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Summer 2003 cycling

Slovakia

Agelasto
2004-05-18 20:22:46

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What are US interests? As defined by Republicans, they include Republican possession of the White House. Once the Supremes put Bush in the White House, it seemed clear that his advisors' number one priority became his re-election (Democrats would say election) 4 years later. Wars might help or they might hurt presidents' political futures, and one certainly does not wage war without an eye on the electoral timetable. The Bush family had unfinished business in Iraq. The alleged attempted assassination of Bush Senior surely influenced Bush Junior's opinion of the Iraq leader. Furthermore, the US economy was in a down cycle, kept there partly by reluctant investors and consumers uncertain over war. But once the military build-up as prelude to war was underway, there was no way war could be averted. There was nothing Hussein could do regarding the UN inspection teams or his own political future that would avert way. How could the US president withdraw troops from the Persian Gulf without a war and not look like a total fool. The dispatch of the first troops meant that war had started.

There have been plenty of evil leaders around the globe that didn't attract US wrath. Indeed, many were friends, Hussein among them at one time. But those friendly leaders did not sit on huge oil deposits either. The major US interest in Iraq obviously concerns oil, cheap oil. To say the war was not about oil is to ignore the obvious.

When it comes to oil pricing and supply, the US is mostly left out of the loop. The Saudis call the shots; the US watches. If the US, however, had a friend in Iraq, it could very well have at least some influence on world oil. The US supports the unified pricing of oil and the functions of the oil cartel. If the US chose to go it alone, to be isolationist in oil matters, it would need virtually no Middle East oil. Venezuela and Mexico could provide the US with the imported oil it needs. US domestic production could provide the rest. There's Texas and Alaska. If the prices were high enough, it would be feasible to uncap domestic oil wells, which have become economically unviable to operate with low oil prices.

Who then depends on Middle East oil? Our good friends and sometimes friendly competitors, the Europeans. If the US had some influence on oil pricing and supply, it would necessarily be a more important political actor on the European stage. Europe (first Western, now the whole of) has been seen more a friend than a foe of the US. But Europe is changing. Who knows what the European Community will become, perhaps more competitive and less subservient than the US would desire. It seems logical to me, if a bit convoluted, to say that a war in Iraq is not divorced from US-European oil matters.

US foreign policy is often accompanied by an almost evangelical zeal. America likes to export its culture and values around the world - and much of the world likes much of what it imports from the US. Americans do believe their country is the best in the world. The war in Iraq is about one set of values - liberal democracy and US-directed capitalism and globalization - deemed to be better than another - those of a fairly ruthless dictator.

So when I am asked, as I have been so often on this trip, for my views on why the US attacked Iraq, I respond as above. A variety of issues conflated to produce a foreign policy that met with the country's approval.