America's oil addiction

In yesterday’s State of the Union address, George W. Bush told the US Congress that “keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world”.

Whilst Washington will always maintain that the Iraq war in particular and its Middle East policy in general are part of a righteous struggle against evil and an idealistic crusade to spread democracy etc etc, this part of Bush’s address sounds like a not-so tacit nod to the view that costly US interventions in the region are in fact driven by the need to maintain US access to cheap oil. By pledging to “make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past” Bush seems to be offering some light at the end of the tunnel to a US public that increasingly opposes the war in Iraq.

But US foreign policy is not driven primarily by domestic energy consumption. As Noam Chomsky points out, “the critical issue is control, not access. US policies towards the Middle East were the same when it was a net exporter of oil, and remain the same today when US intelligence projects that the US itself will rely on more stable Atlantic Basin resources. Policies would be likely to be about the same if the US were to switch to renewable energy. The need to control the "stupendous source of strategic power" and to gain "profits beyond the dreams of avarice" [quoting US planners] would remain.”

The problem posed by oil is not one of mere efficient housekeeping as Bush pretends. It is one of imperial strategy, and should be understood as such. Cheap oil has been the lifeblood of the US-dominated post World War 2 global economy, and thus would remain essential to the functioning of its imperial domain even if the USA itself ran entirely on wind power. Furthermore, given the desire to ensure that the global system does not pass to new management in the coming decades, oil represents a strategic weapon of vast potency, providing the US with what former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski described as “critical leverage” over its rivals. It was primarily these concerns that drove the policy to install a client government and a permanent military presence in Iraq, at the heart of the world’s energy producing region.

So the problem is not an American society addicted to oil. Rather, it is American state-corporate elites and institutions (and their counterparts across the world, not least here in London) addicted to the pursuit of economic and political power whatever the human cost. Those costs will continue to be paid by the western public – and, to a far, far greater extent, by the people of the third world - until the imperial nature of western foreign policy is recognised for what it is.