andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> But oil is at the center
> of Mid East politics, if Brad says otherwise, he's a
> liar or a fool. My suggestion is that US interests in
> the region are stratetic and indirect. We do not need
> the oil to keep ouyr SUVs running. But Europe and
> Japan do, so power over it is leverage over them. This
> had been recognized since 1946, when the Us threatened
> to nuke the USSR to get the Red Army out of Northern
> Iran.
I'm not sure of the exact dates, by I believe the projected Berlin-to-Baghdad (?) railroad was (a) partly planned with Persian oil in mind and (b) one of the factors leading to WW 1.
It should take awhile (probably beyond my life expectancy) for it to develop, but a pre-war situation of EU vs US (with the rest of the world grouping around these two poles) is no longer out of the question. And whether such a war would be Cold or Hot is also a question.
In any case, I would agree that the projected war on Iraq is primarily a power-play against EU & Japan, who are (under present conditions) forced to pretend not to know this.
But the invasion of Yugoslavia was equally aimed at the EU.
I wonder when the EU will begin to campaign strenuously to force the withdrawal of U.S. troops from western Europe.
Carrol