http://www.merip.org/mer/mer225/mer225.html
In the Shadow of War: Iraq, Israel and Palestine
(Middle East Report 225, Winter 2002)
Editorial
If there is to be a US-led conquest of Iraq, the
American public and the world are entitled to know why. Unable to
demonstrate that Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction pose a
"mortal threat" to the United States or to provide evidence
implicating Iraq in the September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda, the
administration and members of Congress recite the litany of Saddam
Hussein's many crimes as if the world's greatest military power has no
grand strategy, national interests or economic agenda of its own, but
only reacts haphazardly to the misdeeds of rogues and pirates.
George W. Bush disappoints even his own neo-conservative base when he
spouts platitudes about good and evil instead of addressing the
national interest, and he insults Americans by telling them to live in
"fear" of a half-occupied, third-rate tyrant. A more honest
explanation would point out that Iraq's size, location, water
resources, scientific community and potential for Arab regional
leadership, in addition to its oil and its current despotism, make it
the ideal place for a long-sought, permanent military installation in
the Middle East.
Off-camera but online, the Defense Department, the National Security
Council (NSC), the Department of Energy and the White House itself lay
out a much more internally coherent, if less media-friendly, case for
war. These documents reveal that "regime change" in Iraq is part of a
long-term strategy for military dominance of not only the Persian Gulf
but the entire arc of crisis stretching from South Asia across Iran
and the Arab East to the Horn of Africa.
There is little secrecy or subtlety to the American quest for "forward
deployment" centered around the world's major petroleum deposits. The
Carter Doctrine first committed US military prowess to the
"protection" of the Persian Gulf. Yet as unabashedly rearticulated by
the Bush-Cheney administration, this doctrine has become a prospectus
for permanent global military supremacy, starting with pacification of
the zone of disquiet known to official Washington as the Central
Command.
Since CENTCOM's creation in the 1970s, acquisition of a regional base
from which to police oilfields and key transport lanes has been a
major strategic goal. Currently based in Tampa, Florida, CENTCOM
operates in its "home" theater only at the whim of the Arab monarchs
of the Persian Gulf. But only Saudi Arabia is large enough for a
full-scale American base, and Saudi domestic opposition to such an
arrangement runs wide and deep. Kuwait and the other tiny, oil-rich
emirates share Saudi trepidation about a substantial foreign force on
their sands. Occupying Iraq would provide an insurance policy against
instability in the petro-princedoms, securing US access to regional
resources and markets.
Many people suspect that, if Iraq did not have oil, its weapons of
mass destruction program would be of less concern to the White House.
Every year, the US uses a quarter of the oil burned worldwide. Having
rebounded from a crisis-induced effort at conservation in the late
1970s, US reliance on imported oil is projected to grow for the next
25 to 50 years. Department of Energy reports emphasize the crucial
role Saudi Arabia plays in stabilizing oil prices, while the Defense
Department acknowledges US dedication to the Kingdom's own political
stability. It was Iraq's invasion of another pro-American oil
monarchy, Kuwait, and its threat to Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf
states, that prompted Desert Storm in 1991, the first US war against
Iraq.
But it is not only "our oil" that concerns Washington as it stumps for
Desert Storm II. The US imports just over half its energy needs, and
about half those imports come from the Western Hemisphere (especially
Canada, Mexico and Venezuela). A bit less than one quarter of American
oil imports come from the Persian Gulf. Estimates of total US energy
needs met from the Middle East (especially Saudi Arabia but also Iraq)
are in the 12 to 19 percent range. In a short-term emergency, Gulf oil
could be replaced from American strategic reserves and alternative
foreign and
domestic sources. Prices might rise, but gas and heating oil would not
run out. Contrast this relative "energy security" with Europe, which
gets a third of its imports and over 20 percent of total consumption
from the Gulf, and nearly as much again from African nations including
Libya and Algeria. Some 30 to 40 percent of the oil consumed in Europe
comes from the Middle East. Japan, totally reliant on imported oil,
buys some three quarters of all the petroleum it consumes from the
Gulf. Western Europe and Japan each import over twice as many barrels
of oil each day from the Gulf than the US. As the authors of the
National Energy Strategy report, published in May 2001, observed, "US
energy and economic security are directly linked not only to our
domestic and international energy supplies, but to those of our
trading partners as well. A significant disruption in world oil
supplies could adversely affect our economy and our ability to promote
key foreign and economic policy objectives."
Nor are interests in the flow of oil limited to the concerns of
America's best trading partners. The Defense and Energy Departments
and the NSC are also "attentive to the possible renewal of old
patterns of great power competition," especially from Russia, India
and China. Russia is a net exporter, so there the US aims to secure
for American oil firms a share of the action. China, which has moved
from being a net oil exporter to an importer in the past decade and
whose consumption is predicted by Department of Energy analysts to
rise as much as eightfold in the next 20 years, buys two thirds of its
imports in the Gulf. Caspian Sea suppliers will not make much of a
dent in this dependency. Demand is also accelerating in India and some
other Asian industrializers. Strategic planners have noted that China,
India and other Asian countries are less likely than OECD countries to
back American policies in the Middle East generally, especially if
their energy lifeblood is at stake. Looking into the future,
therefore, strategists see a potential challenge to US hegemony over
world oil. From the point of view of grand military planning of the
sort that won World War II and the Cold War, the positioning of forces
in the oil heartland and along critical sea routes is a no-brainer.
The capacity to deprive a potential military rival of fuel for its war
machine is one crucial element of what Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz calls "area denial or anti-access strategies."
"To contend with uncertainty and to meet the many security challenges
we face," Bush told a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001,
"the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond
Western Europe and Northeast Asia." The themes of this speech are
reiterated in the goals elaborated by the NSC, which call for American
"defense beyond challenge" to "dissuade future military competition;
deter threats against US interests, allies and friends; and decisively
defeat any adversary if deterrence fails." The same set of documents
stresses "forward military presence" and "access to distant theaters."
The end of Cold War era deterrence requires the expansion, not
contraction, of US military capabilities, according to Joint Vision
2020: America's Military Preparing for Tomorrow. The report is blunt:
"The overarching focus of this vision is full-spectrum dominance,"
meaning "overseas presence forces and the ability to rapidly project
power worldwide."
Full-spectrum dominance is especially needed in the CENTCOM zone.
According to a report on the November 2001 conference of the CIA's
Strategic Assessments Group, "Prominent US observers of the
international security environment contend that the United States will
continue to encounter challenges along an 'arc of instability' in
coming years and decades." This arc refers to a "southern belt of
strategic instability" that ranges from the Balkans and West Africa
through the Middle East to South and Southeast Asia. "These
commentators argue that US military forces overseas and at home are
distant from those areas where future turmoil and conflicts are most
likely to occur. This will challenge the United States to develop and
deploy new forms of overseas presence, power projection and
expeditionary operations."
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