The way I see it, that's the political process: a tug of war, factions, the odd cock-up, someone gets the upper hand, the rest fall into line - and the end product of this process is that the US policy establishment becomes a unified body and speaks in one voice ... until the wheels come off a bit later.
Wojtek:
'A larger point here is not the accuracy of an explanation of a particular historical event, but the tendency - particularly strong in certain Marxist circles - for a grand all-encompassing macro-systemic narrative and fitting all facts into that narrative, while systematically disregarding the possibility that human agency may play a decisive role every now and then.'
Yes, and the grand all encompasing macro-systemic narrative that fits all facts excluding human agency that I take issue with is the one that says 'War for Oil'. More than reducing all human history to greed the 'war for oil' thesis is one that makes us into the objects, and oil into the subject. It is commodity fetishism writ large, where mankind becomes the puppet of things (or stuff). This is an (anti-)social theoretic trend that is very strong these days - everything happens because of 'oil', 'blood diamonds', 'fast food' or some other inanimate object, to which we are presumed slaves.
In the instance I raised (Gulf War 1991-2) I prefer to see that the US military command were looking for an alternative justification for their spending in that all-too conjunctural moment, when their chosed enemy of the previous sixty years, decided to give up. Or in other words cock-up (Kremlin collapse) followed by tug of war ('Internal Look' over Zagros Mountain schema), human agency playing an enlarged role (setting up Saddam).
PS I went to Jested on a journalistic project for Blueprint magazine: the Victoria and Albert Museum ran a (every good) exhibition on Cold War Modernism a year or so ago, and to celebrate it, they flew me and a couple of others off to Prague to see another exhibition there, and to visit the Jested communications tower and hotel. The man with the beard is the surviving architect. It was very James Bond in the decor, and up in the tower were lots of old broken down bits of telecomms machinery. I recommend it.