Jeebus! Why is this so hard to understand!
At 12:24 PM 4/13/2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
>uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
>
>>You are not fighting wars all the time. You can't use blockades and
>>bombardments or the threats thereof all the time.
>
>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?
They want to privatize Iraqi oil so that investors in, say, France will become involved in Iraqi oil companies. As the neocons say they were planning to do with Saddam. The neocons believe that privatizing the oil market in the ME will prevent or mitigate the possibility that this sort of situation will arise. "The day could come, if it has not already, when Americans will no more heed the pronouncements of the EU than they do the pronouncements of ASEAN or the Andean Pact. <...>"
this is what I meant by the discipline of the market. Capitalism is a juggernaut and everyone throws themselves in front of it -- willingly (see hegemony, your recent response to Uhlas). And if they don't, then someone is pushing them: Iraq needed to be pushed.
Discipline isn't _just_ about the discipline of market mechanisms. Rather, it's also about participation in the very social practices, rituals, ideologies, beliefs, etc. that make that market "work". Not unlike US policy of encouraging home ownership: if you have a stake in the system, will you give it up so easily?
NOw, you will say that all it takes is for the _nation_ of Iraq to participate in the world oil market.
Not on the neocon perspective: what made things unstable for them _geo-politically_ was that they didn't get their way because Saddam didn't crumble and Fr and Ru "supported" him. They don't have to deal with that situation any longer. Or, so they think.
Further, I think they believe that there's an advantage to be gained with both an elite and a working class fully participating in the "discipline of the market" and relying on no other form of class society with which they might have more allegiance.
They weren't just cold war babies, they were "failed" leftists. heh.
Kelley