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2 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Is
Barack Obama morphing into Dick
Cheney? By Michael T Klare
As details of his administration's global
war against terrorists, insurgents, and hostile
warlords have become more widely known - a war
that involves a m้lange of drone attacks, covert
operations, and presidentially selected
assassinations - President Obama has been compared
to President George W Bush in his appetite for
military action. "As shown through his stepped-up
drone campaign," Aaron David Miller, an advisor to
six secretaries of state, wrote at Foreign Policy,
"Barack Obama has become George W Bush on
steroids."
When it comes to international
energy politics, however, it is not Bush but his
vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been
providing the role model for the president. As
recent events have demonstrated, Obama's energy
policies globally bear an eerie likeness to
Cheney's, especially in the way he has engaged in the
geopolitics of oil as
part of an American global struggle for future
dominance among the major powers.
More
than any of the other top officials of the Bush
administration - many with oil-company backgrounds
- Cheney focused on the role of energy in global
power politics. From 1995 to 2000, he served as
chairman of the board and chief executive officer
of Halliburton, a major supplier of services to
the oil industry. Soon after taking office as vice
president he was asked by Bush to devise a new
national energy strategy that has largely governed
US policy ever since.
Early on, Cheney
concluded that the global supply of energy was not
growing fast enough to satisfy rising world
demand, and that securing control over the world's
remaining oil and natural gas supplies would
therefore be an essential task for any state
seeking to acquire or retain a paramount position
globally. He similarly grasped that a nation's
rise to prominence could be thwarted by being
denied access to essential energy supplies. As
coal was to the architects of the British empire,
oil was for Cheney - a critical resource over
which it would sometimes be necessary to go to
war.
More than any of his peers, Cheney
articulated such views on the importance of energy
to national wealth and power. "Oil is unique in
that it is so strategic in nature," he told an
audience at an industry conference in London in
1999. "We are not talking about soapflakes or
leisurewear here. Energy is truly fundamental to
the world's economy. The Gulf War was a reflection
of that reality."
Cheney's reference to
the 1990-1991 Gulf War is particularly revealing.
During that conflict, he was the secretary of
defense and so supervised the American war effort.
But while his boss, President George H W Bush,
played down the role of oil in the fight against
Iraq, Cheney made no secret of his belief that
energy geopolitics lay at the heart of the matter.
"Once [Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein]
acquired Kuwait and deployed an army as large as
the one he possesses," Cheney told the Senate
Armed Services Committee when asked to justify the
administration's decision to intervene, "he was
clearly in a position to be able to dictate the
future of worldwide energy policy, and that gave
him a stranglehold on our economy."
This
would be exactly the message he delivered in 2002,
as the second President Bush girded himself for
the invasion of Iraq. Were Saddam Hussein
successful in acquiring weapons of mass
destruction, Cheney told a group of veterans that
August 25th, "[he] could then be expected to seek
domination of the entire Middle East [and] take
control of a great portion of the world's energy
supplies."
For Cheney, the geopolitics of
oil lay at the core of international relations,
largely determining the rise and fall of nations.
From this, it followed that any steps, including
war and environmental devastation, were justified
so long as they enhanced America's power at the
expense of its rivals.
Cheney's
world Through his speeches, Congressional
testimony, and actions in office, it is possible
to reconstruct the geopolitical blueprint that
Cheney followed in his career as a top White House
strategist - a blueprint that President Obama,
eerily enough, now appears to be implementing,
despite the many risks involved.
That
blueprint consists of four key features: 1.
Promote domestic oil and gas production at any
cost to reduce America's dependence on unfriendly
foreign suppliers, thereby increasing Washington's
freedom of action.
2. Keep control over
the oil flow from the Persian Gulf (even if the US
gets an ever-diminishing share of its own oil
supplies from the region) in order to retain an
"economic stranglehold" over other major oil
importers.
3. Dominate the sea lanes of
Asia, so as to control the flow of oil and other
raw materials to America's potential economic
rivals, China and Japan.
4. Promote energy
"diversification" in Europe, especially through
increased reliance on oil and natural gas supplies
from the former Soviet republics of the Caspian
Sea basin, in order to reduce Europe's heavy
dependence on Russian oil and gas, along with the
political influence this brings Moscow.
The first objective, increased reliance on
domestic oil and gas, was highlighted in National
Energy Policy, the energy strategy Cheney devised
for the president in May 2001 in close
consultation with representatives of the oil
giants. Although mostly known for its advocacy of
increased drilling on federal lands, including the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Cheney Report
(as it came to be known) largely focused on the
threat of growing US dependence on foreign oil
suppliers and the need to achieve greater "energy
security" through a
damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead program of
accelerated exploitation of domestic energy
supplies.
"A primary goal of the National
Energy Policy is to add supply from diverse
sources," the report declared. "This means
domestic oil, gas, and coal. It also means
hydropower and nuclear power." The plan also
called for a concerted drive to increase US
reliance on friendly sources of energy in the
Western hemisphere, especially Brazil, Canada, and
Mexico.
The second objective, control over
the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, was, for
Cheney, the principal reason for both the First
Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Although
before that invasion, the president and other top
officials focused on Saddam Hussein's supposed
weapons of mass destruction, his human rights
record, and the need to bring democracy to Iraq,
Cheney never wavered in his belief that the basic
goal was to ensure that Washington would control
the Middle Eastern oil jugular.
After
Saddam's ouster and the occupation of Iraq began,
Cheney was especially outspoken in his insistence
that neighboring Iran be prevented, by force of
arms if need be, from challenging American
preeminence in the Gulf. "We'll keep the sea lanes
open," he declared from the deck of an aircraft
carrier during maneuvers off the coast of Iran in
May 2007. "We'll stand with others to prevent Iran
from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the
region."
Cheney also focused in a major
way on ensuring control over the sea lanes from
the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian
Gulf (out of which 35% of the world's tradable oil
flows each day) across the Indian Ocean, through
the Straits of Malacca, and into the South and
East China Seas. To this day, these maritime
corridors remain essential for the economic
survival of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan,
bringing oil and other raw materials to their
industries and carrying manufactured goods to
their markets abroad.
By maintaining US
control over these vital conduits, Cheney sought
to guarantee the loyalty of America's key Asian
allies and constrain the rise of China. In pursuit
of these classic geopolitical objectives, he
pushed for an enhanced US naval presence in the
Asia-Pacific region and the establishment of a
network of military alliances linking Japan,
Australia, and India, all aimed at containing
China.
Finally, Cheney sought to rein in
America's other major great-power rival, Russia.
While his boss, George W. Bush, spoke of the
potential for cooperation with Moscow, Cheney,
still an energy cold warrior, viewed Russia as a
geopolitical competitor and sought every
opportunity to diminish its power and influence.
He particularly feared that Europe's growing
dependence on Russian natural gas could undermine
its resolve to resist aggressive Russian moves in
Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
To
counter this trend, Cheney tried to persuade the
Europeans to get more of their energy from the
Caspian Sea basin by building new pipelines to
that region via Georgia and Turkey. The idea was
to bypass Russia by persuading Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan to export their gas
through these conduits, not those owned by
Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled monopoly.
When Georgia came under attack from
Russian forces in August 2008, after Georgian
troops shelled the pro-Moscow enclave of South
Ossetia, Cheney was the first senior US official
to visit Tbilisi, bringing a promise of US$1
billion in reconstruction assistance, as well as
an offer of fast-track entry into NATO. France and
Germany blocked the move, fearing Moscow might
respond with actions that could destabilize
Europe.
Obama as Cheney This
four-part geopolitical blueprint, relentlessly
pursued by Cheney while vice president, is now
being implemented in every respect by President
Obama.
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