Oil wars Pentagon's policy since 1999

A top-level United States policy document has emerged that explicitly confirms the Defence Department's readiness to fight an oil war.

According to the report, Strategic Assessment 1999, prepared for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defence, "energy and resource issues will continue to shape international security".

Oil conflicts over production facilities and transport routes, particularly in the Persian Gulf and Caspian regions, are specifically envisaged.

Although the policy does not forecast imminent US military conflict, it vividly highlights how the highest levels of the US Defence community accepted the waging of an oil war as a legitimate military option.

Strategic Assessment also forecasts that if an oil "problem" arises, "US forces might be used to ensure adequate supplies".

Although Strategic Assessment 1999 predicts adequate US energy supplies, it also finds that supply shortages could "exacerbate regional political tensions, potentially causing regional conflicts".

The Bush Administration has stated that providing for US energy needs is a priority.

Strategic Assessment was prepared by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, part of the US Department of Defence's National Defence University. The institute lists its primary mission as policy research and analysis for the Joint Chiefs, the Defence Secretary, and a variety of government security and defence bodies.

According to the report, national security depends on successful engagement in the global economy, so national defence no longer means protecting the nation from military threats alone, but economic challenges, too.

The fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s brought an end to the US's ideological basis for potential conflict. In 1992 Bill Clinton urged that "our economic strength must become a central defining element of our national security policy".

Since then, members of the Bush Administration have promoted the need for the consolidation of the Cold War victory.

In what many may see as an apparent parallel to present events, Strategic Assessment 1999 drew attention to pre-World War II Britain's pursuit of an approach where control over territory was seen as essential to ensuring resource supplies.

However, the Defence Department policymakers behind Strategic Assessment also appear to recognise the potential consequences of such policies.

The authors warn that if the great powers return to the 19th century approach of securing resources, of conquering resource suppliers, the world economy will suffer and world politics will become more tense.

However, the Defence Department policymakers behind Strategic Assessment also appear to recognise the potential consequences of such policies.

Sober men wrote a sober report. This could be the key behind the reason Bush wants to make Russia and the 'Stans partners rather antagonists (the reverse of the Clinton policy).

Sober men wrote a sober report.

Any drunk with two brain cells left will tell you that a nation will commit not suicide on principle. So, let me be blunt, these are worst case sernarios. Of course the United States would go to war to ensure the free flow of oil. Anyone who tells you different is either a fool or a liar. If the flow of oil is cut off the nation dies. It would be fighting in self-defense. It is that simple.

This is the opposite of the 19th century game of securing resources. In this case our interest is to insure, not that we control key resources, but that no one controls them.

Of course, how you do that most easily is to make sure there are many sources, that cannot be controlled by anyone. To that end, we want to encourage Russian oil development as a balance to mideast oil. We want Caspian oil as a balance to Russian oil. We want to increase oil production in Africa as a balance to eurasian oil. It doesn't take a lot of secret machinations to make this happen, if any country tries to manipulate the price by cutting production, OPEC-style, they only insure an increase in production elsewhere. Any effort to corner the market could shock the market, but only in the short term. Countries, companies, consumers, markets, are flexible and in relatively short order the river jumps its banks and establishes new ones.

The need to actually go to war over resources is a pretty unlikely scenario. What is more likely is to prepare for a war for other reasons, and explain it as a war over resources. We might plan a war in the Central Asian landmass and sell it as a war for oil, when it had more to do with containing Chinese ambition, for example, or a war for oil in the middle east when the problem is not the oil, but the individual or regime in power. But sometimes its hard to explain all the geopolitical reasons behind an action, and its easier to just give a short hand explanation, such as "WMD". Oh, there aren't any WMD? Well, its about oil then. Fine. It saves trying to debate a long term strategy on the OReilly Factor.

Not to pick on OReilly.

The difference then is in emphasis. Let a thousand sources bloom (to tweak Mao's phrase) is the Bush policy. Clintonian policy was not that way at all. Clinton sought specific sources under specific controls or maybe to put it another way the Clintonistas seemed to think the weaker the states that had oil the easier it would be to develop them as clients states and control production.

That is where the overlap with al-Qaeda's efforts in these oil producing regions and the Clintonistas overlapped and and had the appearance of collusion (to be measured with my words).

preparation for ALL possible contingencies is part of defense. The left does this every time the us military goes into action when they ask about the use of nuclear weapons. Everything is possible, even if it is improbable. The left asks about the improbable to cause insecurity. Gee if the baracks get bombed will they violate the third ammendment to the constitution?

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