So as everyone knows, Dick Cheney, through his spokesman George W. Bush, has decided that the proper response to the resounding electoral defeat of the President's policy in Iraq this past November and the recommendations of the bi-partisan committee led by Daddy Bush's right-hand man James Baker III is to ignore all of it and escalate the war. (Bush's speech itself is too absurd to warrant extended comment, beyond the obvious points Juan Cole makes in his first paragraph here. Reading my comments on prior displays like this would do just as well.)
My colleagues who are students of the political process believe that the Democrats will flex their new political muscle by...approving the funds necessary. (If any readers live in democratic societies, where elections matter, please write and share your experiences about what that is like.) Outside of the war-mongering far right in America (which is far louder and more prominent than its actual electoral strength), domestic reaction has been critical, but not, it seems to me, in very compelling ways. Paul Krugman, for example, here betrays his limited ideological horizons in assessing the proposal for escalation of the war:
The only real question about the planned “surge” in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional.
Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks they’re cynical. He recently told The Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be “the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof.”
Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his research on irrationality in decision-making, thinks they’re delusional. Mr. Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon recently argued in Foreign Policy magazine that the administration’s unwillingness to face reality in Iraq reflects a basic human aversion to cutting one’s losses — the same instinct that makes gamblers stay at the table, hoping to break even....
Well, we don’t have to settle the question. Either way, what’s clear is the enormous price our nation is paying for President Bush’s character flaws.
I began writing about the Bush administration’s infallibility complex, the president’s Captain Queeg-like inability to own up to mistakes, almost a year before the invasion of Iraq. When you put a man like that in a position of power — the kind of position where he can punish people who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, and base policy decisions on the advice of people who play to his vanity — it’s a recipe for disaster.
Is that really the best Krugman can do: reduce the whole thing to one man's (admittedly defective) character? Psychological explanations often make sense, especially when no rationalizing explanations are in the offing. But Krugman, an economist by training, ought to take seriously for a moment the thought that states and leaders of states are sometimes rational maximizers of their interests, and consider whether there isn't a quite rational explanation for the escalation of the war.
Part of the difficulty here is that the "public" discussion of Iraq in the U.S. is so thoroughly infantilized, so weighed down by outright lies (e.g., the Iraq war is part of the [fake] war on terror) or self-serving myths (e.g., the purpose of the war was to liberate the people of Iraq), that the basic facts openly discussed everywhere else in the world--for example, that Iraq has the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world; that the U.S. faces increasing competition for energy resources from China and India; and that the U.S. has been establishing permanent military bases in Iraq since shortly after the invasion--make it clear why the U.S. would, from the standpoint of rational self-interest, not want a fundamentalist, Iran-style regime in Iraq, or even a genuinely independent Iraq, one that might not welcome U.S. military presence in perpetuity. As another commentator, more cosmopolitan than Professor Krugman, has observed:
As is obvious to anyone not committed to the party line, taking control of Iraq will enormously strengthen US power over global energy resources, a crucial lever of world control. Suppose that Iraq were to become sovereign and democratic. Imagine the policies it would be likely to pursue. The Shia population in the South, where much of Iraq's oil is, would have a predominant influence. They would prefer friendly relations with Shia Iran.
The relations are already close. The Badr brigade, the militia that mostly controls the south, was trained in Iran. The highly influential clerics also have long- standing relations with Iran, including Sistani, who grew up there. And the Shia-dominant interim government has already begun to establish economic and possibly military relations with Iran.
Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia is a substantial, bitter Shia population. Any move toward independence in Iraq is likely to increase efforts to gain a degree of autonomy and justice there, too. This also happens to be the region where most of Saudi Arabia's oil is. The outcome could be a loose Shia alliance comprising Iraq, Iran and the major oil regions of Saudi Arabia, independent of Washington and controlling large portions of the world's oil reserves. It's not unlikely that an independent bloc of this kind might follow Iran's lead in developing major energy projects jointly with China and India.
Looked at this way, Bush's efforts to escalate the war are completely instrumentally rational and require no psychologizing about the man's character: if the actual objective is to secure U.S. military influence and control over energy resources, then the war must go on until threat to such influence and control is destroyed. If we had an actual opposition party in the United States, perhaps these points would be aired publically, and then public discussion would focus on the moral propriety of letting these kinds of objectives steer policy.
UPDATE: There is a sharp critique of the appalling news coverage of the Bush speech here. And this item from last Sunday's Independent in London is pertinent:
The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is
about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to
exploit the country's massive oil reserves.
And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an
estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize
worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was
still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is
the key to preventing the world running out of oil.
Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and
the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going
through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to
the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a
radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a
system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors
such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would
be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.
PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives
a share of profits to the international companies that invest in
infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries.
Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil
producer. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's number one and two oil
exporters, both tightly control their industries through state-owned
companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration, as do most members
of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Opec....
[T]he new legislation was drafted with the assistance
of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US
government, which had a representative working in the American embassy
in Baghdad for several months....
The draft went to
the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the
International Monetary Fund in September....
On 18 March 2003, with the invasion imminent, Tony Blair
proposed the House of Commons motion to back the war. "The oil
revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be
put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN,"
he said. "The United Kingdom should seek a new Security Council Resolution
that would affirm... the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the
Iraqi people."
That suggestion came to nothing. In May 2003, just after President
Bush declared major combat operations at an end, under a banner
boasting "Mission Accomplished", Britain co-sponsored a resolution in
the Security Council which gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil
revenues. Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people,
Resolution 1483 continued to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings
to pay compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990....
The Independent on Sunday has obtained a copy of an early draft
which was circulated to oil companies in July. It is understood there
have been no significant changes made in the final draft. The terms
outlined to govern future PSAs are generous: according to the draft,
they could be fixed for at least 30 years....
Iraq's sovereign right to manage its own natural resources could
also be threatened by the provision in the draft that any disputes with
a foreign company must ultimately be settled by international, rather
than Iraqi, arbitration.
In the July draft obtained by The Independent on Sunday, legislators
recognise the controversy over this, annotating the relevant paragraph
with the note, "Some countries do not accept arbitration between a
commercial enterprise and themselves on the basis of sovereignty of the
state."
It is not clear whether this clause has been retained in the final draft.
Under the chapter entitled "Fiscal Regime", the draft spells out
that foreign companies have no restrictions on taking their profits out
of the country, and are not subject to any tax when doing this.
"A Foreign Person may repatriate its exports proceeds [in accordance
with the foreign exchange regulations in force at the time]." Shares in
oil projects can also be sold to other foreign companies: "It may
freely transfer shares pertaining to any non-Iraqi partners." The final
draft outlines general terms for production sharing agreements,
including a standard 12.5 per cent royalty tax for companies.
It is also understood that once companies have recouped their costs
from developing the oil field, they are allowed to keep 20 per cent of
the profits, with the rest going to the government. According to
analysts and oil company executives, this is because Iraq is so
dangerous, but Dr Muhammad-Ali Zainy, a senior economist at the Centre
for Global Energy Studies, said: "Twenty per cent of the profits in a
production sharing agreement, once all the costs have been recouped, is
a large amount." In more stable countries, 10 per cent would be the
norm.
While the costs are being recovered, companies will be able to
recoup 60 to 70 per cent of revenue; 40 per cent is more usual....
Production sharing agreements of more than 30 years are unusual, and
more commonly used for challenging regions like the Amazon where it can
take up to a decade to start production. Iraq, in contrast, is one of
the cheapest and easiest places in the world to drill for and produce
oil. Many fields have already been discovered, and are waiting to be
developed. Analysts estimate that despite the size of Iraq's reserves - the
third largest in the world - only 2,300 wells have been drilled in
total, fewer than in the North Sea....
James Paul of Global Policy Forum, another advocacy group, said:
"The US and the UK have been pressing hard on this. It's pretty clear
that this is one of their main goals in Iraq." The Iraqi authorities,
he said, were "a government under occupation, and it is highly
influenced by that. The US has a lot of leverage... Iraq is in no
condition right now to go ahead and do this."
Mr Paul added: "It is relatively easy to get the oil in Iraq. It is
nowhere near as complicated as the North Sea. There are super giant
fields that are completely mapped, [and] there is absolutely no
exploration cost and no risk. So the argument that these agreements are
needed to hedge risk is specious...."
Iraqi trade union leaders who met recently in Jordan suggested that
the legislation would cause uproar once its terms became known among
ordinary Iraqis.
"The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be
decided behind closed doors," their statement said. "The occupier seeks
and wishes to secure... energy resources at a time when the Iraqi
people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under
conditions of occupation...."
Despite US and British denials that oil was a war aim, American
troops were detailed to secure oil facilities as they fought their way
to Baghdad in 2003. And while former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld
shrugged off the orgy of looting after the fall of Saddam's statue in
Baghdad, the Oil Ministry - alone of all the seats of power in the
Iraqi capital - was under American guard.
Halliburton, the firm that Dick Cheney used to run, was among
US-based multinationals that won most of the reconstruction deals - one
of its workers is pictured, tackling an oil fire. British firms won
some contracts, mainly in security. But constant violence has crippled
rebuilding operations. Bechtel, another US giant, has pulled out,
saying it could not make a profit on work in Iraq....
"By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The
Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still
where the prize lies"
Dick Cheney; US Vice-President
