Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, the Americans have been giving us one fancy hypothesis after another – the end of history, clashes of civilisations, the retreat of nation-states, the information revolution, the new economy, free trade and so on and so forth. Some of these hypotheses, especially the economic ones, have been repeated so very often that they have almost acquired axiomatic status in popular perception like the laws of nature. The notion of massive cross-border capital flows softening and eventually breaking down rigid national barriers was taken so seriously that even some of the anti-globalisation best-sellers wanted us to believe that the world’s sole superpower is also being subjected to a systematic erosion of the authority of its nation-state. Only the other day a book like Empire was being hailed as the Communist Manifesto of the era of globalisation, the book that dared declare that “the United States does not, and indeed no nation-state can today, form the centre of an imperialist project. Imperialism is over.”
But as we can now see so very clearly, all this while imperialism was really busy not just developing its repertoire of instruments of economic domination but also constantly upgrading its war machine (the military-industrial complex) and its doctrines of war. While the ‘principle’ of retreat of nation-states has been used to facilitate a massive invasion of the market, it has now been supplemented with the notion of ‘rogue states’ whose sovereignty, we are told, is eminently dispensable. The entire thrust of the so-called war on terror has been directed not so much against those ‘shadowy networks of terror’ as against nation-states who are selectively accused of sponsoring terrorism and then ravaged and savaged like Afghanistan and Iraq to facilitate their reintegration into what constitutes ‘normal international life’ for Washington. Incidentally, all these ‘rogue states’ are very rich in energy resources (oil and natural gas) and are invested with considerable geo-strategic significance.
Amidst all the talk of information technology and new economy, it is oil, as every child today knows, that has been at the centre of the war on Iraq. Oil remains the single most important source of energy for the foreseeable future, accounting for nearly 40% of the world’s fuel mix. The US with a daily consumption of some 20 million barrels accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s total oil consumption, but its domestic production is declining and remains below 6 million barrels a day. This means the US is suffering from growing import dependence (70%) and with production in non-OPEC countries having already peaked, it will once again be the OPEC that the US will have to increasingly depend upon. In other words, the US will continue to be haunted by the spectre of the great oil shock of 1973 when many in the US and the whole world had first discovered the existence of the OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries had been formed at a meeting held on September 14, 1960 in Baghdad – yes Baghdad – by five Founder Members: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela). The OPEC had inflicted a terrible shock (shock and awe!) by placing an embargo on oil exports to the US in protest against America’s support for Israel. It is therefore not difficult to understand the growing American obsession with oil and why the Middle-East has emerged as America’s most favourite theatre of war.
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The US-Saddam Love-Hate Relationship
From One Regime Change to Another
One of the favourite excuses peddled by the US for the attack on Iraq was the need for a ‘regime change’ of the ‘evil’ Saddam Hussein. But we should remember that it was the US which helped Saddam Hussein secure power in Iraq. Then too, the US had felt the need for a ‘regime change’ of Abdel Karim Qasim, who, in 1958, had overthrown the puppet regime of Nuri as-Said, and declared a republic.
Actually, the US has raised the slogan of ‘regime change’ every time an Iraqi government has even marginally or partially, challenged US hegemony over oil and tried to assert Iraq’s own control over resources.
As soon as Qasim seized power, US and UK troops prepared to invade Iraq. But opposition to the deposed regime was so great that, within Iraq, the US could find no supporters. In response to US threats of invasion, the Qasim regime issued declarations promising to respect US oil interests, after which US and UK troops were withdrawn. However, the deposition of the puppet regime created extremely high expectations among Iraqi people, that the crippling colonial-era oil concession to IPC would be scrapped. Under pressure from the people, the Qasim regime began a tug of war with IPC, withdrew from the pro-US-UK Baghdad Pact, signed aid deals with USSR, cancelled all US aid programme, ordered British forces to quit Iraq. IPC’s existing oil mines covered only 0.5% of the area conceded to it; Qasim in 1961 issued a law under which the rest of the 99.5% of territory would revert to the government. In 1963, Qasim announced the formation of a state oil company, made public a secret American note threatening Iraq with sanctions. Four days later, Qasim was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored coup, carried out by the Ba’ath Party in alliance with an army faction. The army faction, however, soon edged the Ba’ath Party out of power. The new regime made plans to surrender more oil interests to the IPC, but faced with widespread nationalist opposition, was forced to retreat.
Then, in 1968, the Ba’ath Party seized power in yet another coup, in which Saddam Hussein became vice president and the influential deputy head of the Revolutionary Command Council. In the bloodbath that followed the coup, the Ba’athists systematically ‘purged’ hundreds of intelligentsia and communists and political figures, using lists provided by the CIA. (See Frontline, April 11, 2003, p 123)
Arab Challenge to Imperialist Domination of Oil
However, the Ba’ath Party belied US hopes, going on to nationalize the IPC in 1972, and making overtures to the USSR and France instead of the US. A really robust nationalist step would have been to develop technological self-reliance in the field of oil (as Socialist China had done). The new regime fell short of this, restricting itself instead to “loosen the bonds to the US-UK oil giants by tying up with other advanced countries” (Behind the Invasion). But Iraq under Saddam’s Ba’ath Party did play a crucial role in mounting a challenge to western domination by the formation of OPEC, and by the Arab oil embargo and raised oil prices that affected western states.
When Saddam effectively became unchallenged leader of his party and Iraq in 1979, the region was at the crossroads.
— In Iran, the US client Shah regime had been overthrown, and a massive upsurge had replaced it with the ‘Islamic revolution’ of Khomeini. This caused deep anxiety for the US.
— The US regarded Ba’ath Party as secular (though dictatorial) regime in Iraq to be a buffer to Khomeini’s Islamic Iran. This fact ridicules the US attempts today to claim that Saddam is an ally of a global fundamentalist conspiracy. The fact is that Islamic fundamentalism remained hostile to many aspects of Saddam’s regime, for instance its increase in women’s literacy and employment in various professions, or its putting up Saddam’s idols (disallowed by Islam).
— However, Saddam’s rule posed some challenges to US hegemony. Not only did it organize Arab assertion over oil; it invested a significant part of the earnings, increased from hiked oil prices, in Iraq’s internal development – housing, education, literacy, diversified industry, non-oil exports, civilian infrastructure, increased agricultural production, etc. This was in stark contrast to the Gulf Sheikhdoms, which invested most of the increased oil revenues in US banks and currency!
— Also, Saddam had used Iraq’s oil wealth for a major military build-up, buying Soviet weapons.
Iran-Iraq War Cures American Headache
The Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 came as a boon for the US. Iran and Iraq were the region’s two major military powers, both potentially hostile challenges to the US. With one stroke, they were both tied up in a decade-long mutual military conflict! When Iraq was on the brink of invading Iran in 1980, the US lost no time in re-establishing diplomatic relations with Iraq, which it had severed in 1967. This restoration of ties was kept secret for a few years, and formally restored in 1984. The special envoy sent by President Reagan to seal the friendship was none other than Doanld Rumsfeld, the present US Defense Secretary. The US backed Iraq to the hilt in its war against Iran.
The US, with the cooperation of Britain, France, Germany and Italy, supplied Iraq with weapons, including uranium, and chemical and biological weapons. It was the US which arranged loans for Iraq from US client states like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Why and How the US Stabbed Saddam in the Back
The Iran-Iraq war, which ended inconclusively in 1990, had left both countries economically crippled by losses and debt, with nothing to show for the war. This suited the US, but it was not enough. The US’s ultimate ambition was to consolidate global supremacy by securing unchallenged control over West Asian oil resources. This needed permanent installation of US military in the region. The Iran-Iraq war opened up golden opportunities for the US to gain a foothold in the region.
After the war with Iran, Saddam felt his close collusion with US interests would result in compensation for the war damages Iraq had incurred. Instead, the US client states like Kuwait and others hiked their oil production, resulting in a drop in oil prices that was devastating for war-ravaged Iraq.
Not only that, Kuwait, provocatively, stole the oil from Iraq’s Rumaila oil fields near the border, a move that is very likely to have been orchestrated by the US.
Goaded and desperate, Saddam appealed to the US, pointing out that it was Iraq who had ‘protected’ the ‘US’ interests against Iran, and asking, “Is this Iraq’s reward for its role in securing the stability of the region?” Saddam pleaded with the US to intervene to curb its ‘friends’ (like Kuwait), warning that if they failed, Iraq would be forced to invade Kuwait.
The US administration sent back a neutral reply, expressing mild concern over Saddam’s intentions, but specifying that “we have no opinion on … your border disagreement with Kuwait …” Saddam took this, at face value, to mean that the US would maintain a neutral stance.
Instead, as soon as Saddam invaded Kuwait, the US promptly grabbed the opportunity to mobilize the UN and other Arab states in a coalition against Iraq. The US, then, scotched all diplomatic efforts for a peaceful solution, and launched the First Gulf War.
The recently concluded Gulf War II is no post 9 September part of a ‘war on terror’. It is the logical sequel to Gulf War I. Iraq had been systematically starved and crippled by sanctions, while ‘weapons inspections’ had subjected it to the thorough espionage and systematic stripping of its military capability. Long before 9 September, and even before Bush became president, he and his cronies had come up with a detailed plan to invade Iraq in order to secure military control of the Gulf region.
In this report and others, Bush and Co. clearly states that it is Saddam’s independence, even occasional defiance vis-à-vis the US interests in the oil market, and not his dictatorial regime, which made Iraq deserve invasion. 9 September only provided a flimsy excuse, a fig leaf, for this war and the many others which the US needs in order to secure unchallenged global hegemony.
