A NOT-SO-FUNNY thing happened on the way to Baghdad to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Americans came to realise they might have to take a detour through Riyadh. The famed Rand consultancy has advised the Pentagon that Saudi Arabia is the “kernel of evil”, and that serious thought should be given to taking control of the 25% of the world’s known oil reserves on which the kingdom happens to sit.
Colin Powell, secretary of state, rushed to reassure the Saudi regime that Rand does not make American policy. But sources close to the Pentagon tell me that the some members of the Saudi royal family “are sufficiently apprehensive” about their country’s increasing unpopularity in America to fear that the days of business as usual are over.
The Rand report is the culmination of a learning process that has been under way since September 11. First, Americans discovered that the Saudi Arabian regime consists of a bunch of not-very-nice royals. Second, Americans discovered that the House of Saud is the principal financier of the terrorists against whom President George Bush has declared war. Third, Americans are beginning to realise that they have to do something about their depen- dency on Saudi Arabian oil.
Let’s start with the nasty bit. For years Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, managed to create a pleasant image of his country by lavish entertaining, shrewd schmoozing, and making himself useful to American administrations when they needed an Arab intermediary. Add to that the exotic robes of visiting Saudis, a kind of desert chic, and you had an American public not terribly inclined to notice the regime’s repression of women and its support for Islamic radicals.
Then came September 11, and Americans couldn’t fail to notice that 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the attacks were Saudis. “Not a coincidence,” says the Rand report. And students of Saudi affairs are not surprised that its rulers even now continue to fund the schools and mosques that are homes to preachers of violent anti-American dogma, and have shown no inclination to co-operate with American efforts to cut off the flow of funds to terror organisations. As Edward Morse, former deputy assistant secretary of state, puts it: “They won’t give us information, won’t help track people down, and won’t let us use our bases that are there to protect them.” Rand adds that “the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain”.
Which brings us to Saudi oil. Americans have got the message: the money we spend on Saudi oil not only supports the welfare state that bribes the unemployed and unemployable middle-class into acquiescence to rule by unelected royals. It is also used to pay for princes’ palaces and to make caves habitable for the terrorists who threaten America and the West.
America often takes a long time to react to having thumbs stuck in its eye, but react it eventually will. The problem is not in the resolve to do something, but in figuring out just what to do. Bush wants to increase domestic production of oil and add to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But with even the nation’s limited storage facilities only partly filled, that strategy cannot do more than buy a few months of relief if the Saudis join a new boycott in support of Iraq, or Islamic extremists take over their country. Drilling holes in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge won’t help much either. Alaskan oil might not come on stream until 2010-20 and at best would cover only a portion of the increase in American oil consumption.
The greens, of course, want to lower demand rather than increase domestic supply. That is not a bad idea, except that even on the most optimistic assumptions, economically sensible conservation cannot quickly make America independent of Saudi manipulation of oil markets.
Then there are the optimists who have discovered that Russia sits on a lot of oil, and is rapidly increasing its production. Switch to oil from our new ally, they say, and we can afford to get tough with the Saudis. That was the thinking behind Bush agreeing to a joint energy development strategy with the Russian president Vladimir Putin at their May summit in Moscow.
But Russia’s limited ability to expand output in the near and medium term, and the high cost of producing and transporting oil from Russian fields — four to five times the cost in Saudi Arabia — makes it an inadequate alternative should Saudi oil be cut off. Besides, American planners for “regime change” in Iraq cannot be certain that Russia will continue to export at current levels when Bush moves against Iraq, a long-time Russian client-state.
All of which is why there is mounting talk around Washington of a possible American takeover of the Saudi oil fields. Should Osama Bin Laden’s associates topple the existing regime, or even seem to be about to do so, or should the Saudis shut down their wells, “the affected world community may feel compelled to ‘liberate’ the wells of Arabia and restore production”, writes S Fred Singer of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. After all, that is what America did in Kuwait. But, adds Singer, this time we “might not return the wells to the original owners, who by then will have departed to hotels on the Riviera or to the Dorchester”.
Does this sound far-fetched? Just watch the intensity of the services commemorating the anniversary of September 11 if you doubt that Americans aim to do whatever is necessary to win their war on terror."
That would be some bluff wouldn't it? Imagine that the day the stealth fighters go in, they are ordered to head for Riyadh aswell as Baghdad. Arabic newspapers will be working overtime on this. Having said that, I don't for one minute believe it will happen. Iraq may be a muslim country but it doesn't mean as much to muslims as the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
But it is interesting. There are lots of arguments being bandied around in favour or against the invasion of Iraq and almost all of them are misguided.
The argument that Tony Blair is acting like George Bush's poodle for his own personal gain is a red herring. The argument that America is acting like an international bully refuses to confront the possible outcome of not acting. On the other hand, the idea put forward by Bush that this is a continuation of the "war on terror" is unconvincing. The article you posted gets to the crux of the matter - the West's relationship with the Islamic world is inextricably linked to and compromised by our dependence on middle eastern oil.
It seems as if we can't possibly be fair to them without being unfair on somebody else - or ourselves. Every decision we take has to include the oil factor in it. Any serious debate needs to consider if we can afford to lose influence over the countries that sit on the oil fields.
There have been several other interesting articles in today's papers too. From Peter Hitchens bit in the Mail On Sunday "The Real Reason For Attacking Saddam", there is this:
"The Rand Corporation briefing suggested that the overthrow of Saddam....would end US dependence on Saudi oil.
Having lost Iran and now seeming likely to lose Saudi Arabia, having lost patience with Yasser Arafat and grown closer to Israel than at any other time, the USA badly needs a new and reliable friend and a new base from which to exert influence and project power in this dangerous zone.
As an old-fashioned imperial and strategic exercise for the benefit of the civilised West, an invasion of Iraq makes perfect sense. What a pity nobody is prepared to admit publicly that this is what we are doing."
But In The Observer, Anthony Sampson has an article titled "West's Greed For Oil Fuels Saddam Fever" in which he argues that any attempt to topple Saddam will split Iraq into three even less stable warring countries - the Kurdish north, the Sunni Muslims in the centre and a Shia south which will be dominated by Iran.
Another aspect was covered by Nick Cohen back in The Observer. He berates liberals and those from the left who have taken the line that the proposed invasion is unjust because it will result in the deaths of innocent Iraqis. What about the innocent Iraqis who die every day under Saddam's regime? He suggests that a more correct response from the left would be to support an attempt to overthrow him and hints at the reason they won't. "There are honourable grounds for upholding the authority of the United Nations and opposing American global domination. What is dishonourable - indeed insufferable - is the pretence that their animating concern is the sufferings of the peoples of Iraq."
As far as I can see, there are only three valid reasons to oppose the war and they all have their own potential pitfalls:
1) The war would be nothing more than a calculated risk and could easily ignite simmering tensions all over the muslim world. We could probably do more good and curry more favour within the middle east by forcing Israel to withdraw from Palestine.
2) It would be wrong to pursue a war for selfish strategic energy-supply reasons - however much our wealth is tied to them. We should look for alternative energy sources instead.
3) An overthrow of Saddam could worsen the already unfavourable balance of power in the region. In any case, Saddam's power is already contained by UN-backed sanctions and the limited military actions that the US and UK regularly undertake. We should continue this policy and leave the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam themselves.
But then, if all three arguments against are wrong then there is no reason why the US and UK shouldn't include Saudi Arabia into the military equation.
Something needs doing but what and to whom? As you can see, it's making my head hurt.
You should read some of this before deciding on the long-term wisdom of Bush's boys going into Iraq. Even I was amazed at some of this stuff, and I live here.
I think that the age of nation states is over. The de-colonialism of the past fifty years has brought nothing but trouble.
Now is the time for the Europeans and Americans to start re-colonising the third world and bringing some order and justice to it.
The Arab nations are incapable of ruling themselves and the quicker Western rule is imposed the better. The same holds true of Africa and parts of the Far East.
Radical thinking maybe, but look what a mess the world is in now. If this continues, London, Paris, New York and Washington will be nuked and then the West will have to act belatedly.
Give it a couple of hundred years and then maybe these idiots like Mugabee can try to rule themselves again, but right now they are like children who need to be shut in their room until they behave.
A little known fact of the.....If you add up all of the exports from the 1 Billion plus people in the Arab countries around the world, excluding oil...because you don't produce it, you just suck it out of the ground...Arab Nations contribute as much to the world economyas Finland...In this persons opinion....they are a waste of DNA..That might be harsh but think about there civilization is still in the stone age yet because of Oil they can bargain with a country such as the U.S. or the U.K. If the world sucked it up, instituted a trade embargo of all counties belonging to OPEC, it would take 6 months and they would be killing themselves. But that's just my opinion
