----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> But let's work out this idea of strategic leverage. First the U.S. conquers the Middle East. Then it gets annoyed at China or France or Japan and tries to cut off its oil. How would it go about this? Would someone please fill in that blank?
Instead of the two step procedure of 1) conquering and colonizing the Middle East and 2) cutting off the adversary's oil, isn't it more efficient just to take step 2)?
Controlling the Middle East isn't enough if the point is strategic leverage. You'd still need the blockade or bombardment.
Doug ========================
This misses the default rule/cya rhetoric of the preemption/paranoia paradigm; "we're not controlling the oil in order to have leverage over 'them', we're controlling the oil to prevent 'them' from having and/or gaining future leverage over us."
See Cordesman's statements on the history of warfare as a random walk. Unlike the neocons, at least one faction of the Dems has ditched a romantic teleology for interpreting US foreign policy history in order to justify imperial adventures. This attempt at a justificatory strategy could be even more insidious down the road.
Ian
"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest, why then it was national honor that had been insulted." [Joseph Schumpeter]