> It's obviously true in some sense - who'd care about
> Iraq if it weren't floating on oil? But after that,
> I don't get what it means. Most sectors of U.S.
> capital like moderate oil prices, so the high price
> regime of the last couple of years isn't doing them
> much good. What does it mean to "control" Middle
> Eastern oil? As long as the U.S. has no serious
> military rivals, it could deny oil imports to
> just about anyone through blockades and bombardment,
> without going through all the trouble of invasion
> and colonial control. It's not like you can turn
> off a tap in Baghdad and suddenly pumps in Beijing
> are going to go dry. (And Russia has plenty of its
> own oil anyway.) Chomsky always quotes a 50-year-old
> passage about ME oil being a "great strategic
prize,"
> but that was 50 years ago. The debasement of the
> dollar has rendered oil a lot cheaper, at least in
> relative terms, when priced in euro or yen - we take
> a much bigger hit than our principal rivals, and
> they're a lot more energy-efficient than we
> are too. It's like the neocons are living in a world
> of 19th century colonialism, where the direct
> control of real estate is supposed to confer some
> great advantage that I don't really see.
When pressed, Greenspan argued that Saddam had to be deposed before he could seize the Straits of Hormuz and block oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf. His scenario falls apart if Saddam was boxed in--the reality. The fact that even evil dictators will sell their oil doesn't square with his forecast, either.
Shane