Oil And the Americanization of the Middle East

Book Review: Oil Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda
By Larry Everest
Published January 2004 by Common Courage Press, Maine

“Oil and Power” unravels the truths behind the war on Iraq, beginning with the divide-and-rule strategy of the British Empire to subjugate Iraq and other large chunks of the Middle East at the turn of the 20^th century and its replacement by U.S. neocolonialism in the 1950s. In the book, Everest clearly lays down the vital interests that had driven colonial powers led by the British and French empire-builders to covet Iraq and the rest of the Arab world: oil and the practical value that makes the region the key to a global empire.

By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat.com

Next to a battle lost, the worst thing is a battle won.

One year after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power following the U.S. invasion and occupation of his country, U.S.-led coalition forces are themselves locked in a guerilla war that has seen more than 600 Americans and thousands of civilians killed. The Iraqis – 50,000 of whom, according to independent estimates, were killed during the war last year – are themselves caught between the continued fierce fighting and the sheer terror of recovering their lives destroyed by the war.

Next to rebuilding their lives, nobody knows what recovery could be possible to bring back the historic relics and museums destroyed. U.S. air strikes made sure that Iraq’s history that included one of the world’s first great civilizations would forever be buried. After all, the war was about burying the satanic evil of Saddam and giving the Iraqis a new lease on life.

Indeed, there’s a sense of reconstruction going on in Iraq, as George W. Bush, Jr. had promised. But the reconstruction is taking place mainly in Iraq’s oilfields and oil pipelines. Near these oilfields are new military bases being built or sequestered by the U.S. forces including a military camp inside the Baghdad international airport; the 25- sq. km. Camp Anaconda north of Baghdad; the Tallil air base near Nasariyah; in the western desert near the Syrian border; and at Bashir airfield in the Kurdish region of the north.

Economic reconstruction is also centered on de-nationalizing the oil industry – reversing the policy made by Saddam years before his fall – leading to all-out privatization. In fact the whole economic program being laid by the U.S. occupying force is about reining in Iraq’s economy along privatization and making sure that BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and other large U.S. corporations would recover their oil possessions from which they had made huge profits before Saddam made that difficult.

The economic blueprint, based on the paper “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth,” was prepared by the private company Bearing Point years before Bush, Jr. ordered the invasion of Iraq. At the center of its implementation is Paul Bremer, the virtual viceroy of the American Empire in Iraq. Bremer is a top executive of Bearing Point.

With not a single piece of evidence found to prove Bush, Jr.’s theory about “weapons of mass destruction” to justify his “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq, what critics – along with millions of anti-war protesters all over the world – have argued all along in their opposition to the “war on terror” has been vindicated: OIL. It was oil that moved Bush’s policymakers and ideologues to make a push for Iraq, it was for oil that every bullet, missile and cluster bomb were used to bring the Iraqis to their knees in violation of international law, and it was oil that was behind the arrogant display of American power in the Persian Gulf. “Blood for oil,” as Bush critics would put it.

Race for global power

For 20 years, Larry Everest, an American freelance investigative writer has covered the Middle East and Central Asia. His reports have been published by Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle. Especially in the growing anti-war movement, his new book, “Oil Power and Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda,” has been a hot copy in the United States.

Published in January this year, “Oil Power and Empire” details the U.S. race to extend its global power – and Iraq’s unlucky central role. Documents have been unearthed showing that the war against Iraq had nothing to do with WMDs and that it was planned the moment Bush, Jr. took his seat as U.S. president early 2001. But the military blueprint was part of a master plan, called “Defense Policy Guidance,” that Dick Cheney (now U.S. vice president), Paul Wolfowitz (current defense undersecretary) and other neoconservatives hatched 12 years ago right after the disintegration of the other superpower – Soviet Union – in a bid to consolidate American hegemony throughout the world.

Iraq held the key toward making sure that oil would continue to make the American economy dominant in the 21^st century. But it was also to be the base toward redrawing the map of the Middle East in the American image under the pretext of “regime change” and “democratization.”

In April 2001, according to Everest, a report by the neoconservative U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and the Baker Institute for Public Policy, pushed the alarm button when it revealed that “the world is currently precariously close to utilizing all of its available global oil production capacity, raising the chances of an oil supply crisis with more substantial consequences than seen in three decades.”

The report, which had been commissioned by Vice President Dick Cheney, was followed by the latter’s own “National Energy Policy” which also warned that in 20 years U.S. oil consumption would increase by 33 percent and natural gas consumption by well over 50 percent. Based on this trend, Cheney said, the United States would be importing two-thirds of its oil in 20 years – up from 37 percent in 1980. “Energy security,” Cheney, himself a top oil executive, reiterated, “must be a priority of U.S. trade and foreign policy.”

Iraq oil

Meanwhile, Iraq, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) could turn out to be the world’s potentially biggest oil supplier, and not Saudi Arabia, which has 262 billion barrels of oil reserves. In addition to its 112 billion proven oil reserves, EIA reveals, Iraq has probably another 220 billion barrels in unexplored areas. The country’s total oil reserves – 332 billion barrels - would be equal to one-quarter of total world reserves.

That the acquisition of oil was central to Bush’s war policy is a fact whose trail leads to the White House itself. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum – who coined the phrase “axis of evil” – said in October 2001 – that the global “war on terror” was designed to “bring new freedom and new stability to the most vicious and violent quadrant of the earth – and new prosperity to us all, by securing the world’s largest pool of oil.” Along with the Bush ideologue Richard Perle, Frum advocated in January this year the overthrow of the Iranian government and imposing economic quarantine of Syria and military blockade of North Korea.

“Who gets the oil?” became the main agenda of a closed-door meeting of U.S. oilmen, military strategists and pro-U.S. Iraqi exiles in London in October 2002, as told by Everest based on a Guardian report. The British paper cited excerpts from the meeting’s paper, “Invading Iraq: Dangers and Opportunities for the Energy Sector”: “We could see the three of the world’s largest public companies – BP, Shell and ExxonMobil – fighting for their old IPC (Iraq Petroleum Company) possessions” that Saddam Hussein nationalized in 1972.

Other claimants

Everest explains however that just as oil was the hammer that beat the nail of the U.S. war against Iraq, the same war made sure that other claimants to the Middle East oil would have to have the blessings of Washington first. It’s the oil, stupid, former Clinton official Kenneth Pollack says as he bluntly spells out that the U.S. is not simply concerned with keeping oil from the Persian Gulf flowing to the U.S. economy. “It also has an interest,” he says, “in preventing any potentially hostile state from gaining control over the region and its resources and using such control to amass vast power or blackmail the world.”

“Oil and Power” unravels the truths behind the war on Iraq, beginning with the divide-and-rule strategy of the British Empire to subjugate Iraq and other large chunks of the Middle East at the turn of the 20^th century and its replacement by U.S. neocolonialism in the 1950s. In the book, Everest clearly lays down the vital interests that had driven colonial powers led by the British and French empire-builders to covet Iraq and the rest of the Arab world: oil and the practical value that makes the region the key to a global empire.

Using the same context, Everest offers the reader historical accounts and documented evidence showing that U.S. policy in the Middle East has nothing to do with “democratizing” it but rather with the same objectives that drove the British and French into the heart of the region. Not even war apologists in the Philippines and fans of Bush, Jr. could ignore these facts. If ever they read the book, they will not turn to its last page without entertaining second thoughts about their own views.

“Oil and Power” should be a must read in the Philippines especially among policy-makers because it has earned acclaim from both radical and pro-war conservative sectors. Daniel Ellsberg, author of the controversial books Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers says that Everest’s book “turns on the lights in the dark cellar of American foreign policy in the Middle East.” He described the book as “remarkable, horrifying and brilliantly illuminating.”

On the other hand, Anatol Lieven, senior associate of the conservative think tank, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recommends “Oil Power and Empire” an “essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the background to the latest war and the present occupation.”

How many more lives have to be claimed in the name of oil? Bulatlat.com

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