Friday, September 15, 2006

It's the Oil, Stupid: Conclusions of U.S. policy in the in the Middle East

There are several conclusions that can be drawn here. First of all, I think a few disclaimers are necessary. If you did not notice, I generalized and relied on less that solid sources in my analysis. That is appropriate here because the details of each country are not nearly as important for my analysis than the larger picture of U.S behavior over the last 20 years. I am no expert, you probably noticed, in Middle East affairs but you do not need to be to draw the conclusions that I have drawn. The U.S's actions are very simple to explain in the context that I have explained and am about to conclude.

First, 9/11 had very little effect on U.S. policy. The policy toward Iraq was regime change before Bush took office. Dick Cheney asked William Cohen, Bill Clinton's secretary of Defense, to brief Bush on Iraq before they were inaugurated. Contingency plans for military action were solidified before 9/11. The practical effect of the terrorist attacks was merely to speed the implementation of military action. The invasion of Afghanistan would not likely have taken place without the events of 9/11. However, their long term ramifications are now quickly fading. The Karzai government has not consolidated its power over the region. Warlords from the Northern Alliance have increased pressure on Karzai and the Taliban have resurfaced from tribal areas in Pakistan. The U.S. invasion was short lived, feebly implemented, and attention quickly shifted to Iraq before any long term positive changes could be secured. Second, there is a strong correlation between the attention, positive or negative, that the U.S. gives nations that produce oil. This attention turns on whether they follow U.S. economic policy. The oil producing nations that are willing to allow western nations to reap the benefits of the oil, are essentially given free reign in their nations to do whatever they please, be it brutal dictatorial regimes, few civil protections, or human rights abuses. When those oil producing nations choose other trading partners, especially China or Russia, then the policy quickly becomes regime change and pre-emptive military strikes become options the current administration will use, supported by a heavy partisan punditry, whose goal has never been honest journalism, but favor with the power structures. (This is the same reason ESPN commentators and anchors never publicly criticize players. If they do so, they don't get any more interviews and that often means fewer viewers.)

U.S. policy is exclusively based on whether the other nation does what they are told. In other words, if the U.S. can control a nation, the U.S. will embrace that nation and its policies, regardless of how antithetical to freedom, liberty, and democracy. If the U.S. cannot control the country, regardless of how free, and democratic, any justification necessary will be used to bring it in line. As there are very few democratic nations, and even fewer nations that actively promote universal civil rights, those two reasons can almost always be invoked to justify preventative attacks against an uncooperative state.

In the most egregious cases, the U.S. will turn to military options, as it did in Iraq in 2003. The war on terror did not change this modus operandi which has existed since WWII, but gave new and streamlined tactics to further its implementation even in the face of massive domestic and foreign popular opposition, as the expected invasion of Iraq brought. Iraq presented a particularly gruesome example which showed the administration willfully preying on the fears of an American public that the government and media intentionally sought to exaggerate and exploit in the wake of 9/11. It may even be likely that the regime change policy, again, put in place by Bill Clinton, had much more to do with pressure from the U.S. energy sector realizing that most of the profits for the oil fields in Iraq, once sanctions were removed would go to French and Russian oil companies. The only way the U.S. could prevent that was recasting the state in one of its own making. That could not have happened without something like 9/11, as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz concluded in early 1990's under the sponsorship of their think tank, the Project for a New American Century.

The basis of our foreign policy to each nation is in the economic dynamic between us and them. The bankers and financiers determine policy and our dutiful unitary executive carries it out. Follow the money, my friends, and all the wrinkles smooth themselves out.

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