Addicted to Empire, Not Middle Eastern Oil

[Clara T]

Addicted to Empire, Not Middle Eastern Oil
by Paul Street

But contrary to conventional wisdom in dominant media, Bush's supposed super-candid "addicted to oil" statement was more about deception than frankness. This is for two reasons. The first one is simple: the U.S. imports just 20 percent of its petroleum from the Middle East, the obvious geographic meaning (though he may also have had Venezuela in mind) of Bush's phrase "unstable parts of the world."

The second reason is a bit more complex. When it comes to America, Iraq, oil, war, and world geography, the really honest and relevant point regarding U.S. policy is that Uncle Sam is addicted to global dominance and empire. That addiction and not any direct-use reliance on Persian Gulf petroleum is the real reason "we" are in Iraq (against the wishes of "our" own populace not to mention those of the Iraqis) and not likely to leave anytime soon.

U.S. policymakers have long known that Middle Eastern oil is critical to their dominance in the world. They've long exhibited an obsessive but logical concern with controlling world petroleum supplies, which are disproportionately concentrated in the Middle East. That concern is all about the "critical leverage" (to use President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's telling phrase) such control gives the United States over its major competitor states in Europe and Asia. And as Noam Chomsky observes, U.S. policymakers' determination to guarantee and expand American hegemony in the world system through manipulation of this "critical leverage" goes back to World War II. It would be no less relevant today if the U.S. enjoyed full energy self-sufficiency.

Many serious analysts (including Chomsky, and the prolific Marxian world system writers David Harvey and Giovanni Arrighi), and most of the moderately cognizant world that isn't hopelessly enthralled with and/or beholden to U.S. power understands quite well that this is what the invasion and occupation of Iraq is about. Speaking of the administration's war aims in Iraq, Chomsky says it very well: "anyone with a gray cell functioning knows that invaded to establish control over Middle Eastern oil more firmly."

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=9689

[OneBlueSky]

1. addicted to both . . . you can't have one without the other . . . n/t

.

[Uncle Joe]

2. One thing is for sure, in my mangled Robert Palmer quote,

regarding the Bush administration's relations to the rest of the world, we are not "addicted to love".