Page 1 of 2 US garrisons and global gas stations
By Michael T Klare
American policymakers have long viewed the protection of overseas oil supplies
as an essential matter of "national security", requiring the threat of - and
sometimes the use of - military force. This is now an unquestioned part of
American foreign policy.
On this basis, the George H W Bush administration fought a war against Iraq in
1990-1991 and the George W Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003. With
global oil prices soaring and oil reserves expected to dwindle in the years
ahead, military force is sure to be seen by whatever new administration enters
Washington in January 2009 as the ultimate guarantor of the US's well-being in
the oil heartlands of the planet.
But with the costs of militarized oil operations - in both blood and
dollars - rising precipitously, isn't it time to challenge such "wisdom"? Isn't
it time to ask whether the US military has anything reasonable to do with
American energy security, and whether a reliance on military force, when it
comes to energy policy, is practical, affordable or justifiable?
How energy policy got militarized
The association between "energy security" (as it's now termed) and "national
security" was established long ago. President Franklin D Roosevelt first forged
this association in 1945, when he pledged to protect the Saudi Arabian royal
family in return for privileged American access to Saudi oil.
The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when president Jimmy
Carter told the US Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Persian
Gulf oil was a "vital interest" of the United States, and attempts by hostile
nations to cut that flow would be countered "by any means necessary, including
military force".
To implement this "doctrine", Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid Deployment
Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat operations in the Persian
Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later turned that force into a full-scale
regional combat organization, the US Central Command, or CENTCOM. Every
president since Reagan has added to CENTCOM's responsibilities, endowing it
with additional bases, fleets, air squadrons and other assets. As the country
has, more recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa,
US military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well.
As a result, the US military has come to serve as a global oil protection
service, guarding pipelines, refineries and loading facilities in the Middle
East and elsewhere. According to one estimate, provided by the conservative
National Defense Council Foundation, the "protection" of Persian Gulf oil alone
costs the US Treasury US$138 billion per year - up from $49 billion just before
the invasion of Iraq.
For Democrats and Republicans alike, spending such sums to protect foreign oil
supplies is now accepted as common wisdom, not worthy of serious discussion or
debate. A typical example of this attitude can be found in an "Independent Task
Force Report" on the "National Security Consequences of US Oil Dependency"
released by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2006.
Chaired by former secretary of defense James R Schlesinger and former Central
Intelligence Agency director John Deutch, the CFR report concluded that the US
military must continue to serve as a global oil protection service for the
foreseeable future. "At least for the next two decades, the Persian Gulf will
be vital to US interests in reliable oil supplies," it noted. Accordingly, "the
United States should expect and support a strong military posture that permits
suitably rapid deployment to the region, if necessary." Similarly, the report
adds, "US naval protection of the sea lanes that transport oil is of paramount
importance."
The Pentagon as Insecurity Inc
These views, widely shared, then and now, by senior figures in both major
parties, dominate - or, more accurately, blanket - American strategic thinking.
Yet the actual utility of military force as a means for ensuring energy
security has yet to be demonstrated.
Keep in mind that, despite the deployment of up to 160,000 US troops in Iraq
and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, Iraq is a country in
chaos and the Department of Defense has been notoriously unable to prevent the
recurring sabotage of oil pipelines and refineries by various insurgent groups
and militias, not to mention the systematic looting of government supplies by
senior oil officials supposedly loyal to the US-backed central government and
often guarded (at great personal risk) by American soldiers.
Five years after the US invasion, Iraq is producing only about 2.5 million
barrels of oil per day - about the same amount as in the worst days of Saddam
Hussein in 2001. Moreover, the New York Times reports, "At least one-third, and
possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq's largest refinery ... is [being]
diverted to the black market, according to American military officials." Is
this really conducive to American energy security?
The same disappointing results have been noted in other countries where
US-backed militaries have attempted to protect vulnerable oil facilities. In
Nigeria, for example, increased efforts by American-equipped government forces
to crush rebels in the oil-rich Niger Delta region have merely inflamed the
insurgency while actually lowering national oil output. Meanwhile, the Nigerian
military, like the Iraqi government (and assorted militias), has been accused
of pilfering billions of dollars' worth of crude oil and selling it on the
black market.
In reality, the use of military force to protect foreign oil supplies is likely
to create anything but "security". It can, in fact, trigger violent "blowback"
against the United States. For example, the decision by the senior president
Bush to maintain an enormous, permanent US military presence in Saudi Arabia
following Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait is now widely viewed as a major
source of virulent anti-Americanism in the kingdom and became a prime
recruiting tool for Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to the September
11, 2001, terror attacks.
"For over seven years," bin Laden proclaimed in 1998, "the United States has
been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian
Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its
people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the peninsula into
a spearhead through which to fight neighboring Muslim peoples." To repel this
assault on the Muslin world, he thundered, it was "an individual duty for every
Muslim" to "kill the Americans" and drive their armies "out of all the lands of
Islam".
As if to confirm the veracity of bin Laden's analysis of US intentions,
then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld flew to Saudi Arabia on April 30,
2003, to announce that the American bases there would no longer be needed due
to the successful invasion of Iraq, then barely one month old. "It is now a
safer region because of the change of regime in Iraq," Rumsfeld declared. "The
aircraft and those involved will now be able to leave."
Even as he was speaking in Riyadh, however, a dangerous new case of blowback
had erupted in Iraq: on their entry into Baghdad, US forces seized and guarded
the Oil Ministry headquarters while allowing schools, hospitals and museums to
be looted with impunity. Most Iraqis have since come to regard this decision,
which insured that the rest of the city would be looted, as the ultimate
expression of the Bush administration's main motive for invading their country.
They have viewed repeated White House claims of a commitment to human rights
and democracy there as mere fig leaves that barely covered the urge to plunder
Iraq's oil. Nothing American officials have done since has succeeded in erasing
this powerful impression, which continues to drive calls for an American
withdrawal.
These are but a few examples of the losses to American national security
produced by a thoroughly militarized approach to energy security. Yet the
premises of such a global policy continue to go unquestioned, even as American
policymakers persist in relying on military force as their ultimate response to
threats to the safe production and transportation of oil. In a kind of energy
"Catch-22", the continual militarizing of energy policy only multiplies the
threats that call such militarization into being.
If anything, this spiral of militarized insecurity is worsening. Take the
expanded US military presence in Africa - one of the few areas in the world
expected to experience an increase in oil output in the years ahead.
This year, the Pentagon will activate the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), its
first new overseas combat command since Reagan created CENTCOM a quarter
century ago. Although Department of Defense officials are loathe to publicly
acknowledge any direct relationship between AFRICOM's formation and a growing
US reliance on that continent's oil, they are less inhibited in private
briefings.
At a February 19 meeting at the National Defense University, for example,
AFRICOM deputy commander, Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, indicated that "oil
disruption" in Nigeria and West Africa would constitute one of the primary
challenges facing the new organization.
AFRICOM and similar extensions of the Carter Doctrine into new oil-producing
regions are only likely to provoke fresh outbreaks of blowback, while bundling
tens of billions of extra dollars every year into an already bloated Pentagon
budget. Sooner or later, if US policy doesn't change, this price will be
certain to include as well the loss of American lives, as more and more
soldiers are exposed to hostile fire or explosives while protecting vulnerable
oil installations in areas torn by ethnic, religious and sectarian strife.
Why pay such a price? Given the all-but-unavoidable evidence of just how
ineffective military force has been when it comes to protecting oil supplies,
isn't it time to rethink Washington's reigning assumptions regarding the
relationship between energy
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