A War for Bananas? - Part I, Peeling the Options

“Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here, that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?”

- President Woodrow Wilson, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

It was an odd statement coming from the man who called the Great War a crusade to “make the world safe for Democracy” yet, as millions took to the streets of Europe to protest against an imminent and unilateral invasion of Iraq there was hardly a man, woman or child who would have doubted that Bush & Gang were out for oil.

But it has to be asked: is the impending preemptive strike against Iraq really a “war for oil” the way the United States once waged war for bananas?

Part I - The Options.

The answer to this question is not as easy as one might think. While there is a mass of often repetitive circumstantial evidence pointing to the somewhat obvious fact that American oil companies have interests and aims in Iraqi oil, no direct and hard evidence has come to light proving that specific oil companies are pushing for a war of commodity conquest. If anything, the evidence tends to be that major oil company interests are adverse to war with its attendant risks -- although they are not at all adverse to making as many profitable deals as they can with Hussein or anyone else, as opportunity and circumstance permit. That, after all, is the “bottom line”.

Complicating the search for an answer is the fact that virtually no one speaks plainly about anything. Four years ago, Hans Blix stated that 90-95% of Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons had been dealt with. There was not a country in the world that had been so comprehensively disarmed. The basic structure of Iraq's weapons-making industry had been destroyed.

Nevertheless, in what surely qualifies as Neo Dada, hours upon hours of diplomatic time, air time and newsprint have been used up in the past months on the issues of inspections, more inspections, no more inspections, more disclosure, enough disclosure and so on. The U.S. Government insists that it has undisclosable information about undisclosed, probable weapons production facilities which might possibly be linkable to known terrorist networks. Just look, ten empty pipes were found!!!! “Precisely” add the French, which is why we need deeper and more penetrating inspections for as long as it takes to find more empty pipes and make sure that none are not empty.

What is clear is only that the parties are jockeying but what they say is otherwise meaningless and therefore of no help in finding out why and over what they are jockeying.

About the only at least straightforward voice in this regard was that of Richard Perle, Bush’s pro-Israeli imperialist adviser who, speaking in November 2002 to a British Parliamentary committee, stated that, regardless of what was found or not found, the United States “reserved the right” to attack Iraq anyway.

The utter meaningless of this remark is what makes it instructive. Just like any boy in the playground, all states “reserve the right to attack”. The question usually concerns why, under what circumstances and pursuant to what provocation. Perle certainly did not need to belabor the obvious to a Parliamentary Committee. Did he then mean, that the United States reserved the right to attack even if it had no right to do so under international law anyway?

What was being signaled by Perle was that all this yabber about inspecting weapons programs was just stuff and nonsense. The United States was itchin’ to go to war against Iraq. Fine. But the question remains why? To steal oil? And if not that, then for what?

One view is that the conflict is for control of oil as the sine qua non of industrial production and development. According to this view, American geo-economic policy in Central Asia and the Middle East is aimed at gaining direct or indirect control of the world’s three most important petroleum reserves: Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Central Asian countries of the “Caspi-Stan” US interests are already well positioned in Central Asia, so that control over Iraqi oil would be a bonanza in itself as well as the key to leveraging OPEC. One proponent of this view is Michel Collon, Belgian author of "Monopoly". According to him, oil and gas by themselves are not the aim of the U.S.: “If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil. Anywhere."

In a recent interview given to England’s socialist leader Tony Benn, Saddam Hussein adopted Collon’s thesis in order to explain American policy. According to Hussein,

“Those people and others have been telling the various US administrations, especially the current one, that if you want to control the world you need to control the oil. Therefore the destruction of Iraq is a pre-requisite to controlling oil. That means the destruction of the Iraqi national identity, since the Iraqis are committed to their principles and rights according to international law and the UN charter.”

"It seems that this argument has appealed to some US administrations especially the current one. If they control the oil in the Middle East, they would be able to control the world. They could dictate to China the size of its economic growth and interfere in its education system and could do the same to Germany and France and perhaps to Russia and Japan. They might even tell the same to Britain if its oil doesn't satisfy its domestic consumption. It seems to me that this hostility is a trademark of the current US administration and is based on its wish to control the world and spread its hegemony.”

Collon’s thesis is true enough, as far as it goes; but it assumes that there is a desire “to rule the world” in the first place. Normally, nations do not desire to rule the world for the pure fun of it, but rather -- as Wilson stated -- for the economic gain empire entails. There can be little dispute that a Plunder Policy is at the heart of the Bush Administration’s thinking on anything. It repudiated the Kyoto Accords, it sought to open up protected Alaska preserves to oil drilling, it has pushed through new regulations that open up millions and millions of beautiful American forest to industry clear-cutting.

This is an administration that makes the Vandals look good. But plundering the world and ruling it are not quite the same thing. Indeed the essence of the public criticism of Bush II policy put forth by members of the Bush I team is that it is possible to plunder without letting loose a conflagration in the Middle East. Put another way, if gas and oil themselves are not the reason for waging war in Iraq what other concrete justification is advanced for the immense expense and risks involved other than some amorphous or testosteronal “desire to rule the world”?

While the evidence of an oil-company motive for war is equivocal, there is a well known paper trail evidencing a hegemonistic motive within the Administration, advanced by former Reaganite advisors who believe in what they postulate as the inherent, a priori good of extending American military and economic power and who see any potential rivalry to this unilateral triumph as something to be destroyed.

In other words, testosteronal or not, there are protagonists within the Administration who proclaim that hegemony is an absolute good in and of itself and who would have it be believed that this final good is the sole motivation of policy.

This is an extremely important distinction; one which lies at the very heart of Orwell’s 1984. Cynical as Woodrow Wilson’s remark might have been, a war for bananas makes at least caloric sense. The exercise of power for its own sake is simply sadism as policy. In 1984’s concluding interrogations Brian reveals to Winston that there is no point in arguing anymore because the Party discovered that there was no need to justify why power is exercised; power is its own absolute good,

“The image of the State in 1984 is that of a boot in the face.”

But that is precisely the manner in which elements within the American political establishment talk. According to them, the first step in this march toward a New American World Order, is regime change in Iraq. As described by the Administration itself, “regime change” begins with a rapid fire barrage of conventional missiles of such intensity and rapidity as to be the non-nuclear “equivalent” of Hiroshima. This is said without a blush; and what “regime change” entails is the further physical obliteration of an already wrecked country and its occupation for some indefinite period of time. Not without reason a “very high U.N. official” -- (one supposes the Secretary General) -- was quoted in recent a Guardian article as calling these advisors “sinister men”.

Studies have concluded that the cost of occupying Iraq would alone exceed any realizable profit from its oil fields and that subjugation of Iraq does not necessarily equate with a bonanza of oil-profits. Furthermore, “stabilizing” Iraq would not be the end-game by any means. Iraq, is only the first of three along the so-called Axis of Evil, and after Iran and North Korea, stands China, who is poised to be the real oil-hungry, industrial power house of the 21st century. If the consequential costs of the war are known beforehand to exceed the potential value of bananas, then the war cannot be said to be waged for economic reasons.

But between war for profit and war for pure hegemony, there is always the third alternative of a war for geo-political security. The difficulty here, is that the United States is in no ways territorially threatened by Iraq. The only countries Iraq has the capacity to threaten are Turkey, Syria, Iran, the Arab states and Israel. But none of the Muslim countries are complaining, at least not in public.

On the other hand, the proponents of the America’s new imperialism assert a compatibility verging on coincidence between Israeli and United States interests. And, indeed, the only other parties in the world calling for an attack and/or destruction of Iraq are various members of the Likud and the Israeli political establishment.

Assuming arguendo that such a destruction would benefit the United States as well, left unexplained is how a new century of perpetual conflict after Iraq with other “potential” threats to American preeminence would be of benefit to anyone. If this is indeed the policy that is afoot, the millions who took to the streets this past weekend protested far more than they knew.

The ensuing installments of this article can only scratch the surface of what is a complicated subject in which hard-proof of critical facts is not easily come by. The best I can hope to do is to summarize some of the information on record so that the reader can draw his own conclusions.

© Barfo, 2003