[lbo-talk] Seymour Drescher and the Decline of the West Indian planters

Marv Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Sat Sep 25 16:09:12 PDT 2010


On 2010-09-25, at 12:01 PM, SA wrote:

[…]

As promised, my response to the rest of your comments earlier today:


>> MG: In any case, oil is oil, whether Kuwaiti or Iraqi or Saudi Arabian, and you're correct in assuming that it was, at bottom, security of access to that oil which prompted the first Gulf War.
>
> SA: What does this mean, "security of access"? You mean security that Iraq would continue to sell its oil? What else would it do with the oil? Or do you mean security of price? In which case, what was the desired price of oil, high or low? Presumably giving one OPEC country a lock on a bigger share of world oil would result in higher prices. So the US wanted to prevent higher prices? But the major oil companies make more money when oil prices are high. In the 70s, OPEC quadrupled the price of oil and it threw the world economy into convulsions. You know who was behind that? The Shah of Iran and the Saudi Monarchy. They were rewarded with massive weapons sales. So I'm confused; it's hard to figure out exactly what theory you're insisting I sign on to. You seem much more interested in incanting the magic word "oil" than in explaining what exactly it has to do with anything.

MG: But the Shah and the Saudi monarchy remained staunch US allies, guaranteeing access to their oil, adjusting production quotas at critical junctures against cartel members promoting more aggressive pricing, recycling petrodollars into US financial assets, goods, and services, and favouring US oil exploration and oil servicing companies with their business. The US, like any imperialist power, installed and supported despotic monarchies and military dictatorships in the Middle East and elsewhere in order to ensure that wealth of the world's resources would be shared between a small number of pro-Western ruling families and US multinational corporations, rather than redistributed downwards to the populations of these states or diverted to commercial competitors from France, Russia, and, more recently, China. The US has always reacted strongly to movements and regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere, whether Islamist or secular nationalist, who have resisted US and Western imperialist control of their economies and have sought instead to redirect their resource wealth into endogenous economic and social development.


>> MG: Now you would have to explain what happened in the intervening decade which, in your view, abruptly eliminated oil as a consideration in the second Gulf War against Saddam by the second Bush.
>
> SA: What was eliminated from consideration after the First Gulf War was Iraq's absorption of Kuwaiti oil, because it was no longer operative

MG: But as I noted earlier, access to Iraq's more considerable reserves, from which US firms had been excluded by Saddam, was a consideration in the second Gulf War even after Kuwait's oil supply had been secured in the first one. And isn't your narrower focus on Kuwaiti oil still somewhat inconsistent with your thesis that the "magic word oil" doesn't have much "to do with anything"?


>> MG: Our disagreement has never been about whether the US wanted to rid itself of Saddam. But to say it's "because you don't fuck with the USA" and to simply leave it at that is to say nothing at all.
>>
>> Of course, you don't fuck with the USA, but why not? The answer is that the Americans and their Western allies have been unable to abide regimes who are a threat to "fuck with" their oil supplies.
>
> SA: And what about regimes that piss off Washington without threatening any oil supplies? The US has a hands-off policy toward them? Let's try to introduce some basic logic to this argument.

MG: Washington has intervened many times against non oil producing regimes who threaten the empire in other ways. I earlier pointed to Grenada and Cuba as examples, and suggested the primary reason for US intervention in these cases was the accurate perception that their revolutionary example was encouraging like-minded movements in other more strategically important countries in the hemisphere.


>> MG: I don't agree that "it would be wrong to look for some specific rational goal" for overthrowing Saddam. In fact, you approvingly cite what was, from the neocon perspective, the "specific rational goal" of using his overthrow to demonstrate the US will to use its military power against its adveraries. But, like Woj, you don't inquire into the purpose served by that exercise of power, which in the final analysis was to strengthen US imperialism. Kristol and Kagan and the other neocons generally are self-conscious proponents of "empire" who have argued for the aggressive deployment of US power to maintain and expand it.
>
> SA: That's what I meant. It wasn't a specific goal, it was about imperial grandeur in general.

MG: This is the nub of the debate. You and Woj think the US and earlier imperialist states have expended blood and treasure for "grandeur" in and of itself, while I believe the historical evidence to be overwhelming that the underlying central consideration has been the conquest or control of the world's economic resources. I'm no more interested in debating your proposition than debating the existence of God, but it explains your hostility to a materialist explanation of imperialism.


>> MG: US domestic politics weren't the only reason which made Iraq a target. There's abundant evidence that Bush officials and advisors who were instrumental in the Project for a New American Century had targetted Iraq for regime change well prior to 9/11.
>
> SA: Yes, but again, that wasn't about oil in particular, it was about glory in general.

MG: We're talking past each other. But thanks for the discussion.



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