>On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Eubulides wrote:
>
>> What, if anything, has strategic value?
>
>A strategic necessity is anything which, if seized by an enemy under a
>plausible scenario, could cause you to lose a war you would otherwise win.
What has strategic value obviously depends on what strategy, or strategies, are being relied on to achieve ones objectives. If there is no strategy, then nothing has strategic value. If there is a strategy, then anything on which that strategy depends can be thought of as strategic and a strategy must depend on something.
So in the case of Iraqi oil, whether or not it has strategic value depends on whether is it valuable in the context of any particular strategy.
The objective is to maintain and extend the rule of the capitalist class. The new strategy to achieve this objective, being promoted by the Bush administration, is indefinite US "full-spectrum dominance". There are conceivably various ways in which control of significant oil reserves might have strategic significance.
For instance, some people have mentioned the issue of the currency used to denominate the price of oil. It is plausible that any shift away from using the US $ might tend to threaten "full-spectrum dominance", since control of the defacto international reserve currency is strategic to financial dominance.
Another possibility is that the Iraqi oil industry may be regarded as strategically significant for its potential to be privatised, thus providing another outlet for investment capital. Its all very well for the American capitalist class to enjoy bloated profits, but ever-expanding avenues for profitable re-investment of those profits are also strategically vital. So unquestionably any particular investment option which can be opened up is of strategic value. Especially if access to such investment opportunities can be controlled, directly or indirectly, by the US government, ensuring that cronies of the US ruling class have preferred access.
What I'm trying to get at is that strategic values shouldn't be thought of as necessarily limited to military questions. Although military dominance is part of the strategy, there's more to it. Mind you, purely from a military point of view, middle east oil is logically of strategic significance from the perspective that, as a nationalised resource, the huge profits that flow to the governments that control the oil give those governments the ability to fund large military forces. Thus, potentially, being a future threat to US military dominance.
Privatising the Iraqi oil industry would thus kill two strategic birds with one stone, generating windfall profits for some cronies into the bargain. No wonder they couldn't wait to send in the troops.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas