David Harvey: It is about oil

From chapter two (All About Oil) in David Harvey's "The New Imperialism", 
Oxford 2003

I briefly review this history here in order to make two basic points. Since 
1945 there has been a steady escalation of US involvement in the region, 
marked by a significant break after 1980 as the involvement came to depend 
more and more on a direct military presence. Secondly, the conflict with 
Iraq is of long standing, and planning for some sort of military denouement 
was in the works even before the last Gulf War started. The only difference 
between the Clinton years and now is that the mask has come off and 
bellicosity has displaced a certain reticence, in part because of the 
post-9/11 atmosphere within the United States that makes overt and 
unilateral military action more politically acceptable. Viewed 
geopolitically and in the long term, some confrontation with Iraq appeared 
inevitable unless it became a client state of the US, like Saudi Arabia. 
But why this geopolitical thrust? Again, the answer has everything to do 
with oil.

At any one time, the status of global oil reserves is a matter of 
conjecture. Oil companies are notoriously reticent to say what they know 
and on occasion deliberately mislead. Estimates of reserves often differ 
wildly. Most accounts suggest, however, that the rate of exploitation of 
oil reserves has exceeded the rate of discovery since 1980 or so. Oil is 
slowly becoming increasingly scarce. We do know that many fields are past 
their peak and that within a decade or so many of the world's present 
oilfields will be depleted. This is the case for domestic US, North Sea, 
Canadian, Russian, and (more ominously) Chinese production. While other 
oilfields have a longer life, the only fields that look set to last fifty 
years or "more are those in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab 
Emirates, and Kuwait. While new discoveries could change this picture, most 
strategic thinkers have to confront the increasing significance of the 
Middle East as the key provider of oil over time. On the demand side we see 
that the United States is increasingly dependent upon foreign imports, that 
the dynamic centres of economic growth in East and South-East Asia are 
almost bereft of significant oil reserves (with demand in China now 
escalating at a phenomenal rate), and that Europe (with the exception of 
Britain and Norway) is likewise totally dependent on imported oil. 
Alternatives to oil are being explored, but there is very little chance 
that these will be serious contenders (given the barriers erected by the 
oil companies and other vested interests) for several decades. Access to 
Middle Eastern oil is now, therefore, a crucial security issue for the 
United States, as it is for the global economy as a whole.

This immediately poses the problem of US motivation in seeking tighter 
military and strategic control, unilaterally if necessary. Thomas Friedman 
argues, for example, that 'there is nothing illegitimate or immoral about 
the US being concerned that an evil, megalomaniacal dictator might acquire 
excessive influence over the natural resource that powers the world's 
industrial base'. But we have to be careful to convey to the public and 
reassure the world that the intention is 'to protect the world's right to 
economic survival' rather than our own right to indulge ourselves, that the 
US is 'acting for the benefit of the planet, not simply to fuel American 
excesses. ... If we occupy Iraq and simply install a more pro-US autocrat 
to run the Iraqi gas station (as we have in other Arab oil states), then 
this war partly for oil would be immoral.'16 Is the US, in short, 
exercising leadership and seeking to regulate the use of Middle Eastern oil 
in everyone's interests through consent? Or is it seeking domination to 
realize its own far narrower strategic interests? Friedman wishes to 
believe the former. But what if it is the latter?

If the US successfully engineers the overthrow of both Chavez and Saddam, 
if it can stabilize or reform an armed-to-the-teeth Saudi regime that is 
currently based on the shifting sands of authoritarian rule (and in 
imminent danger of falling into the hands of radicalized Islam), if it can 
move on (as seems it will likely seek to do) from Iraq to Iran and 
consolidate a strategic military presence in the central Asian republics 
and so dominate Caspian Basin oil reserves, then it might, through firm 
control of the global oil spigot, hope to keep effective control over the 
global economy for the next fifty years. Europe and Japan, as well as East 
and South-East Asia (now crucially including China) are heavily dependent 
on Gulf oil, and these are regional configurations of political-economic 
power that now pose a challenge to US global hegemony in the worlds of 
production and finance. What better way for the United States to ward off 
that competition and secure its own hegemonic position than to control the 
price, conditions, and distribution of the key economic resource upon which 
those competitors rely? And what better way to do that than to use the one 
line of force where the US still remains all-powerful-military might? There 
is also a military aspect to this argument. The military runs on oil. North 
Korea may have a sophisticated air-force, but it cannot use it much for 
lack of fuel. Not only does the US need to ensure its own military 
supplies, but any future military conflict with, say, China will be 
lopsided if the US has the power to cut off the oil flow to its opponent. 
But such lines of argument only make sense if the US has reason to fear 
that its dominant position within global capitalism is somehow threatened. 
It is to the economic rather than the military dimension to this question 
that I turn in Chapter 2 of this enquiry.


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org