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On the road to Damascus |
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So what’s changed? Anybody who has read William Engdahl’s excellent book ‘A Century of War – Anglo-American oil politics and the New World Order’ (reviewed here), will not be surprised to learn that the convoluted machinations of those who rule empires, whether past or present, are intrinsic to the workings of the ruling class. History reveals that a mere handful relatively speaking of individuals are able to determine the fate of millions through the economic and political power they wield. The role of the political class that represents the interests of the owners of economic power is to maintain the rule of the owners of capital by making damn sure that opposition is neutralised and/or made to look ridiculous or ultimately ‘removed’. Hence the ‘loony left’, ‘fellow travellers’, ‘dinosaurs’ et al are but a few of the pejoratives the corporate/state-run media use to marginalise the views of those who oppose such power. But in times of crisis and failing propaganda and persuasion, more extreme measures need to be taken and such people and movements need to be re-labelled as ‘extremists’ or a ‘danger to the state’. Laws are passed making such opposition illegal, such as those now being enacted, even thinking ‘seditious’ thoughts become the subject of the state’s wrath. A quick scan of the media reveals the tactics used; President Chavez is described as a ‘leftist with authoritarian ambitions’, Castro as a ‘Marxist dictator’, and anybody who opposes the rule of capital is invariably labelled as an ‘opponent of the free market’ or ‘anti-privatisation’; a ‘demagogue’ and so on and so forth. Attempts are made to link ‘leftists’ to ‘extremists’ and even to ‘terrorists’. Such terms, in use for so long, trigger conditioned reflexes in the reader, the associations are buried deep in the public’s mind as ‘received opinion’; all thinking ceases; we metaphorically salivate when we hear or read the terms and dismiss such people and ideas as beyond the pale or even dangerous to our health. Critics of those of us who analyse the workings of our rulers are quick to dismiss us as ‘conspiracists’, nutty people who apparently have nothing else to do with our time but weave complex plots, spun out of what are, at least according to the pundits, accidents of time and place, mere serendipity. This is of course a tactic to relegate our opinions to ‘Area 51’, and obviously there are those who do spin complex webs, making connections where none exist. But connections do exist between events, else there would be no cause and effect, no one with interests and objectives they’d rather not reveal to the world for what they are, vested interests and real criminal conspiracies. That it’s governments or business doing the conspiring doesn’t make them any the less conspiracies, indeed it makes them all the more dangerous because of the immense power they wield. Without connections the world would be one of chaos and happenstance, a world where as Margaret Thatcher said, “there is no such thing as society”, an obviously loony idea but one that has a subversive appeal, as it implies that circumstances are ultimately beyond our control hence why bother as there is nothing we can do about it. The implication is that we are at the mercy of ‘natural’ forces, hence capitalism for example, is a ‘force of nature’. The intended result of course is that we adopt a position of fatalism, very convenient for our rulers, they can get on with the business of ruling undisturbed by ‘winters of discontent’. The problem of course is that any investigation of events does reveal vested interests, possessing economic and political power is not an accident and rarely is its possession the result of good intentions or a social conscience. As Engdahl’s book reveals, the past 100 years and more have been shaped by a small group of individuals who possess vast wealth intimately connected to an equally small group of people who possess enormous political power. The centres of their economic power are predictably energy, banking, weapons and communications and maintaining control of such enormous power inevitably connects directly into the comparable key areas of government; trade, investment, ‘defence’ and foreign policy. Those who sit on the boards of big corporations are also found in key government positions and they regularly make the trip back and forth between the two in a revolving door relationship. The examples are numerous, the most obvious being for example in the UK, the relationship between the Blair government and British Petroleum or in the US, between the Bush regime and Halliburton and the big oil companies. Is identifying such connections an invention, a conspiracy or a reflection of the common interests of those who hold economic power and the political class that seeks to maintain an environment that preserves that power? Most importantly, to what lengths will they go in order to maintain their power? Considering what’s at stake it is no surprise that there is virtually nothing they won’t do in order to maintain the status quo including murdering their own citizens, attacking sovereign states, concocting ‘threats’ and fabricating entire ‘histories’ to justify their piratical ways. The apologists for such activities would have us believe that such actions belong to the past, the past being conveniently, well before the current crop of rulers inherited power. St. Paul, on the road to Damascus is said to have gone through a major conversion, he proverbially ‘saw the light’ and in all likelihood there are many of us who experienced a comparable flash of illumination when the forces of Darkness invaded Iraq and came to rational and well-founded conclusions about the relationship between war and economics – the two go hand-in-hand, to pretend otherwise is either sheer ignorance or deliberate deception. The mainstream media was (and still is) all to quick to condemn all those who cried ‘it’s all about oil’ as ‘conspiracists’ and in their haste to condemn us they revealed much about their own ideological leanings, leanings that would have us believe that the invaders were actually operating out of concern for the Iraqi people. Indeed, the mainstream media was awash with apologists for the invaders. Most are now noticeable by their absence given the results of the invasion and occupation. Most noticeable is the absence of any alternative explanation for the invasion except the laughable “failure of intelligence”, which only a cretin would actually believe.
So, is it all about oil? For over 100 years oil has been lifeblood of capitalism, two world wars have been waged over possession of it, but not merely its possession but because without it, the larger economic objectives of capitalism would be unrealisable, hence to say it’s all about oil is only part of the answer. Oil fuels the armies, powers the factories and control of its production and distribution enables the West to exert control over the natural resources needed to make the entire shambolic enterprise lurch from crisis to crisis and of course, make profits for the shareholders. It is, when all’s said and done, astounding simple, one might say juvenile were it all not so murderous of millions.
A report, ‘Crude Designs – The rip-off of Iraq’s oil wealth’, available here, is a comprehensive analysis of the centrality of oil to the invasion of Iraq and for anyone who is really interested in the real motivations behind the invasion and occupation, it is required reading. I’ll do my best to produce an overview of its findings as understanding what is really going on is central to countering all the nonsense surrounding the policies and actions of our governments and those who would condemn us as ‘conspiracists’ or defend the motivations of our rulers as ‘humanitarian’. Much has been made in the corporate/state-run media of Blair being some kind of ‘restraining influence’ on Bush and the ‘neo-cons’ but as the report makes abundantly clear, US-UK foreign and energy and military policies are ‘joined at the hip’ and have been so for the past century and in spite of the rivalries. As Jack Straw made clear in January 2003,
And lest anyone think that the UK government’s relationship with the major oil companies is not central, a later paper states that a key objective is to
And, as the report demonstrates the US-UK relationship is no ‘one-night- stand’, but an on-going relationship a century-old. Moreover the label ‘neo-con’ is a total misnomer, for whilst it may well be true that Bush is some kind of weird Christian fundamentalist and his close associates are heavily involved with Israel’s imperialist strategy, it is a big mistake to confuse the ideology of Bush or that of Israel with the fundamental strategic/economic interests of the US (and UK). This is made abundantly clear by the ‘parting of the ways’ of the ‘traditionalists’ within the US ruling elite currently taking place as the Middle East strategy of the Bush regime goes pear-shaped, revealing the fact that as long as objectives can be realised, Bush’s ‘peculiar’ ideas are neither here nor there in the larger scheme of things. Importantly, the policies of America and Britain are coordinated. The US-UK Energy Dialogue – a bilateral initiative established during the April 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Blair and President Bush in Crawford, Texas,[3] and designed to “enhance coordination and cooperation on energy issues” – demonstrates the close convergence of Anglo-American views and interests on Middle Eastern oil. The relationship between economics and politics is revealed by the following quote taken from the Executive Summary
The report describes the background as well as the context leading up to the invasion and occupation; the key players and their interests and connections as well as supplying a detailed analysis of the effects of the Iraqi ‘government’ signing away not only its one and only natural resource, oil, but in doing so, also renouncing its sovereignty and democratic control over it. As the report states, “PSAs are effectively immune from public scrutiny and lock governments into economic terms that cannot be altered for decades”. The potential losses to the Iraqi people are staggering, the most conservative estimates puts it at $94 billion over the usual (25 year length of a PSA contract) assuming oil at $40 per barrel and $250 billion if the cost is $50 per barrel! The degree of influence of both the US and UK governments over future Iraqi oil policy is revealed by the following
So too with the US. When the Coalition Provisional Authority ‘handed over power’ to the Iraqi Interim Government, a senior US official said
An important aspect of the debate around Iraq’s oil has hinged on the issue of ‘privatisation’ which has, according to the report obscured the nature of the PSA, for as the report states, it’s “who gets the revenue and who controls the way in which oil is developed” that counts. PSAs first appeared in Indonesia in the late 1960s (not surprisingly following the US-inspired and backed overthrow of Sukarno). PSAs are an “ingenious arrangement” as “PSAs shift the ownership of oil from companies to the state, and invert the flow of payments between state and company.” Traditionally, the relationship between the foreign oil companies and the state was based on royalty payments (and still is in the major oil- producing countries of the world such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela), with the oil company taking the investment risk. PSAs reverse this process. PSAs are an ingenious arrangement for although “… the oil is still legally in the hands of the state, foreign companies are compensated for their investment in oil production infrastructure and for the risks they take.” PSAs are
The report states the following facts about PSAs
PSAs are also incredibly complex legal documents that require an army of sophisticated legal eagles not only to draft but to understand.
What we call ‘creative accounting’ of the kind Enron was so adept at. And the potential profits are “staggering”, as much 178 per cent compared to an average 12 per cent return on investment, assuming oil at $40 a barrel, not very likely in the near term. With current price at around $60 per barrel, the oil execs are salivating at the thought of getting their hands on the biggest oil reserves on the planet (from 100-200 billion barrels).
The corporate lobby group ITIC (the International Tax & Investment Centre) with most of its 110 listed sponsors large corporations a quarter of which are oil companies is perhaps the best example of the role of big capital in ripping off Iraq and it advocates the use of PSAs. Yet the report’s assessment is that it is
But the interim constitution forced on the Iraqi people made quite sure that the terms over which Iraq’s oil would extracted would not be subject to oversight or control by the Iraqi people,
The meshing of state and business objectives is made clear by the report and the key role of PSAs play in the policies of both the US and the UK. If the US-UK oil companies and their political/military capos get their way Iraq
That’s assuming it ever gets a democratic government. Notes [1] The terminology of PSAs labels the private companies as “contractors”. This report illustrates that this label is misleading because PSAs give companies control over oil development and access to extensive profits. [2] Introductory paper on the Middle East by the UK, undated [1947], FRUS, 1947, Vol. V, p. 569, cited in Mark Curtis, The Ambiguities of Power (Zed Books, London, 1995), p. 21 [3] US Department of Commerce, Memorandum for the President, Transmittal of the Report on the US-UK Energy Dialogue, 30 July 2003 [4] Dr Kim Howells MP, answer to Parliamentary Question by Harry Cohen MP, 12 July 2005, Hansard column 878W [5] James McLaughlin (Iraq Policy Unit, Foreign & Commonwealth Office), letter to Lorne Stockman (PLATFORM), response to request under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information, 9 December 2004 [6] Jim Krane, “US will retain sovereign power in Iraq,” Associated Press, 21 March, 2004 [7] Professor Thomas W Wälde, an expert in oil law at the University of Dundee, ‘The current status of international petroleum investment: regulating, licensing, taxing and contracting’, in CEPMLP Journal, Vol 1, no.5, July 1995 (pub. University of Dundee) [8] Carola Hoyos, ‘Exiles Call for Iraq to Let in Oil Companies’, Financial Times, 7 April 2003 [9] Energy Compass, ‘Iraq: Puzzling over the future’, 1 October 2004 Crude Designs – The rip-off of Iraq’s oil wealth. Lead Publisher US co-publishers The Institute for Policy Studies. strengthens social movements with independent research, visionary thinking, and links to the grassroots, scholars and elected officials.http://www.ips-dc.org Oil Change International campaigns to expose the true costs of oil and facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy. We are dedicated to identifying and overcoming political barriers to that transition. http://www.priceofoil.org UK co-publishers War on Want is a UK-based campaigning charity. Founded in 1951 it has links to the labour movement and supports progressive, people-centred development projects around the world. http://www.waronwant.org |
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Oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British control is the Persian and Mesopotamian supply .… Control over these oil supplies becomes a first class British war aim – Sir Maurice Hankey in 1918 and Britain’s First Secretary of the War Cabinet