I havent published much of anything about Iraq, although Ive written a bunch about it. Most of what Ive written has represented my own confusion about there I stand, and while honesty is doubtless interesting, simply standing up and saying Im confused seemed like a waste of my time and yours.
But I saw something the other day over at Oliver Willis place that made me sit up and think.
It was an article in Newsday, suggesting that members of the Administration have floated a plan to take and sell Iraqi oil to pay the costs of the invasion. Spoils of war they call it.
Now I dont doubt that someone has floated this as a concept, but Im also a little dubious about whether it has been adopted as U.S. policy. I Googled it, and find the same story literally, the same story, by Knute Royce, republished in three places Newsday, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Gulf News in the UAE. Googling Knute Royce I see that hes apparently a two-time Pulitzer winner and the Washington D.C. correspondent for Newdsay, so hes a credible guy. My jury’s out on this one.
But thinking about this brought some small clarity to my thoughts, and I realized just what were doing wrong.
There are (at least) two issues at stake in our approach to the Middle East.
The first is that we (the industrial West) have profited quite substantially from Middle Eastern oil; our trading partners there have profited as well, but the profits havent built economies and societies that offer much to the average person.
The second issue is that in no small part in response to the dysfunctional societies that have been built and maintained with our oil money, a culture has emerged which is virulently anti-Western; it combines the anti-Western Romantic intellectual strains that flowered in the 60s and became intellectual commonplaces in the 90s with traditions in Muslim history of conflict with the West.
The second issue, funded by the profits of the first issue, has emerged as a chronic, low-level war that has most dramatically shown itself on 9/11, but has cost thousands of lives over the last decade in less-dramatic attacks.
The second issue is a genuine threat to us, to our allies in the West, and to the people who are forced to live in religious dictatorships in Islamist countries (note that not all Islamic countries are religious dictatorships or post aggressive threats to the West).
The problem is in no small part of our (again, the Wests) making; we traded freedom for stability in the region in order to have secure and compliant trading partners. But having had a role in raising a psychopath doesnt mean we should let ourselves be attacked by him as a way of assuaging our guilt.
We have a clear choice; we can fight to secure a supply of affordable oil, and to intimidate the other countries in the region into maintaining our supply of cheap oil; or we can fight to dismantle the social structures that our oil money and their dictators have created and attempt to free the people who have been forced to live hopeless, squalid lives.
Theres a bunch of issues collapsed into that paragraph that will require discussion and explanation
at a later time.
Right now, I want to focus on one thing; that if were going to do this, we need to do it for the right reasons, or at least for reasons that arent transparently wrong.
If we are going to invade Iraq, we need to make two public and firm commitments:
1) We arent in it for the oil. Not in the short run, anyway. A prosperous, stable Middle East would doubtless want to sell and exploit their natural resources. Wed want to buy them. Sounds like a deal could be made.
2) Were in this for the long haul. We dont get to declare victory and go home when the going gets tough, elections are near, or TV shows pictures of the inevitable suffering that war causes. The Marshall Plan is a bad example, because the Europe that had been devastated by war had the commercial and entrepreneurial culture that simply needed stuff and money to get restarted. And were good with stuff and money. This is going to take more, and were going to have to be willing to figure it out as we go.
There are no good examples of this that I can think of in history. The postwar reconstruction of Japan comes the closest, and its not necessarily a good example, because the Japanese by WWII were a coherent, unified, hierarchical society that could be changed by fiat from the top. The Robert Kaplan-esque world were moving toward isnt.
We need to make a grand moral gesture to make it clear to the world that 1) isnt the case. Personally, I think that it needs to come both from the American people and businesses, from our government.
I think the whole anti-SUV thing isnt a bad place to start. Its an incredibly powerful symbol to the rest of the world that were killing people in Iraq so we can buy Suburbans. I dont believe it should be legislated, I dont believe they should be banned, but I think that we should each examine what were willing to give up to play our part in changing the world so that 9/11 is an aberration.
I do think that on a national level, we should talk about moving toward taxing energy to encourage efficiency; there are a lot of arguments about this, but Ill make a simple one: we can buy energy from outside our economy, or we can buy ingenuity and products that save it from within it. Which one leads to jobs?
Im not one of the liberals who has a vision of essentially 19th Century village life as the way we all should live. That goal is of people who have an essentially abstemious belief set. I dont believe that sacrifice and frugality are in themselves character-building or good moral values. I do believe that sacrifice in the name of a goal is a good thing, and that frugality in the name of building a better future are.
So if the Democrats want a response to the war, here it is:
1) We wont take Iraqi oil as booty;
2) We will work to wean ourselves from Middle Eastern oil through efficiency and domestic sources (but this time, unlike the Alaska pipleline, we wont sell them to Japan)
3) Were in this for the duration.
If we cant answer all three as a solid yes, we shouldnt go. If we can, we should.
10 thoughts on “IRAQ AT LAST”
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I thought the oil was going to pay for Iraq’s Marshall Plan. And that’s better than using it to pay for WMD research.
Typical loaded left-wing liberal media bias at work. We are going to use the damn oil to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq. We will be controlling how the revenue is used, because we will be running the place, but that is it. Nobody is talking about using Iraqi oil money to pay for anything other than Iraq’s bills.
It may be typical, but it’s right…
…because if the rest of the world sees this as an effort to reimpose extractive colonialism (think “Heart of Darkness”), we’ll be fighting everyone on every front possible.
If it’s seen as something other than “invade them, rule them, take their stuff”, it might, just might be seen as an effort to liberate the Iraquis.
Big damn difference between those two.
A.L.
Good blob, but one statement I disagree with: “[W]e can buy energy from outside our economy, or we can buy ingenuity and products that save it from within it. Which one leads to jobs?”
The answer is likely whichever is cheaper, and that is likely buying from outside. We could have a solar economy, or a wind economy, or even a domestic oil economy, but the cost of energy would be higher. One can argue how much higher, but higher nonetheless, at least at the present. If the cost of energy is higher, those things that people buy that require energy to build or maintain (pretty much everything) will become more expensive to buy or operate, and thus people will buy less, which will lead to a smaller economy, and thus fewer new jobs. You may have a few more people working on new technology, but you’ll lose a lot of people working in factories.
Tom:
I’ve seen a number of analyses of this, and don’t necessarily agree.
Prices go up directly with energy costs in the short run, but we’re pretty lazy as a consequence of having such cheap energy, and so don’t spend a lot of time or effort finding new processes, patterns of distribution, etc. because there’s no margin in it.
As energy prices rise (up to some threshold level), we’ll continue to do substitutions.
Thoughts??
A.L.
I don’t buy the argument that the West by buying oil screwed up societies in the Middle East. Those countries that don’t have oil are in about the same shape, in terms of the masses, as those that do. When oil runds out they will be where there are now…nowhere.
> …because if the rest of the world sees this as an effort to reimpose extractive colonialism (think “Heart of Darkness”), we’ll be fighting everyone on every front possible.
Really? Who? Why? How?
The answer must be some group that has the relevant capabilities, the willingness to make the relevant sacrifices, the self-interest, AND they can’t already be fighting us.
Note that no European, Asian, African, North or South American, or Indian subcontinent country qualifies. Neither does anyone in the South Pacific.
Who’s left? And, how do they qualify as “everyone”?
I think that a version of this war could be justified, if we (Bush) had begun that way. If he had come out and said “we need to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam”, and posed this as a humanitarian mission, I think it would all be very different.
For one thing, it would force us on the Left to say “no, we think it’s ok that these people continue to suffer.” Which, in effect, is being said every day, but under cover of “no blood for oil” or whatever.
And I actually don’t buy that we just want oil. If we wanted oil, we were already in Iraq 12 years ago, on the ground, with Saddam on the run. We just left.
Maybe Shrub is sneakier than his dad, but I just don’t see that kind of blatant grab. I do see some serious patronage after we win, but that’s a different kind of problem.
This was a good blog entry, I’m glad I came by your site.
There is a factor I think people overlook when discussing the Iraq oil thing, and that is that oil is running out. Whether anyone cares to discuss it or not, according to the oil industry’s own publications, global oil production is expected to peak anywhere between 2005-2035. After that it will become increasingly expensive until it is no longer a viable energy source. As Grand Poobahs in the oil industry, the members of the Bush administration are fully aware of this.
Iraq’s oil fields are the last great reserve in the entire world. I’ve read articles in Oil & Gas Journal that put Iraqi reserves second only to Saudi Arabia’s.
There is no question that America’s primacy is a result of cheap energy. If other nations have access to cheap oil they can also advance as rapidly as the US. The problem is that right now, Iraq is making oil deals with Russia, China, Jordan, and India.
When the crunch comes in the next few decades, the nations with access to the most oil will end up the new world powers. If this is in doubt, remember that Germany ultimately lost WWII because they ran out of gas.
If the United States does not sieze Iraqi oil very soon, Iraq, Russia, China, Jordan and India stand a chance of becoming true threats to the United States by way of their access to longer-lived Iraqi oil.
There is absolutely no question whatsoever that the Iraq thing is about oil. It is not about liberal or conservative, traitor or patriot. It is about trying to figure a way out of the mess before it reaches critical mass.
hopefully that was coherent, given the time. thanks for reading this.
Nice entry. I also stopped blogging on Iraq for awhile because I too am a liberal who hates Saddam, but distrusts the president’s motives. Can a foreign policy characterized by overconfidence, arrogance, and patronization of our allies ultimately be successful? I don’t know. If we did confiscate Iraqi oil to pay for our war I would be sorely disappointed, and my worst suspicions about Cheney and company will have been confirmed.