the
>Sa'udis in order to not to bring popular pressure against its clients; the
>foremost interest of our capitalist masters is to ensure its continued
>economic
>plundering of the Arab world. This has made us Americans unsafe, and it has
>left a young Arab population increasingly impoverished, and without a
>future.
>Moreover, in plundering the Arab world, the US has propped up--as Bernard
>Lewis
>himself clearly recognizes--tottering tyrannies the only resistance to
>which
>that can survive is itself authoritarian, irrational and anti democratic.
>
>But about this US system of plundering neither you nor Hitchens nor Henwood
>has
>much to say. Why is that?
>
>Control of oil rent and the correlative subversion of democracy--such is
>the
>nature of US foreign policy in West Asia. Chomsky's analysis of US policy
>against Iraq reaches the same conclusion in what is surely one of the
>brilliant
>examples of satire from contemporary American political writing (see
>Chomsky's
>piece in the Arnove, ed. book on sanctions against iraq).
>
> Such aggressive, imperialist policy cannot be otherwise even if (as the
>economic illiterate Hitchens imagines) the US removes from office a few
>wicked,
>self aggrandizing men like Kissinger...or Cheney. US aggressiveness is
>built
>into its political economic structure. Bauer and Kautsky, like bourgeois
>economists, were wrong about the superfluity of imperialism, Luxemburg and
>Grossmann correct.
>
>But your ignorance of Marxist debates in value, accumulation, and
>imperialism
>is a highly cultivated form of distinction that may yet get you into the
>highest levels of US govt again. It's of a piece with your refusal to have
>even
>once condemned the US use of atomic weaponry even as you have mailed off in
>three or so years countless posts on communist aggression and savagery.
>These
>are apparently the silences that a respectable academic must keep.
>
>You can rage all you want about the hatefulness of the American left, but
>there
>is no US left for all practical purposes. The American left (hitchens,
>henwood,
>alterman) has in fact spent more time distorting and criticizing Chomsky
>than
>analyzing in any detail the US system of plunder. Between the US and al
>Qaeda there is no choice at all. An apologist for one is as ugly as as
>apologist for the other.
>
>Rakesh
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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