In Monday's Financial Times, Ian Rutledge puts some
facts behind what many suspect to be the ultimate motivation behind the Iraq war. While no doubt the stage was set by the general impulse toward world domi-, um, "leadership" as the
Project for a New American Century calls it, the specifics were in evidence several months before 9/11.
In a crucial report to President George W. Bush by the US Council on Foreign Relations in April 2001, the president was warned that: "As the 21st century opens, the energy sector is in a critical condition. A crisis could erupt at any time . . . The world is currently close to utilising all of its available global oil production capacity, raising the chances of an oil supply crisis with more substantial consequences than seen in three decades."
[The] council stated that it was absolutely imperative that "political factors do not block the development of new oil fields in the Gulf" and that "the Department of State, together with the National Security Council" should "develop a strategic plan to encourage reopening to foreign investment in the important states of the Middle East".
[The council] acknowledged that "there is strong opposition to any such opening among key segments of the Saudi and Kuwaiti populations".
However, there was an alternative. <snip> William Kristol, the Republican party ideologist, in testimony to the House Subcommittee on the Middle East on May 22 2002 [said] that as far as oil was concerned, "Iraq is more important than Saudi Arabia".
So when, according to the former head of ExxonMobil's Gulf operations, "Iraqi exiles approached us saying, you can have our oil if we can get back in there", the Bush administration decided to use its overwhelming military might to create a pliant - and dependable - oil protectorate in the Middle East and achieve that essential "opening" of the Gulf oilfields.
<snip>
[But] the continuing violence of the insurgency has prevented Iraqi exports from even recovering to pre-invasion levels.
In short, the US appears to have fought a war for oil in the Middle East, and lost it.
So what next? On to Iran?