Iraqi oil and global power

The oil is flowing again in Iraq. Iraq’s oil ministry hopes 4.5m barrels per day will be extracted by 2013. Even if production falls short of this goal, it will bring in considerable revenue to those who own it. Where will that money go?

First, it will go to oil companies, executives and shareholders in particular.  Not only do large oil firms, which function largely as the right-arm of the modern state, benefit directly from the forced opening up of the resources of weaker states; they also benefit from the higher prices that result from the instability in the newly-“liberated” nation. Let us see which firms have acquired the largest stakes.

The usual suspects, such as Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and BP, have won the usual concessions. Mixed in with them, though, are the China National Petroleum Corporation, Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., the Korea Gas Corp, Malaysia’s Petronas, Turkish Petroleum International and Russia’s Lukoil and Gazprom. Iraq’s oil is being auctioned off to the powerful people who might otherwise have had the power to block future war. Now that they profit from it, they are likely to support it more willingly in future.

Some Iraqis will make money from it as well. Those in the government, plus the rich and powerful connected to the government, will likely profit heavily. Corruption and inequality will increase. Some of the people who do not benefit from oil revenues will demand some of it. Rather than give it up, the new rulers of Iraq will spend it to repress the Iraqi people. If history is any guide, that repression will lead to protests, religious extremism and terrorism.

Iraq is not very democratic, as a mere glance at the violence of Iraqi politics makes clear. Democracy does not, in any case, mean justice or equality. It does not guarantee that voters will have any control over the oil or see any revenue from it “trickle down”. One might say it would be fair to give that oil to the Iraqi people, particularly the millions that lost loved ones over the past twenty years due to sanctions and invasions. Those having babies with birth defects could probably use the cash, too. But then, fairness is not something the powerful tend to bestow on the world.

The spreading around of Iraq’s oil to the global power elite will have the effect of making similar aggression against weak but resource-rich states worldwide easier. When Russian and Chinese oil firms profit from the newly-acquired oil fields, they will support more such interventions. Of course, they will protest, but only in public. We have seen the uprising against Gaddafi turned into an excuse to invade another OPEC member. The multilateral nature of the intervention grants it the veneer of legitimacy while the plunderers make off with the booty.

Taxpayers from powerful countries are paying for invasions of weak countries and the killing and torture of resisters so that the world’s power elite can become more powerful. Expect less democracy, more terrorism and more “humanitarian intervention” everywhere as a result.

The encirclement of Iran

Thousands of US troops are deploying to Israel. The Israeli military announced it as a major missile defense exercise with its ally. The reason for this “defense” preparation is the big, scary country on the other side of the Middle East.

CBS news reports the Israeli military as saying the drill had been long anticipated and was unrelated to recent events. The article explained the drill would take place “as tension between Iran and the international community escalates”, as if Iran is defiantly taking on the world, rather than being pummeled into submission. If we are not sure who the aggressor is in this conflict, let us review the facts.

• Iran is, at present, surrounded by US military bases. If everyone in your neighbourhood were armed to the teeth and yelling about how dangerous you were, would you feel threatened?
• In recent years, the US has invaded and occupied two of those neighbours, Afghanistan and Iraq, for all the same reasons it may want to occupy Iran. Iran has oil; it is strategically located; it is a manufactured enemy; Americans do not know anything about the country except that it’s evil, and will thus give the green light to their politicians.
• Israelis have been subjected for years to media bombardment about the perils of an Ahmadinejad-led, nuclear-armed Iran. There seems to be broad consensus in the Israeli right wing and other circles that the Islamic Republic cannot wait to “wipe Israel off the map”. Again, the enemy is largely manufactured and sold by elites who want more war.

John Tirman of the MIT Center for International Studies points out the “peculiar” time for the march to war: the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Is it time for Operation Iranian Liberation? The foolishness with which the US stumbled into Iraq in 2003 is repeating itself.

Politicians in the US and Israel are screaming about the need to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before Iran attacks the countries with the two most dangerous militaries in the world. The think tanks, who said US troops would be treated as liberators and that the oil would pay for the war, and media commentators, who did not question the government’s assessments of the threat from Iraq, are helping bring public opinion in line once again.

The US and the EU (“the international community”) are ramping up economic sanctions (but why?). Most recently, EU politicians have willingly endangered the European economy by moving toward choking Mediterranean countries’ oil supplies. Paul Stevens of Dundee University in Scotland says that Greece, which imports 30 percent of its oil from Iran, would be pushed off the cliff on which it is already perched. “It would utterly destroy the Greek economy.” Tough enough sanctions on Iran will not stop it from producing a nuclear weapon, which is, in fact, a very rational exercise for a state expecting to be attacked. (In fact, Iran has been under attack for thirty years. They may, however, repeat the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, as the sanctions on Iraq did to that country during the 1990s.

Needless to say, full-blown war with Iran would be devastating. The war on Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of people and rendered the country intractably unstable for a long time to come for no other reason than to please the Washington power elite. And what is the desired outcome? National security? Can national security ever be achieved by waging endless wars? No, suggest the history of Israel and the 9/11 attacks. The entire Middle East and Central Asia could be engulfed in war.

Warmakers are not merely shortsighted, though. They understand the consequences. More devastation, more instability, more religious extremism, more terrorism, more pain: these are all foreseen and desired outcomes. More instability in western Asia will mean two things that keep the powerful happy: higher oil and gas prices, and more enemies to fight and justify more military intervention. If the elites can benefit, the war with Iran will no longer be clandestine, and millions of people could die as a result.