Posted on 02/21/2003 10:25:02 AM PST by knighthawk
As last Saturday's protests demonstrated, opponents of war in Iraq have all sorts of theories about why the United States wants to dethrone Saddam Hussein. Some allege the coming war is a neo-imperialist plot to "colonize" Iraq. Others claim George W. Bush is doing Israel's bidding. But by far the most popular slogan was "no war for oil." Among protesters, there is a shared suspicion that George W. Bush is on a smash-and-grab mission to seize Iraq's energy resources.
As we've argued before in this space, the war-for-oil charge is incoherent: If Mr. Bush were really after cheap oil, he'd be campaigning to drop sanctions and leave Saddam alone. We also cited data that shows a war with Iraq and the subsequent reconstruction would cost far more than the United States could make back in oil.
But perhaps a better way of debunking the "no war for oil" campaign is by reminding invasion opponents that this is not the first time Mr. Bush has been accused of waging war on behalf of America's energy companies: A lot of what is being said now directly echoes the claims the left was making when the President was preparing to invade Afghanistan a year and a half ago.
Early out of the starting gate, for instance, was George Monbiot, a London Guardian columnist who suggested in October, 2001, that attacking Afghanistan was about "Western domination" of Asia's energy resources. The same month, Gore Vidal wrote in the pages of the London Observer that Mr. Bush was seizing on 9/11 as an excuse to capture Central Asia's oil and gas.
But the most fearless prognostication came from Canada's own Michele Landsberg. In the Nov. 11, 2001, Toronto Star, she wrote: "My prediction is that two seconds after the 'end' of the bombing of Afghanistan, with the entire countryside reduced to a parched and emptied desert, Unocal [a U.S.-based energy company] will be building its long-lusted-after oil pipeline across Afghanistan, bringing Caspian black gold to the gas-guzzling west. Then the true meaning of the war will be made clear."
Too often, Ms. Landsberg and other hard-left conspiracy theorists get let off the hook. When wars end, people rarely look back through the yellowing op-ed pages of months past to see what this or that pundit predicted. But let's make an exception here and see if the post-Taliban evidence supports her claim.
Ms. Landsberg's fixation on Unocal did not come out of the blue. In the mid-1990s, the company jousted with Bridas, an Argentinian firm, to build a gas pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to the growing market in Pakistan, via Afghanistan. The project made some sense: Turkmenistan is home to the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world, and Pakistan has an energy-hungry population set to double by 2040
In 1996, as part of its effort, Unocal hosted a meeting with Taliban representatives in Texas -- where company executives painted a rosy image of a prosperous Afghanistan enriched by fat gas transportation tolls. The next year, Unocal signed a memorandum of understanding with Turkmenistan, confirming that company's interest in the project. Later in 1997, Unocal formed a consortium to build the pipeline, and the U.S. company seemed to have the deal clinched.
But in 1998, Unocal suddenly pulled out of the trans-Afghanistan project. Company executives were nervous about putting a vulnerable pipeline down in Afghanistan, a country still locked in civil war. Neither the Taliban, nor Saparmurat Niyazov's despotic regime in Turkmenistan seemed like particularly reliable partners -- or even to understand basic business principles. Also, Unocal was dismayed by the Taliban's connections with a sinister character named Osama bin Laden, who was then coming to the world's attention.
At this point, we pick up the theories of Ms. Landsberg et al. Their charge was that, with the Taliban gone, bin Laden underground, and a U.S.-friendly regime installed in Kabul, Unocal would quickly dust off its old pipeline plans. As noted above, Ms. Landsberg promised Unocal would be in Afghanistan "two seconds" after a U.S. victory. But other authors were more patient. As recently as December, 2002, Canada's Eric Margolis argued that Mr. Bush was plotting to swarm the region so as to "bring Central Asian oil south through Afghanistan." Follow the Landsberg/Margolis logic and one would think Afghanistan would now be a veritable beehive of U.S.-financed oil and gas activity.
But here's the rub: It's not.
Today, the trans-Afghanistan pipeline project has stalled. Neither Unocal nor Bridas nor any other large energy company has sought to revive it. The plan still has supporters in the national governments of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- indeed, their leaders have twice signed agreements (in May and December of 2002) to proceed with the 1,500 km, US$3.5-billion pipeline. But despite support for the project from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, the three states cannot seem to attract private capital. In fact, the West's reaction to the plan has been so lukewarm that the trio have had to try, without success, to entice other investors. So far, a Japanese conglomerate and the governments of Russia, India, Ukraine and Japan have all demurred.
As for Unocal, which Ms. Landsberg seemed to think would own half of Afghanistan by now, it turned its back on Central Asia a long time ago. "We've moved on," a company spokesman said in 2002. "We've got plenty of other fish to fry." This petro-anti-climax doesn't just cast doubt on the Great Central Asian Energy Swindle conspiracy theory -- it reveals it to be a total fantasy.
We recite all this not simply to make enemies of the Afghanistan campaign look silly (though we certainly hope we've accomplished that). Rather, we seek to provide some context for those who might be entertaining equally delusional theories about America's motivations in Iraq. Indeed, we would urge our readers to keep track of what the left is now saying about the coming war, and compare the claims with the reality on the ground several years from now. While Iraq may have a lot more strategic energy value than Afghanistan, we have little doubt that today's anti-U.S. propagandists will look just as wrong as Ms. Landsberg and the other Afghanistan naysayers look today.
That's a good one. I'd trademark it if I were you.
Our lives are at stake and, if seizing oil were necessary to help insure that we don't have a repeat of 9-11, I'm all for it.
Why do we take offense at the suggestion that we might use force to wrest control of something so essential to the goals of our enemies?
When Iraq falls, we will have CONTROL of 10% of the world's oil, we don't need to own it, or even extract any commission from it to deal a serious blow to terror.
Iraq is only pumping 30 percent of what it could pump with slight tech upgrades to their equipment. Just keeping the spigots open and upgrading their equipment will feed the Iraqi people and deal a final death blow to OPEC, which will have a tremendous impact on the price of crude.
If I were King, the whole Arab-Islam world would wake up to a new neighbor, one who is not afraid of being the keeper of the peace, and not the least bit appologetic about using the oil to break up a cartel which directly enables terror and threatens our safety.
The idea is to get those who hate us to realize that the consequences of hitting us again far exceed the benefits they could derive, and whipping them with their own oil will take us a long way toward that end.
Haven't heard back from him on this one. :)
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