Forget the shock
and awe-inspiring pornography of massive explosions filmed from the
sky, the plaintive faces of civilians being bombed into liberation
or even the plucky resistance of Iraqi partisans. For me, the most
compelling image of the US-led aggression against Iraq was what happened in Umm
Qasr on the first day of the ground invasion. A spokesman for the
invaders declared that the port had been secured.
And to emphasise
the reality of American conquest, the Iraqi flag was torn down from
the docks and the Stars and Stripes hastily hoisted in its place.
For a war officially meant to be about Iraqi Freedom, not
occupation, that rudely fluttering American flag was an unsettling
intimation of what the future really has in store. Anxious that the
illusion of piety surrounding Anglo-American intentions be
maintained, British defence secretary Geoff Hoon counselled his
US counterpart that
the dockyard spectacle not be repeated in a hurry.
The offending flag was removed because it was a naive and
unnecessary expression of war aims. The Bush administration knows
that once it succeeds in bombing president Saddam Hussein out of
power and installing an administrative arrangement of its own
choosing — i.e. when it switches from rule by ordnance to rule by
ordinance — US interests will be well looked after. Already,
reconstruction contracts are being earmarked for politi-cally
well-connected American corporations like Halli-burton and Bechtel,
and oilmen from Texas have begun making their
first forays into Iraq's Rumaila oil field.
Apart from the
strategic pay-off in getting to decide how much Iraqi oil is
produced and to whom it is sold, there's serious money to be made
for American companies. The Iraqi oil industry will need some
capital investment but given the high quality of the oil and the
relatively low extraction costs, profits will be enormous.
Nationalisation of the oil industry in most Arab countries over the
years has led to US oil companies being restricted to downstream,
i.e. refining and marketing, activities. But the real profits are in
upstream, i.e. extraction, operations.
If Saddam Hussein is overthrown, US oil companies would be well
placed to gain control of Iraqi reserves from the extraction to
marketing stage. The US could also block Russian, French and Chinese oil majors
from benefiting. Finally, control over the international oil trade
will help to protect the dollar's dominant position vis-a-vis
long-term rivals like the euro.
But this war is about more than just oil: It is about
cementing the domination of the US in a world that is likely to
undergo fundamental economic and strategic changes in the next few
decades. This strategy goes back to the 1990s, when the Clinton administration adopted a
national security document explicitly built around the objective of
preventing the emergence of rival powers. Through a combination of
containment, co-optation and IMF condi-tionalities, China, Russia, France-Germany, India, Japan, Korea and Indonesia have all been kept in
check thus far.
Faced with the prospects of a multipolar world, the first
preoccupation of the Clinton presidency was to ensure that the US remained indispensable for
European security. The expansion of NATO, the intervention in
Bosnia and, finally,
the illegal attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, were all aimed at discouraging Europe from entertaining the idea
that it could get by without the US. Washington achieved its
objectives, but only in part.
Today, as the Franco-German axis of opposition to the
Iraq war
demonstrates, the fissures between Europe and the US run deep. It is no mere
coincidence that the continent of Asia, whose economy is set to grow
the fastest in the coming years, is also where all of America's
'rogue states' or potential 'rogue states' are. The terrorists who
executed 9/11 gave the US the opportunity to insert itself militarily into the
very heart of Central Asia, where oil and gas reserves rival those of West Asia.
Under the 'axis of evil' thesis and the illegal doctrines
of pre-emptive war and regime change, the US is preparing the ground for
military intervention elsewhere in Asia. Iran and North Korea have already been
given notice, but Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could also end up feeling the heat. In both the oil
surplus regions of West and Central
Asia and the oil deficient regions of East
and South Asia, the
US aim is to use its
overwhelming military might to control and manage the flow of energy
resources. This is what Mr Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney's promised
'endless war' against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction is
all about.
For a country like India, the choice is clear: It
must join hands with others in Asia and elsewhere to resist this
growing US
intervention. Unfortunately, the Vajpayee government is in a myopic
mode. A very senior government source told an off-the-record
briefing last week that India's policy was not to alienate the US over Iraq for fear of what
Washington might do
in the UN over Kashmir. But if the US is allowed to get away with aggression in Iraq, this will increase the
likelihood of it using Kashmir as a lever to ensure Indian compliance. Security can
never be bought by meekly watching the schoolyard bully attack
others in the hope that he will forget about you.
