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COMMENTARY
Oil may be the answer,
but it isn't the question
By Argyle Ellis
 It
has been said that if oil is the question, then Iraq is not the answer. But is
oil the question? And if not, then what is? And what then is the answer to it?
Some perspective is needed. Fast-rewind back to 1991, then fast-forward back to
the present.
After the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989, the leaders of
al-Qaeda needed a mission. The continuing presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia
after the end of the 1991 Gulf War provided this. While Osama bin Laden
declaimed against the Riyadh regime, Saudi sympathizers (by some reports both
in and out of government) funneled money to promote that characteristic form of
Islamic fundamentalism called, by everyone but the Saudis, Wahhabism. Those
funds served to proliferate Islamic religious schools throughout a large number
of countries; for obvious reasons, international attention has focused on those
in South Asia.
The al-Qaeda ideology, not wishing to bite the hand that fed it, finessed its
anti-Saudi tone. It accented instead a strident, visceral intolerance directed
against the West in general and the United States in particular. Such a theme
is in fact part and parcel of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. However, it remains
mainly outside the scope of Western reporting. That is because it is not
allowed to filter from the Arabic-language into the English-language discourse
in the country, so escaping the notice of most Western reporters.
But in a major shift, and as a main immediate result of the events of September
11, 2001, the US foreign policy elite has recognized the importance of
non-elite opinion in the Arab world. Deeming the views of the so-called "Arab
street" a threat to US national interests, the ruling elite in Washington has
taken a decision to reform that opinion. It being politically inexpedient to
destroy the Arab street in order to save it, the necessity arises to reform or
otherwise alter the Arab regimes in power, in whose oppressive practices
Washington has long been complicit.
Yet the light has finally dawned that "militant Islam" becomes by default the
nucleus around which discontent aggregates in authoritarian conditions
characteristic of the region. In non-OPEC hands, Iraq, with a tenth of the
world's proven reserves, and possibly as much as that again under the
unexplored western desert, becomes an instrument for pressuring the economies
of OPEC countries, ie, their ruling elites. The most important Arab members of
OPEC (plus Iran) are precisely those in which Washington would seek reform or,
if necessary, "regime change".
Reforming Arab public opinion and the ruling regimes is a chicken-and-egg
conundrum. Either task by itself would be a tall order. The two taken together
become a Herculean task. Skepticism is not misplaced, but Asian and European
observers who consider the project less than hopeless seem to doubt
Washington's staying power. That is an understandable misperception, but wrong
because it is cynical. It results, on the one hand, from justified disdain for
an American foreign policy style that runs with diminished attention span from
one thing to the next, and, on the other hand, from a superficial stereotyping
of American national character.
George W Bush's invocation, in the State of the Union speech, of World War II
and the Cold War as precedents for the "war against terrorism" is both
boilerplate rhetoric and socially constructed reality. Objectively, to assert
the paramountcy of the American role in either is a half-truth: the turning
point against Hitler was Stalingrad, and the Soviet bloc would not have
crumbled without Gorbachev. However, a half-truth is enough to rally American
industrial power, military might, and elite political will against domestic and
international public opinion.
Moreover, the administration in power in Washington is now institutionalizing
its preoccupations by slash-and-burn through the federal bureaucracy until it
grafts together the kinds of organizations it wants: the more centralized the
better, the more security-fixated the better, and the more omnivorous of
information the better. Subsequent administrations will find it difficult to
reverse course, regardless of the tactical modifications they may apply. The
die is cast. And that is on the domestic side.
On the foreign side, the most ardent antagonists to the current Iraqi regime
are inherited from Bush the Elder's regime. They have been advocating no less
than a decade the course of action that now unfolds before our eyes. This is
but the outward reflection of the transformation of every sphere of domestic
policy into an aspect of "homeland security", by the straitjacket of budgetary
constraint, if not by the refashioning of organizational mission. The internal
structures of the country are being molded so as to reproduce into the future,
both domestically and internationally, the policies now being initiated.
How does all this answer the question about whether oil is the question or
whether Iraq is the answer? The oil is not to be underestimated; but insofar as
this is a war for oil, it is really a war, rather, for the profits from oil. In
fact, however, the question really is: How will Washington seek to influence
developments in Southwest Asia in general, the better to shape the direction of
change in the Arab world in particular? This is the sense in which Iraq is
really the question and oil is really the answer. This evolution of the
international policy of the United States is inseparable from the
transformation of its domestic policy and institutions, and from the erosion of
its once-proud "civic" political culture.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contactcontent@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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