From the Sydney Morning Herald.

Defence redefined means securing cheap energy

December 26 2002

Behind George Bush's high-minded rhetoric on why

America may go to war with Iraq is a long history of

weighing the price of securing its oil supplies. Ritt

Goldstein writes. As troops and equipment pour into

the Gulf for a looming war with Iraq, United States

military thinkers admit that "defence" means

protecting the circumstances of "daily life" - and in

the US daily life runs on cheap oil.As far back as

1975, Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, said

America was prepared to wage war over oil. Separate

plans advocating US conquest of Saudi oilfields were

published in the '70s. So it should come as little

surprise that in May last year - four months before

the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York - a

battle plan for Afghanistan was already being reviewed

by the US Command that would carry it out after

September 11. Military strategists were highlighting

the energy wealth of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia

and its importance to America's "security".The Indian

media and Jane's Intelligence Review reported that the

US was fighting covert battles against the Taliban,

months before the "war on terrorism" was

declared.General William Kernan, commander-in-chief of

the US Joint Forces Command, let the revelation about

the battle plan review casually drop in July while

extolling the success of America's Millennium

Challenge war games to Agence France-Presse.Earlier,

during the northern spring last year, Michael Klare,

an international security expert and author of

Resource Wars, said the military had increasingly come

to "define resource security as their primary

mission". ");document.write("



Over several months beginning in April last year a

series of military and governmental policy documents

was released that sought to legitimise the use of US

military force in the pursuit of oil and gas.

Simultaneously, the energy task force of the

Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was working to tackle a

looming US oil crisis. Reflecting a shifting strategic

policy, the influential Council on Foreign Relations

urged that the Defence Department be included in

Cheney's energy group.

During that spring of 2001, as the US military

examined the all-out battle scenario that would soon

become the operational plan for the war in

Afghanistan, events fatefully spun towards September

11's trigger. But these events did not occur in a

vacuum.

Providing a summary of the US military's coming role,

over the summer of 2000 the Army War College (a

foundry for the US military's strategic thinking)

published a declaration that security "is more than

protecting the country from external threats; security

includes economic security".

The policy statement appeared in an article by

Lieutenant-Colonel P. H. Liotta, professor of national

security affairs at the Naval War College, one of a

handful of present US national security gurus.

His article went on to advocate the use of military

force "for more than simply protecting a nation and

its people from traditional threat-based challenges".

Colonel Liotta argued that defence meant protecting

the US lifestyle, the circumstances of "daily life".

Reflecting the relationship between pronouncements by

such policy gurus and Washington's actual policies, in

the Journal of Homeland Security of August this year,

Colonel Liotta said America "will practise pre-emption

against those who seek to harm our vital interests and

our way of life".

At the end of September President Bush unveiled a

national security strategy of pre-emption.

And so the months preceding September 11 saw a

shifting of the US military's focus. Publications of

the US Army War College and the army General and

Command Staff College argued that, when it came to oil

and gas, "where US business goes, US national

interests follow". They highlighted the energy wealth

of Central Asia and its importance to America's

"security". Oil and gas were on the military's agenda.

Cutting to the crux of present-day issues, a spring

2001 article by Jeffrey Record in the War College's

journal, Parameters, argued the legitimacy of

"shooting in the Persian Gulf on behalf of lower gas

prices".

Mr Record, a former staff member of the Senate armed

services committee (and an apparent favourite of the

Council on Foreign Relations), also advocated the

acceptability of presidential subterfuge in the

promotion of a conflict. Mr Record explicitly urged

painting over the US's actual reasons for warfare with

a nobly high-minded veneer, seeing such as a necessity

for mobilising public support for a conflict.

Amplifying the impact of the military papers, in a

document commissioned early in the Bush presidency,

two key US policy groups, the Council on Foreign

Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute for

Public Policy, explicitly advocated a convergence of

military and energy issues.

Their joint report - Strategic Energy Policy

Challenges for the 21st Century - aproved of "military

intervention" to secure energy supplies. It also urged

Pentagon participation in Mr Cheney's energy task

force. And the report warned that the US was running

out of oil, with a painful end to cheap fuel already

in sight.

Virtually concurrent with the report's release on

April 10 last year, Tommy Franks, commander of US

forces responsible for the Persian Gulf/South Asia

area, added his voice.

An April 13 report on his congressional testimony

defined General Franks's command's key mission as

"access to [the region's] energy resources". That May

it was his command that reviewed the soon-to-be-used

details for the coming war in Afghanistan.

Also early last year, the security expert Michael

Klare warned that US military action to secure oil

"could emerge as the favoured response to future [oil]

crises". In the months preceding September 11, US

governmental and military policymakers increasingly

built military frameworks around energy questions.

Iraq has 10 per cent of the world's proven oil

reserves, with The New York Times reporting in October

that the Bush White House is planning for the

installation of a US military government there in the

event of a war leading to the overthrow of Saddam

Hussein. In a parallel with Afghanistan, US covert

action has reportedly already begun.



From the London Observer:

Focus: Iraq



Carve-up of oil riches begins

US plans to ditch industry rivals and force end of

Opec, write Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam

Sunday November 3, 2002

The Observer

The leader of the London-based Iraqi National

Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, has met executives of three

US oil multinationals to negotiate the carve-up of

Iraq's massive oil reserves post-Saddam.

Disclosure of the meetings in October in Washington -

confirmed by an INC spokesman - comes as Lord Browne,

the head of BP, has warned that British oil companies

have been squeezed out of post-war Iraq even before

the first shot has been fired in any US-led land

invasion.

Confirming the meetings to US journalists, INC

spokesman Zaab Sethna said: 'The oil people are

naturally nervous. We've had discussions with them,

but they're not in the habit of going around talking

about them.'

Next month oil executives will gather at a country

retreat near Sandringham to discuss Iraq and the

future of the oil market. The conference, hosted by

Sheikh Yamani, the former Oil Minister of Saudi

Arabia, will feature a former Iraqi head of military

intelligence, an ex-Minister and City financiers.

Topics for discussion include the country's oil

potential, whether it can become as big a supplier as

Saudi Arabia, and whether a post-Saddam Iraq might

destroy the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting

Countries.

Disclosure of talks between the oil executives and the

INC - which enjoys the support of Bush administration

officials - is bound to exacerbate friction on the UN

Security Council between permanent members and

veto-holders Russia, France and China, who fear they

will be squeezed out of a post-Saddam oil industry in

Iraq.

Although Russia, France and China have existing deals

with Iraq, Chalabi has made clear that he would reward

the US for removing Saddam with lucrative oil

contracts, telling the Washington Post recently:

'American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi

oil.'

Indeed, the issue of who gets their hands on the

world's second largest oil reserves has been a major

factor driving splits in the Security Council over a

new resolution on Iraq.

If true, it is hardly surprising, given the size of

the potential deals. As of last month, Iraq had

reportedly signed several multi-billion-dollar deals

with foreign oil companies, mainly from China, France

and Russia.

Among these Russia, which is owed billions of dollars

by Iraq for past arms deliveries, has the strongest

interest in Iraqi oil development, including a $3.5

billion, 23-year deal to rehabilitate oilfields,

particularly the 11-15 billion-barrel West Qurna

field, located west of Basra near the Rumaila field.

Since the agreement was signed in March 1997, Russia's

Lukoil has prepared a plan to install equipment with

capacity to produce 100,000 barrels per day from West

Qurna's Mishrif formation.

French interest is also intense. TotalFinaElf has been

in negotiations with Iraq on development of the Nahr

Umar field.

Planning for Iraq's post-Saddam oil industry is being

driven by a coalition of neo-conservatives in

Washington think-tanks with close links to the Bush

administration, and with INC officials who have long

enjoyed their support. Those hawks have long argued

that US control of Iraq's oil would help deliver a

second objective. That is the destruction of Opec, the

oil producers' cartel, which they argue is 'evil' -

that is, incompatible with American interests.

Larry Lindsey, President Bush's economic adviser,

recently said that a successful war on Iraq would be

good for business.