On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Shane Taylor wrote:
> > 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.
>
> A very important, possibly underestimated, point. It was the time where
> most of these neocons got there teeth cut.
<quote>
There is one other independent basis of thinking of oil as a strategic good. This is based not so much on war as on a profound misunderstanding and reification of the 1973 oil embargo. There are two things about that embargo that everyone knows and which aren't true.
Strategically, the terrible fear is that oil power could bring us to our knees and force us to do something we wouldn't do otherwise without a shot being fired -- in other words, that oil power is a power equal to war power. And that therefore controlling that power is essential to controlling the world.
That's how everyone felt in the 70s. It was a formative moment in the lives of the most of the present establishment, and especially for neoconservatism, which until post-1973 was mainly a domestic theory. (Up until then, its anti-communism was indistinguishable from that of the liberal mainstream.)
But a look at the historical record, at the actual embargo, proves exactly the opposite. It shows that even under the best of conditions the oil weapon shot nothing but blanks. Actually that's putting it kindly. In strategic terms, it backfired. And conditions will never again be so favorable for its use, not least because you can't utterly surprise the whole world twice.
The cause of the embargo was America's $2.2 billion airlift of materiel to Israel in the midst of the 1973 Arab/Israeli war. It was widely perceived at the time as turning the balance from an initial Arab victory into an ultimate defeat. The goal of the embargo was to force the world to favor the Arab cause and to change the policy of the US away from Israel.
And the result? America's ties with Israel became from that time onward stronger than they had ever been in the past. Stronger in fact than the Arabs of the time would have dreamed of in their worst nightmares.
That's a strategic weapon to be afraid of?
More at: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-March/008879.html
I apologize for my perservation. I honestly believe this is one time I've nailed something.
Michael