US vs western Europe & vice versa

I have three points regarding the interesting Paul Harris piece Dave Smith
was kind enough to quote. Two are small and perhaps pedantic, the other
rather important, I feel..


Pedantic point 1:

On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Dave Smith quoted Paul Harris:

(. . .)

|>Britain's entry into the European Union is inevitable; Scandinavia will join
|>sooner rather than later.

Britain is a member of the EU; so is Finland, Sweden and Denmark. The only
Scandinavian non-member of the EU is Norway (whose membership has been
negotiated twice by its various governments but two referenda said "no").
Britain and DK are not members of the EURO-zone, i.e., they retained their
currencies; maybe that is what Harris has in mind.


Pedantic point 2:

It is amazing to me to see how basically everybody, irrespective of political
bent and intellectual content, keeps referring to either the EU or western
Europe as "Europe". Seen from Budapest, Bucharest or Moscow this looks like
this: moderately funny, but enough already, ok? :-)


(To me) bigger point:

Harris writes:

|>What precipitated all of this was not September 11, nor a sudden realization
|>that Saddam was still a nasty guy, nor just the change in leadership in the
|>United States. What precipitated it was Iraq's November 6, 2000 switch to
|>the euro as the currency for its oil transactions. At the time of the
|>switch, it might have seemed daft that Iraq was giving up such a lot of oil
|>revenue to make a political statement. But that political statement has been
|>made and the steady depreciation of the dollar against the euro since then
|>means that Iraq has derived good profits from switching its reserve and
|>transaction currencies. The euro has gained about 17 percent against the
|>dollar since that time, which also applies to the $10 billion held in Iraq's
|>United Nations "oil for food" reserve fund.

As a sociologist, I have learned to mistrust single-cause arguments. I do not
disagree with the point that a switch to the Euro would mean a potential loss
of various hidden subsidies for the U.S. economy. Nor do I disagree with the
basic message of Harris' piece (the significance of the U.S -- EU dyadic
conflict), although I would be watchful on other geopolitical dimensions also
(especially China!!!), However, even as we just look for reasons for the U.S.
belligerence, I would not leave out some other explanations / causal factors
/ factoids.

- the EU's economies are about 30 to 50 % more fuel efficient than the U.S.
Japan is even more so, not to mention China.

- Iraq does have the single largest oil reserves in the world

- of the major oil importers of the world, the U.S. has the smallest share of
its imports from the Middle East, meanwhile, a relatively sizeable portion of
U.S. imports come from (currently uncooperative) Venezuela

- the west European countries' oil imports are, on the other hand, quite
diversified geographically, including not only the Middle East but also the
central Asian republics of the fmr USSR, north Africa, GB, and Norway. Keep
in mind also that, in addition to it all, most of western Europe has this
peculiar thing called *public transportation infrastructure*, including an
extremely well organized and efficient rail network, suggesting further
opportunities of reducing oil dependence, if need (say, a $80.00/barrel oil
price) be...

- the U.S. imports virtually no fmr-Soviet oil, I suppose do partly to the
legacy of the cold war (path dependence), partly to geographical problems
(pipeline to tanker connection problems, old story)

- China is appearing on the oil market scene with a potentially *enormous*
new demand for oil, strategically very interested in--again, fmr-Soviet
central Asian oil

- a successful U.S.  military engagement in Iraq will create a forward
position for U.S. troops in a strategically very significant part of the
world, (e.g., see the State of the "Union" speech: "we cannot allow such a
tyrant /Hussein/ to rule such a crucially important part of the world",
non-verbatim quote).

- post-cold-war U.S. military bases involve the following countries (just off
the top of my head, this list is surely not exhaustive):

        - Hungary
        - Kosovo (=Yugoslavia)
        - Former Yugoslav Rep. of Macedonia
        - Afghanistan
        - one of the central Asian former-Soviet republics, I cannot recall
which one, perhaps Kyrgyzstan, used as an air force base since the
Afghanistan war
        - (fmr-Soviet) Georgia "training" operations

- pending base negotiations include:

        - Poland
        - the Baltic states
        - Slovenia
        - Romania
        - Bulgaria
        - India . . .

 ==> what does it look like to you if you plot this on the map?

- do we need the specific drama of the German-U.S. disagreement to expect
that perhaps some U.S. troops will be superfluous in Germany once U.S. troops
are stationed another 3-600 kilometers to the east?

- the domestic problems of an illegitimate presidency are always helped by a
good little policy of mass murder abroad a.k.a. "rallying behind the chief"

- the lure of establishing an entirely new kind of warfare (0% casualty risk,
remote operation, virtual control, etc.), the technological imperatives that
require non-virtual testing

I'm sure there are other things but I cannot think of them right now.

Oh, and two more implications of all this: if we think in these terms, we can
actually do away with the rhetoric of west European niceness which is, to me,
probably the most annoying aspect of the last two months or so. Germany and
France are not being "nicer" or more "civilized" than anybody else: they are
just acting on their geopolitical interests, which in this particular case
clashes with that of the U.S. Finally, I also think that the U.S. vs western
Europe conflict (intra-core hegemonic rivalry) is a relatively small matter
in contrast to what else is going on in the world (the absence of a real
alternative to capitalism, the exacerbation of inequalities, racism, the
obvious absence of any answer to the threat of environmental destruction, the
spread of preventable and/or treatable or at least manageable diseases, etc.)


József (Böröcz)