Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The US and the Middle East
In 2003 many people were convinced that the US was invading Iraq pri-
marily for its oil, and many protestors against the invasion carried “No
Blood for Oil” placards. Donald Rumsfeld said at the time: “this is not
about oil, and anyone who thinks that is badly misunderstanding the situ-
ation”. It was a denial that, given his position at the time, did not carry a
great deal of weight for many people.
However, the evidence suggests that the 2003 invasion was driven
somewhat more by neo-conservative ideologues wanting to make the
Arab world “safe” for democracy and, incidently, for Israel than directly by
a desire for oil. If anything, oil was more of a driving force in the first Gulf
War, both for Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait in 1990 and for his
expulsion from Kuwait in 1991 by the US-led coalition.
But, energy still looms very large in US foreign policy in the Middle
East. This is the subject of much of this chapter. For most of the recent
history of the link between energy and war turns on the relationship
between the US - as the world's largest user and importer of oil - and the
Gulf region as the world's most concentrated repository of oil and gas. The
Gulf produces nearly forty percent of the world's oil and almost a fifth of
its gas, and is home to a still larger proportion of world reserves in both
oil and gas.
For the US, oil has always been a public-private partnership. Unlike
most countries, the US has never had a national state-owned oil company,
but its public authorities have always been closely involved in regulating
oil, and to some extent in promoting its use. For most of the twentieth
century, regulation of production (to prevent over-production) was con-
ducted at the state level - by the two main producing states of Texas and
Louisiana individually, and by the two states together in the Interstate Oil
Compact Commission. Protection from imports (to prevent US produc-
ers being undercut by cheaper imports) was provided at the federal level
- by an oil-import tariff imposed in 1932 and by oil-import quotas that
lasted from 1959 until they were removed in 1973.
America entered World War II as the world's leading oil producer,
believing it possessed about 20bn barrels of oil, or nearly half the world's
known oil reserves. But this belief caused as much anxiety as assurance,
because it meant that if and when the US went through its own reserves
there were few other suppliers it could turn to. The galloping fuel con-
sumption of the Allies during World War II increased this anxiety. So the
US began to eye the Middle East as a source of oil.
