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The First Law of Petropolitics
Thomas L. Friedman, Foreign Policy
When I heard the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declare that the Holocaust was a “myth,” I couldn’t help asking myself: “I wonder if the president of Iran would be talking this way if the price of oil were $20 a barrel today rather than $60 a barrel.” When I heard Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez telling British Prime Minister Tony Blair to “go right to hell” and telling his supporters that the U.S.sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas “can go to hell,” too, I couldn’t help saying to myself, “I wonder if the president of Venezuela would be saying all these things if the price of oil today were $20 a barrel rather than $60 a barrel, and his country had to make a living by empowering its own entrepreneurs, not just drilling wells.”
As I followed events in the Persian Gulf during the past few years, I noticed that the first Arab Gulf state to hold a free and fair election, in which women could run and vote, and the first Arab Gulf state to undertake a total overhaul of its labor laws to make its own people more employable and less dependent on imported labor, was Bahrain. Bahrain happened to be the first Arab Gulf state expected to run out of oil. It was also the first in the region to sign a free trade agreement with the United States. I couldn’t help asking myself: “Could that all just be a coincidence? Finally, when I looked across the Arab world, and watched the popular democracy activists in Lebanon pushing Syrian troops out of their country, I couldn’t help saying to myself: “Is it an accident that the Arab world’s first and only real democracy happens not to have a drop of oil?”
… [The rest of the article is behind a $-wall.]
Summary by David Robertsat Gristmill: Axis of oil:
If you can forgive his Very Buzzy Phrases and tendency to quote himself, the Mustache’s cover story for Foreign Policy is worth a read. He explains why, as the price of oil goes up, movements to promote free speech, free press, and democratic elections flounder in oil-producing countries.
When rulers know they can pump money out of the ground, there’s less incentive to promote other forms of economic growth and private enterprise at home. And when the much of the world comes begging at their doorsteps (“more oil, please”), leaders in countries such as Russia, Iran, and Nigeria feel their hands stregthened to ignore international bugaboos such as human rights. Even if the U.S. and Europe try to play tough cop, their efforts may well be undercut by China and Russia, who are less squeamish about where they do business. In short, high oil prices = less freedom.
So if the White House really wants to get serious about promoting freedom and democracy in the Middle East …
(7 May 2006)
America’s Geopolitical Nightmare and Eurasian Strategic Energy Arrangements
F. William Engdahl, GlobalResearch.ca
By drawing attention to Iraq and the obvious role oil plays in US policy today, the Bush-Cheney administration has done just that: They have drawn the world’s energy-deficit powers’ attention firmly to the strategic battle over energy and especially oil. This is already having consequences for the global economy in terms of $75 a barrel crude oil price levels. Now it is taking on the dimension of what one former US Defense Secretary rightly calls a ‘geopolitical nightmare’ for the United States.
The creation by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld and company of a geopolitical nightmare, is also the backdrop to comprehend the dramatic political shift within the US establishment in the past six months, away from the Bush Presidency. Simply put: Bush/Cheney and their band of neo-conservative warhawks, with their special relationship to the capacities of Israel in Iraq and across the Mideast, were given a chance.
The chance was to deliver on the US strategic goal of control of petroleum resources globally, in order to ensure the US role as first among equals over the next decade and beyond. Not only have they failed to ‘deliver’ that goal of US strategic dominance. They have also threatened the very basis of continued US hegemony or as the Rumsfeld Pentagon likes to term it, ‘Full Spectrum Dominance.’ The move by Bolivian President Evo Morales, following meetings with Velezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, to assert national control over oil and gas resources is only the latest demonstration of the decline in US power projection.
…In the space of 12 months Russia and China have managed to move the pieces on the geopolitical ‘chess board’ of Eurasia away from what had been an overwhelming US strategic advantage, to the opposite, where the US is increasingly isolated. It’s potentially the greatest strategic defeat for the US power projection of the post World War II period. This is also the strategic background to the re-emergence of the so-called realist faction in US policy.
F. William Engdahl is a Global Research Contributing Editor and author of the book, ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order,’ Pluto Press Ltd. He is about to publish a book on GMO titled, ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Political Agenda Behind GMO’. He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net .
(7 May 2006)
Oil a sticky issue for next Mexico president
Catherine Bremer, Reuters via Yahoo!News
…If oil dollars have failed to trickle down to the poor, neither have they been adequately pumped into oil exploration, meaning Mexico’s reserves are falling and its prospects for remaining a top 10 exporter of crude are gloomy.
Mexico is riding a crest of giddy oil prices and record output, scooping up unbudgeted oil revenues of $22 billion over 2004 and 2005. But the dollars have dissipated away into routine spending at federal and state levels with no grand projects to show off.
When the crunch comes, and analysts say price swings and declining reserves make it inevitable, Mexico’s next president — to be decided in a July election — will face unprecedented pressure to beef up the oil industry and better manage its profits.
“I don’t think politically anyone’s willing to put their neck on the line in this type of environment. The only thing that will force a change is something really dramatic,” said John Padilla, head of energy research firm IPD Latin America.
“But whoever comes into power is going to have some very serious decisions to make over the next six years.”
(8 May 2006)
Good background article on Mexico, oil and the coming elections. Mexico is a country to watch, since it will likely vote in a leftist-populist administration – one more Latin American country moving to the left. -BA
Bolivia’s populism steps on Brazil
Andrew Downie, Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo!News
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – Bolivia’s decision last week to nationalize its natural gas reserves shocked the West, but the country set to pay the highest price – both politically and economically – is Brazil, experts and analysts say.
More than half the gas used in Brazil is Bolivian, and in Sao Paulo – the state that accounts for roughly half of Brazil’s
GDP – the figure is 75 percent. Any disruption in supply from Bolivia would hit Brazil hard, and those in the heavily industrialized south of the country are especially concerned about the potential costs of last week’s decision.
“If prices were to increase, industry would be very hard hit,” says Saturnino Sergio da Silva, vice president of the Sao Paulo Federation of Industries, the state’s most important business organization. “We want [Brazil’s state-owned oil company] Petrobras to act; we have to be tough and say we don’t accept this.”
…Another worry for Lula – and also for the US – are the political ramifications of Morales’ decision. Although a wave of leftist leaders have swept to power in Latin America recently, until now their words spoke louder than their deeds.
Analysts are now concerned that Morales’ move to nationalize – made just days after he met in Cuba with Fidel Castro and populist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez – is evidence he plans to stand alongside those radical partners rather than the moderates led by Lula.
(8 May 2006)
Related:
The Wealth Underground: Bolivian Gas in State and Corporate Hands (UpsideDownWorld via Znet)
Morales is taking Bolivia out of the shadow of the US (Guardian)
Cuba seeks oil near Keys
Susan Taylor Martin, St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Few Americans paid much attention last year when Cuban President Fidel Castro announced China would help explore potentially large oil reserves off Cuba’s northwest coast — not far from the Florida Keys.But now — with gas prices climbing above $3 a gallon — the prospect of China drilling near the United States has become a hot political issue as two of the world’s largest economies vie for new sources of energy.
Some members of Congress warn that China and other countries could lock up oil supplies at a time when U.S. companies are barred from doing business with Cuba because of a 43-year-old trade embargo.
…Cuba pumps about 80,000 barrels of oil a day in Havana and Matanzas provinces, but it is of poor quality and meets less than half of the country’s needs.
Thus there has been considerable excitement about fields off the northwest Cuban coast that could contain 4.5-billion to 9-billion barrels of oil — almost as much as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
In February 2005, Castro announced that huge Chinese drilling rigs would be used to further explore areas in which a Spanish company had reported promising results. The Cuban government also signed a contract with China’s oil and gas company, Sinopec, to work in areas around the island thought to contain oil deposits.
“There’s been very little drilling offshore and there’s uncertainty over how much (oil) there is,’’ said Chris Schenk of the U.S. Geological Survey. “There’s less than in the Gulf of Mexico, but from a Cuban perspective, it would be a lot.’’
…One expert on Cuban-American issues says it’s not surprising that some members of Congress would seize on soaring gas prices and the U.S.-Chinese competition for oil as a reason to relax the Cuban embargo.
(7 May 2006)
Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom Divided
Alain Gresh, The Nation
The presence of fifteen Saudis among the nineteen 9/11 hijackers marked a turning point in the way Saudi Arabia was perceived in the United States, a shift perhaps best summed up by the expression “Saudi bashing.” Books about the country, which till then had been rare, multiplied, and showed more propaganda than serious study. After arduous researches, American investigative journalists discovered that Saudi Arabia was a theocratic country, that women were segregated, that fundamental freedoms weren’t respected, that there were no elections. One neoconservative actually called for military operations against the country, which was regarded as the main propagator of “Islamic terrorism,” and even suggested partition, with the eastern region–oil-rich and mainly Shiite–to be placed under US control.
Abdelhamed al-Ghathami, a professor of literary theory at King Saud University in Riyadh who readily quotes Derrida and Foucault, is still surprised at what he discovered while teaching in the United States in the 1990s. “Americans didn’t know anything about Saudi Arabia. They thought the country was just a desert and some Bedouins. They didn’t know we had cities, or that middle classes existed. After September 11 they saw us as the quintessence of evil. Our entire society is identified with terrorism. When the Japanese Red Army carried out its attacks, did people make Japan bear all the responsibility? This simplistic view feeds terrorism, since radical groups can claim that the United States is targeting not terrorism but our society as a whole–Arabs, Islam itself. Even more so when we hear Americans calling for the nuclear bombing of Mecca, or denouncing the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.”
Saudi Arabia deserves better than this simplistic treatment. One must be aware not just of its political system and of the place of Islam but also of the changes the country is undergoing. To understand Saudi Arabia, one must first examine the society and its complex relationships to power.
(4 May 2006)
Kossacks push “Energize America” – an energy platform for Democrats
(original: “YearlyKos – Energy panel announcement and input request”)
Jerome a Paris, Daily Kos
As you know, YearlyKos is taking place in Las Vegas on June 8-11. As you may have guessed, it includes a panel on energy issues. That panel will be dedicated to a large extent to the presentation of Energize America, the collective proposal of the kossack community to try to do something realistic, comprehensive and coherent about the current energy crisis – and get it endorsed by Democrats.
See the official press release and, below the fold, more details and a request for your input.
The panel, Energize America – Sane Policy for Sustainable Energy, is scheduled for Friday, June 9, at 1:30. It will explain that, indeed, there is an energy crisis, and not just because of the current high gas prices, which are just one symptom. It will describe how the idea to prepare a “netroots-generated” policy proposal emerged, and how it was pushed into something that can work and actually be implemented. And, for the most part, it will be there to answer your questions.
For the time being, the panel is constituted exclusively of kossacks, all of which have participated actively to the development of Energize America (see the bios below). We are still awaiting the decision of a senior politician as to whether s/he will participate to the session, so the programme may be adjusted to include a keynote speech. This will be announced as appropriate in the near future.
It is quite an honor – but also a daunting task – for me to be organizing this session in today’s context, with energy at the forefront of the public debate and after having initiated in my diaries in recent times a vigorous debate on how to pay for the Energize America. In particular, the impact of any further increase in gas prices, in particular on poor and rural Americans, rightly worries a number of kossacks, and the political impact of any changes in the gas tax has been a particular topic of concern.
This diary is written a few days before Draft Five of Energize America is due to be published on DailyKos (most likely under the byline of Meteor Blades, who will sadly be unavaiable for YearlyKos). That draft will incorporate all the feedback that has been provided by the kossacks in recent days, and will be fully open to comment, discussion, suggestions so that the final version presented at YearlyKos benefits from the enthusiastic support of as many members of the community as possible, and can become a standard for all Democrat candidates to rally around or support in the coming election.
We count on you to help us make this a great, realistic and politically palatable document. The current draft is here: Energize America – A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security (Fourth Draft).
(8 May 2006)
