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More
than eight decades ago, to be precise, in 1919, a year after the
end of World War I, the then President of the US Thomas Woodrow
Wilson had raised a rhetorical question that has become more valid
than ever before. He had asked: ''Is there any man, is there any
woman, let me say, any child here, that does not know that the seed
of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?''
Only the most gullible supporters of the Bush
administration believe that the US-led war on Iraq is aimed at destroying
the so-called weapons of mass destruction with the Saddam Hussein
regime. Who does not know that first, the attack on Afghanistan
and now, the invasion of Iraq, have been motivated by America's
desire to control the world's reserves of oil and gas-especially
the hydrocarbon reserves of the Middle East and Central Asia?
The US currently guzzles as much as one-fourth of the world's total
consumption of petroleum products while possessing barely 5 per
cent of the planet's proven reserves of fossil fuels and an equal
proportion of the earth's population. A University of Wisconsin
academic Rob Nixon went as far as to argue in The New York Times
that over the last 70 years, oil had been responsible for more of
America's ''international entanglements and anxieties than any other
industry'' and that oil ''continues to be a major source of America's
strategic vulnerability and of its reputation as a bully, in the
Islamic world and beyond''. He argued that the insatiable US appetite
for foreign oil-more than half the oil used in the US is currently
imported-''has created a long history of unsavoury marriages of
convenience with petro-despots, generalissimos and fomenters of
terrorism''.
More pithy is novelist John Le Carre's remark:
''What is at stake is not an axis of evil, but oil, money and people's
lives.'' In an article titled The United States of Oil in the online
magazine Salon, staff writer Damien Cave argued that it was common
knowledge that the Bush administration's ties to the oil industry
''are as deep as an offshore well''. The article pointed out that
three generations of the Bush family have run oil companies since
1950, that Vice President Dick Cheney used to head Halliburton,
the world's largest provider of services and equipment to oil-extracting
companies, that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice sat on
the board of directors of oil multinational Chevron-a tanker was
even graced with her name-while Commerce Secretary Donald Evans
used to head Tom Brown Inc., owner of natural gas fields.
What's not so well known is that Osama bin
Laden's family members as well as others belonging to Saudi Arabia's
oil-rich elite have contributed generously to several Bush family
ventures. As Cave wrote: ''The fusion of oil and politics is a Bush
family tradition.'' Moreover, Halliburton under Cheney had conducted
sales worth over $23 million with Iraq in 1998 and 1999 through
the company's European subsidiaries ''to avoid straining relations
with Washington'', according to a November 2000 report in the Financial
Times, London.
In early-September 2001, a few days before
the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, a report
prepared by the American Energy Information Administration stated:
''Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from
its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and
natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.'' This
statement is perhaps even more valid for Iraq, which has the world's
second-highest hydrocarbon reserves after Saudi Arabia. Iraq's production
costs are among the lowest in the world at $1 per barrel against
$2.5 in Saudi Arabia and around $4 in the US. Nearly 80 per cent
of the oil from the Gulf region moves through the narrow Straits
of Hormuz, making this area strategically crucial for American interests.
Do you still have any doubts about the real
reasons for the war on Iraq?
The author is Director, School
of Convergence at IMI, New Delhi, and a journalist.
He can be contacted a paranjoy@yahoo.com
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