On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >And in any event, isnt control of the worlds energy resources worth
> >something?
>
> It might, if someone could explain to me what "control" means.
Control only makes sense in time of war. Then it does make sense. Or it did -- back when we had enemies that could conceivably threaten us. We're still acting like we do.
You're totally right about the economic argument. But you can't disprove a strategic argument with an economic one.
I tried to furnish the strategic disproof in my earlier post
URL: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-March/008879.html
for every possible meaning of "strategic control."
The hybrid economic strategic idea, that leverage over the supply of oil can be used to bend countries to your political will, rests on a misunderstanding of the 1973 oil crisis. It's hard to remember now what a huge political trauma that was. It was also a formative one. The misunderstandings made then have been fixed unrevised in our policy making imaginaire ever since.
But this is not simply something the left is wrong about. The left is simply casting light on a deeper problem in the mainstream. This is something that every single person in the security apparatus is wrong about. Every single person in every relevant government agency, every single person in the think tanks that surround them, and every single person who covers them in the media, accepts that oil has a strategic value. Even if they personally don't know what that means, they do know for a fact -- a true fact -- that every authority agrees.
When a wrong belief is that universal it becomes a social fact. Everyone accepts it as a valid premise and acts as if it's true. So it's not at all wrong to attribute motivations based on it. It's true that such people are misguided. They are not furthering their country's interest. But they honestly believe they are. And so does everyone else, friend and foe alike.
How can everyone believe something that is untrue? I think this is a perfect example of "ideology" in the sense that Karl Mannheim uses it in _Ideology and Utopia_: a worldview that evolved to suit a particular historical situation that has outlived that historical situation. It takes considerable time for the worldview to change.
And in this case, the huge historical change that negated it only happened very recently. The cold war only ended a few years ago. The world at large has has only dimly registered how profoundly this changes things. And the security establishment, which provides the world with its authorities on this subject, has a vested interest in not recognizing it; the cold war is deeply institutionalized into all establishments they man. Their first instinct, like any vested establishment, was to find a substitute. And they are overjoyed that they think they have.
And who is to dispute their definition of strategic importance? Us non-authorities? :o)
Michael