A War for Oil
By Nathan Paulsen
University of Minnesota student

From weapons of mass destruction to alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the pre-war justifications for invading Iraq were nothing more than a pack of lies.

Why then has the U. S. government invested hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars - and tens of thousands of young American lives – maintaining its brutal military occupation of Iraq?

The fact that Iraq is situated in a region that is home to the majority of the world’s oil resources has played a dominant role in U.S. foreign policy for more than 60 years.

In the mid-1940s, the U.S. State Department referred to the Middle East as a “stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

Democratic President Jimmy Carter affirmed this perspective during his State of the Union address in 1980, when he said: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Those “vital interests” included the need “to ensure the availability of oil at reasonable prices.” The first line of National Security Directive 54, which authorized the use of force against Iraq in 1991, clearly lays out the motivation for war by stating that, “access to Persian Gulf oil [is] vital to U.S. national security.”

Running on empty

At the turn of the 21st century, the strategic significance of controlling the world’s oil reserves is even more prominent than it was a decade or two ago. The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that world demand for oil will skyrocket 50% by 2025.

At the same time that demand for petroleum is surging, geologists are warning of severe worldwide oil shortages within the next ten to twenty years.

Indeed, a study written for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, titled “Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations,” predicts that the world may begin experiencing oil shortages “within a few short years.”

The report states bluntly: “The United States currently has 5 percent of the world’s population, but uses 25 percent of the world’s annual energy production. This disproportionate consumption of energy relative to global consumption causes loss of the world’s good will and provides a context for potential military conflicts, at the cost of lives, money, and political capital. A more equitable distribution of resources is in our best interest for a peaceful future.”

Given these kinds of conclusions, it is little wonder the report had been withheld from the public since September 2005 and was released (apparently by accident) in mid-March 2006.

Instead of funding alternative energy sources to deal with this emerging petroleum crisis, the U.S. government has decided to ship tens of thousands of young people half way around the world to kill and be killed fighting for the oil interests of multinational corporations.

The process of writing Iraq’s new constitution last summer confirms this reality. After heavy involvement from U.S. officials, Iraq’s constitution will privatize Iraq’s economy and open the country for foreign investments – including Iraq’s oil and gas wealth.

By attacking Iraq, the Bush Administration – along with their Congressional allies in both political parties – not only hoped to install a friendly regime in the heart of the Middle East that would safeguard American oil interests, it also wanted to establish permanent military bases in the region and demonstrate the destructive powers of the U.S. military to a world that is increasingly turning against U.S. interests.

It’s as if by toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime, the U.S. elite are saying to leaders everywhere: “If you get out of line, what happened to Hussein might also happen to you.”

At the end of the day, the Iraq war is an act of desperation designed by rulers whose power is so thoroughly illegitimate that they can only govern at the barrel of a gun. Fortunately, the strategy to capture control of the Middle East’s energy resources through the use of military force has been a spectacular failure.

According to an August 2005 poll commissioned by Britain’s Ministry of Defense, 82% of Iraqi citizens are “strongly opposed” to the presence of occupying forces. With protests against the war growing inside Iraq and around the world, the U.S. elite will soon be handed their worst defeat since Vietnam.

Nathan Paulsen is an activist with the Anti-War Organizing League and writes columns for the Minnesota Daily.