Iraq: "the oil conspiracy theory"

"...the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it."
Tony Blair, 6 Feb 2003

"The Australian defence minister today triggered a political storm when he suggested that protecting Iraq's huge oil reserves was a reason for the continuing deployment of foreign troops in the war-torn country.

Brendan Nelson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Iraq was "an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world, and Australians ... need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq"."
Oil a factor in Iraq conflict, says Australian defence minister, Guardian Unlimited Website, 5 July 2005

Oops.

To be honest, today's embarrassing remarks from the Australian Defence Minister could be safely filed in the "no s**t" category (together with news of the Bear's lavatorial rituals and the chosen religion of Joseph Ratzinger) if the likes of Tony Blair hadn't been repeatedly insulting our intelligence with their shrill denials that Iraq's having probably the second or third largest oil reserves on the planet had anything to do with the...er..mission to "bring democracy" to Iraq. Methinks the laddie doth protest too much. But given that he, and so many others, insist on maintaining this charade, the bleeding obvious will have to be stated and re-stated. So, let me repeat what I said last year:

"At a point in history where extraction of the world’s finite oil reserves may soon peak and fall away, just as the economies of two of the world’s most populous nations – India and China – are growing at breakneck speed, thus putting massive new demands on those dwindling resources, control over energy reserves constitutes “critical leverage” over one’s rivals, in the words of former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, or “veto power” in the words of Cold War era US diplomat George Kennan, and is therefore a prize that Washington cannot afford to lose if it is to fulfil its aim of maintaining permanent global dominance, as set out in its 2002 National Security Strategy. Securing a long-term military presence in Iraq, which has the world’s second largest oil reserves and lies in the centre of the principal energy producing region, constitutes a decisive step towards achieving that goal."

As Noam Chomsky points out, we have no problem recognising these calculations when examining the behaviour of other countries. US Vice President Dick Cheney for example, recently warned that Russia's oil and gas reserves could be used as "tools of intimidation and blackmail". Of course, the very idea of using the energy reserves under US control "as tools of intimidation and blackmail" wouldn't begin to contemplate the merest possibility of crossing Dick Cheney's mind. Cheney's only wish for the Middle East is to see democracy and human rights blossom througho......well, why go on? You know the script.

As Chomsky observes, "it is unacceptable to attribute rational strategic-economic thinking to one’s own state, which must be guided by benign ideals of freedom, justice, peace, and other wonderful things. That leads back again to a very severe crisis in Western intellectual culture, not of course unique in history, but with dangerous portent."

Only in an intellectual culture where fantasies like "democracy-promotion" are taken for reality, and realities like the standard behaviour patters of nation states are derided as conspiracy theories, could the remarks of the Australian defence minister possibly be described as news. But here we are.

For more on this, see my March 2005 piece, "Iraq, Oil and Conspiracy Theories"