Page 3 of 4 Are they really oil wars?
By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
due to the exaggerated notion that both President George W Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney were "oil men" before coming to the White House. But the
fact is that Bush was never more than an unsuccessful petty oil prospector and
Cheney headed a company, the notorious Halliburton, that sold (and still sells)
services to oil companies and the Pentagon.
The larger part of the perception, however, stems from the fact that oil
companies do benefit from oil price hikes that result from war and political
turbulence in the Middle East. Such benefits are, however, largely incidental.
Surely, American oil companies would welcome the spoils of the war (that result
from oil price hikes) in Iraq or anywhere else in the world. From the largely
incidental oil price hikes that follow war and political convulsion, some
observers automatically conclude that, therefore, Big Oil must have been behind
the war.[17] But there is no evidence that, at
least in the case of the current invasion of Iraq, oil companies pushed for or
supported the war.
On the contrary, there is strong evidence that, in fact, oil companies did not
welcome the war because they prefer stability and predictability to periodic
oil spikes that follow war and political convulsion: "Looking back over the
last 20 years, there is plenty of evidence showing the industry's push for
stability and cooperation with Middle Eastern countries and leaders, and the US
government's drive for hegemony works against the oil industry."[18] As Thierry
Desmarest, chairman and chief executive of France's giant oil company,
TotalFinaElf, put it, "A few months of cash generation is not a big deal.
Stable, not volatile, prices and a $25 price (per barrel) would be convenient
for everyone."[19]
It is true that for a long time, from the beginning of Middle Eastern oil
exploration and discovery in the early 20th century until the mid-1970s,
colonial and/or imperial powers controlled oil either directly or through
control of oil producing countries - at times, even by military force. But that
pattern of colonial or imperialist exploitation of global markets and resources
has changed now.
Most of the current theories of imperialism and hegemony that continue invoking
that old pattern of Big Oil behavior tend to suffer from an ahistorical
perspective. Today, as discussed earlier, even physically occupying and
controlling another country's oil fields will not necessarily be beneficial to
oil interests. Not only will military adventures place the operations of
current energy projects at jeopardy, but they will also make the future plans
precarious and unpredictable.
Big Oil interests, of course, know this; and that's why they did not
countenance the war on Iraq: "The big oil companies were not enthusiastic about
the Iraqi war," says Fareed Mohamedi of PFC Energy, a consultancy firm based in
Washington DC that advises petroleum firms. "Corporations like Exxon-Mobil and
Chevron-Texaco want stability, and this is not what Bush is providing in Iraq
and the Gulf region," adds Mohamedi.[20]
Big Oil interests also know that not only is war no longer the way to gain
access to oil - it is an obstacle to gaining that access. Exclusion of US oil
companies from vast oil resources in countries such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela,
and a number of central Asian countries due to militaristic US foreign policy
is a clear testament to this fact. Many of these countries (including, yes,
Iran) would be glad to have major US oil companies invest, explore and extract
oil from their rich reserves. Needless to say, US oil companies would be
delighted to have access to those oil resources. But US champions of war and
militarism have successfully torpedoed such opportunities through their
unilateral wars of aggression and their penchant for a Cold War-like
international atmosphere.
When Vladimir Putin first became president of Russia he was willing to allow
American energy companies to continue with the one-sided contracts they had
drawn up during Boris Yeltsin's presidency. Putin built a seemingly trusting
relationship with Bush, who looked into Putin's soul and liked what he saw. The
two leaders grew even closer in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon - when Russia provided "help for America's
invasion of Afghanistan". Soon after this generous cooperation, however, "Bush
repudiated the anti-ballistic missile treaty in the belief that America could
develop the technology for winning a nuclear war. This posed a huge strategic
threat to Russia."[21]
Describing the heavy-handed, imperial US policy toward Russia, Stephen F Cohen
writes:
The real US policy has been very different - a relentless,
winner-take-all exploitation of Russia's post-1991 weakness. Accompanied by
broken American promises, condescending lectures and demands for unilateral
concessions, it has been even more aggressive and uncompromising than was
Washington's approach to Soviet Communist Russia.[22]
Bush's
withdrawal from the ABM treaty not merely posed an existential threat to Russia
but was almost a betrayal of the trust that Putin had put in him. This led to
Putin's disenchantment with America.
Eventually he seems to have
decided that every time America transgressed against Russian interests he would
retaliate by stopping another American company from exploiting Russian
resources.[23]
During the past few decades, major oil
companies have consistently opposed US policies and military threats against
countries like Iran, Iraq, and Libya. They have, indeed, time and again,
lobbied US foreign policy makers for the establishment of peaceful relations
and diplomatic rapprochement with those countries. The Iran-Libya Sanction Act
of 1996 (ILSA) is a strong testament to the fact that oil companies nowadays
view wars, economic sanctions, and international political tensions as harmful
to their long-term business interests and, accordingly, strive for peace, not
war, in international relations.
On March 15, 1995, president Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12957, which
banned all US contributions to the development of Iran's petroleum
resources, a crushing blow to the oil industry, especially to the Conoco oil
company that had just signed a $1 billion contract to develop fields in Iran.
The deal marked a strong indication that Iran was willing to improve its
relationship with the United States, only to have Clinton effectively nullify
it. Two months later, sighting "an extraordinary threat to the national
security, foreign policy and economy of the US," Clinton issued another order,
1259, that expanded the sanctions to become a total trade and investment
embargo against Iran. Then a year later came ILSA, which extended the sanctions
imposed on Iran to Libya as well.
It is no secret that the major force behind the Iran-Libya Sanction Act was the
America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main Zionist lobby in
Washington. The success of AIPAC in passing ILSA through both the Congress and
the White House over the opposition of the major US oil companies is testament
to the fact that, in the context of US policy in the Middle East, even the
influence of the oil industry pales vis-a-vis the influence of the Zionist
lobby.[24]
ILSA was originally to be imposed on both US and foreign companies. However, in
the end it was the US companies that suffered the most due to waivers that were
given to European companies after pressure from the European Union. In 1996,
the EU pursued its distaste of ILSA by lodging complaints with the World Trade
Organization (WTO) against the US and through adopting "blocking legislation"
that would prevent EU companies from complying with ILSA. Meanwhile, the
contract that Iran had originally signed with Conoco was awarded to
TotalFinaElf of France for $760 million; the deal also left the door open for
Total to sign an additional contract with Iran for $2 billion in 1997 with
their partners Gazprom and Petronas.
In May 1997, major US oil companies such as Conoco, Exxon, Atlantic Richfield,
and Occidental Petroleum joined other (non-military) US companies to create an
anti-sanction coalition. Earlier that same year Conoco chief executive Archie
Dunham publicly took a stance against unilateral US sanctions by stating that
"US companies, not rogue regimes, are the ones that suffer when the United
States imposes economic sanctions."
Texaco officials have also argued that the US can be more effective in bringing
about change in other countries by allowing US companies to do business with
those countries instead of imposing economic sanctions that tend to be
counterproductive.
Alas, Washington's perverse, misguided and ineffectual policy of economic
sanctions for political purposes - often in compliance with the wishes of some
powerful special interests - continues unabated. "Even with the increased
pro-trade lobbying efforts of the oil industry and groups like USAEngage, whose
membership ranges from farmers and small business owners to Wall Street
executives and oilmen, the lack of support from Washington and the Bush
administration could not allow them [major oil companies and other non-military
transnational companies] to overtake or counteract the already rolling momentum
of AIPAC's influence on Middle East policy or the renewal of ISLA."[25]
Despite the fact that oil companies nowadays view war and political turmoil in
the Middle East as detrimental to their long-term interests and, therefore, do
not support policies that are conducive to war and militarism, and despite the
fact that war is no longer the way to gain access to oil, the widespread
perception that every US military engagement in the region, including the
current invasion of Iraq, is prompted by oil considerations continues. The
question is why?
Behind the myth of war for oil
The widely shared but erroneous view that recent US wars of choice are driven
by oil concerns is partly due to precedence: the fact that for a long time
military force was key to colonial or imperialist control and exploitation of
foreign markets and resources, including oil. It is also partly due to
perception: the
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
