Geez…can’t we ever get away from this magic of the market theocracy!?! Theoretical systems have axioms for heaven’s sakes and if the axioms ain’t satisfied the conclusions don’t necessarily follow. What this means in this case is if you ain’t putting all the accounting of the costs of oil into its pricing, people are going to consume more of it than they ought to by basic market economic theory! We are talking here about some hidden costs of the oil that we are using. There are many, many more hidden costs (e.g., environmental ones) that have been identified. So, please don’t give us this facile logic about the market being “right” in determining the appropriate demand for a commodity when there is no way in hell that it could be!!!
Beside the point because this along with other convenient facts, such as the military equipment we have sold the Saudis, etc. completely contradicts your logic here? We are not asking whether the U.S. should be actively trying to overthrow the Saudi government. Rather, we are talking about whether it should be actively trying to prop it up.
And, the U.S. seems to have no qualms against using various economic and other forms of pressure against repressive governments when it is not against our (narrowly-defined) economic interest to do so.
If the U.S. and other Western countries stopped buying oil from the Middle East, wouldn’t this further impoverish the region and potentially make things worse? It’s true the oil wealth is unequally distributed, but millions depend on it for livelihood, and it also sustains a lot of roads, schools, hospitals etc. Pulling the plug could just make everybody angrier.
Also, Olentzero, I was wondering if you could back up your statement that the Saudi monarchy was installed by the British. I am not an expert on this, but I always understood it that while the Jordanian and Iraqi monarchies were British creations, ibn Saud created the kingdom by old-fashioned conquest. In fact, my historical atlas here doesn’t show any sign of the area ever having been under European control.
OK, let’s stop the Saudi Arabia hijack and get back to the OP, that being is the current situation in Afghanistan a war for oil? Not has the United States done some unsavory things to secure its economic interests.
Rick wrote: “I can see how you could make a logical argument there - however, I maintain that it’s incorrect to say the current energy policy is “inconsistent with terrorist concerns.” Given that terrorists can and have acted on any one of a thousand damn fool issues, it’s possible to construct an argument that will make everything inconsistent with terrorist concerns. Indeed, many on this board have claimed an opposite argument - that NON-involvement in foreign affairs is to blame for terrorism.”
Sorry, Rick–this is transparent waffling. You’d think from reading this that I was connecting US policy on ballroom dancing to terrorist concerns rather than US energy policy–which just happens to be the policy that implicates the US in all kinds of pernicious Middle East interference. That is, the argument is not only logical it’s also quite relevant.
Also, I’m not in the least suggesting that the US or West should be “non-involved” in foreign affairs. I’m suggesting that were our involvement not driven, first and foremost, by oil we’d have the kind involvement that promotes democracy and stability; not political repression and terrorism.
“We may just happen to disagree here.”
Well, as I’m neither an isolationist nor anti-immigration I suspect we don’t disagree 
.
“Of course, the West also tries (usually) to abide by the longstanding convention that sovereign nations have to respect the sovereignty of other nations, so it’s a less-than-easy-to-play balancing act.”
I’m not sure I see your point. I’m not suggesting that the US doesn’t respect other nations’ sovereignty. I’m suggesting that in countries such as Saudi Arabia, the sovereignty we respect is in the hands of a repressive regime that we actively support. This is bound to have repercussions. Hence, the sooner were reduce the dependence on oil, the sooner we can modify this practice without economic side-effects.
“I don’t know of any legal construct or precendent whereby the West could justify not respecting the soveriegnty of a foreign power merely because it’s not a democracy.”
Again, not quite what I’m suggesting. I don’t say the US should invade or otherwise work to overturn non-democracies and convert them to democracies. That would be cultural imperialism of the worst kind. I’m suggesting only that countries with bad human rights records and undemocratic regimes not receive our support.
“I am not about to say the U.S. is right or wrong to have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia; I think that’s beside the point.”
Well, clearly it’s not “beside the point” for bin Laden who claims this is one of his major grievances with the US.
“But oil is cheap and plentiful and remarkably efficient. It’s too convenient to break the habit just yet; until there’s an economic need to do so, oil will continue to be the fuel of choice.”
jshore has already directed you to consider the hidden economic costs of using oil. I’ll just add, once again, the obvious political and human costs.
domina, Saudi Arabia is not a poor country–just a repressive one. The idea isn’t necessarily to pull the plug; the idea is not to be the plug.
Where did you get the idea that just because I read it doesn’t mean it’s true? Cite please!
We gave them a month because we knew they couldn’t hand him over (I doubt that the Taliban ever knows which cave he’s staying in). And after the embassy bombings there was not enough public lust for revenge to justify a sustained military action. We fired a couple of cruise missiles at some aspirin factories and no one cared after that. And I never said that the government was supplying the Northern Alliance (they already had their suppliers anyway).
And I’m sorry, but your “no possible alternative motive” theory doesn’t reflect reality, unless you can provide more factual information.
This is correct. It was the Hashemite kingdoms of the Hijaz, Iraq, and Jordan ( as well as other states around the Gulf ) that were British clients. The Saudi kingdom of Najd ( eastern Arabia ) was the arch-enemy of the Hashemites and conquered and incorporated the Hijaz to form the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the 1920’s. It is probably the last major conquest state in world history ( I don’t consider later territorial aggrandisement ala Indnesia to be in quite the same category ).
Also to continue slightly on this hijack, I think folks are overestimating the insecurity of the Saudi regime a bit. Yes it’s a repressive, elitist( and I would say a little racist ), nepotistic regime and it’s true there is a reasonable amount of unrest, which is on the upswing. But the Saudi family, much like the Hashemites in Jordan actually, has always depended on the traditional bedrock loyalty of tribal Bedouins. This is the reason there virtually two armies in SA. A regular force and a parallel, surprisingly large and well-equipped “National Guard” recruited almost exclusively from tribal sources and tasked with internal security.
Now this tribal support may be eroding these days a bit, I don’t know. But I suspect enough of it holds that between that and SA’s continuing wealth ( which is fading, however ) that actual overt unrest among citizens ( as opposed to exploited foreign labor who have been unhappy for a long time ) is still pretty minimal. I don’t think they are in need of a great deal of “propping up” at this point. That may change in the future, maybe even the near-future, as the economy continues to grind down. But for now I think the U.S. presense there is much more geared towards preventing a possible mass Iraqi assault ( which I actually think the Saudis might be able to blunt pretty well on their own - at least for a little while ) and the U.S. is just happy to take Saudi cash in exchange for fancy arms systems.
- Tamerlane
Just to clarify on my earlier post - I think unrest exists in SA, but from what I’ve read it is still mostly more in the “muttering and grumbling” phase rather than the “let’s overthrow the bastards” phase. i.e. this isn’t Iran circa 1978 and the regime stil has some ( however tarnished and fading ) moral authority and popularity. Remember that the monarchy still has a ( increasingly shaky ) position as exemplars and defenders of the local religiuous doctrine of Wahabi Sunnism, which confers some local validity to their reign.
The ibn Saud family with it’s independant history ( they began expanding and propagating Wahabism back in the 18th century and were only prevented from conquering the Hijaz from the moribund Ottomans in the early 19th by the intervention of Muhammed Ali of Egypt ) has a lingering legitimacy that monarchies like the Hashemites in Iraq ( utterly alien to the region ) or the Pahlavis in Iran ( unpopularly installed by coups - twice ), lacked.
- Tamerlane
FTR Tamerlane, I entirely agree with you. I wasn’t suggesting that Saudi Arabia is–like the Shah was in Iran–some kind of US/Western introduction; nor that they would topple tomorrow were it not for US support.
I also don’t underestimate how difficult it is for governments to topple: e.g., Iraq where the US has been actively attempting to promote civil unrest, but where Saddam persists (as though he had nine hundred lives). And then there are countries such as Pakistan, under a military dictatorship of sorts, which has only recently gained legitimacy thanks to its current strategic importance. There’s a good example of where governing institutions are far from perfect even though Western foreign policy has not involved oil.
My only point (which I think is rather obvious) is that whatever problems the Saudi people may have with its monarchy would be internal were the US not so cozy there. And the US would not be so cozy there were not it for oil. And oil would not–by anyone’s logic–be the preferred energy choice in the US were it not for the deeply entrenched interests within the US power elite. That is, it’s political and environmental costs outweigh its economic benefit: and if that wasn’t apparent before September 11, it should be now.
Yipes, sorry for the typos. I hate when people type “it’s” for “its.”
Okay, in the spirit of letting up on the hijack (so that Neurotik can play too 
) here’s another link, from the UK newspaper The Guardian on the subject of oil and Afghanistan.
An excerpt:
*"The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism, but it may also be a late colonial adventure. British ministers have warned MPs that opposing the war is the moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler, but in some respects our moral choices are closer to those of 1956 than those of 1938. Afghanistan is as indispensable to the regional control and transport of oil in central Asia as Egypt was in the Middle East.
Afghanistan has some oil and gas of its own, but not enough to qualify as a major strategic concern. Its northern neighbors, by contrast, contain reserves which could be critical to future global supply. In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil services company, remarked: “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route which makes both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan."*
The link:
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1023-10.htm
Have fun, thou oleagenous debaters.
A matter of semantics, I think. I read the phrase as “It is now possible to assert this because it is true, whereas it wasn’t earlier” while you see it as “As long as there may be some possible grounds to assert it, we will, no matter what the actual situation may be because it suits our argument”.
A planned raid in 2000 may not be a US plan to overthrow the Taliban, but an extended bombing campaign with efforts to station military personnel and hardware in former Soviet republics and cautious support of a rival for power in Afghanistan certainly looks like one. It’s not like the US hasn’t done squat since they backed off Clinton’s plan, now is it?
Yeah, and I backed off it admitting I’d made a mistake, and no longer support that argument. Or did you miss that little detail at the beginning of my last post? So I guess your characterization is moot - the argument is no longer being used.
Perhaps not; I will check into this one a little more. In any case it does not invalidate the argument that a successful Russian occupation of Afghanistan would have directly threatened two countries firmly in the US sphere of influence, namely Pakistan and India. The US threw training, money, and guns at Afghani warlords from 1979 onwards in order to prevent this, and your buddy “Zbiggy” there admitted it.
domina - I’m going to check up on that for you. I do know that Britain had its fingers deep in the Saudi pie after WWI, whether the ibn Saud dynasty was installed by them or not. The US hasn’t been the only one directly intervening in Middle Eastern affairs over oil interests.
As a final note, I’ve heard it argued that the Islam of the Taliban is a direct offshoot of the Wahhabism embraced by the Saudi ruling family. Any comments?
Yay!
Um, perhaps you want to clarify that request for a cite, because it sounds like you want me to disprove the above statement. I hope that isn’t the case, unless you truly believe that everything you read is true. If that’s the case there are some web sites I’d like to direct you to.
OK, let’s move on to your other points. You say the US gave them a month knowing they couldn’t hand him over. They didn’t. Fine, maybe they didn’t know where he was. However, they still kept him under their protection and refused to cooperate with attempts to bring him to justice through peaceful means. As a result, violent means were used. It’s really quite simple and has very little to do with oil.
Next, we move on to why the US has an interest in the region. Well, natural resources certainly are a large part and why the US would like a stable government. But that’s not why the US is bombing. The US is bombing because the man who organized the deaths of 5000-6000 American citizens was there and the people who he associated with refused to help bring him to justice. It has nothing to do with a pipeline.
Neurotik - The WTC bombing is a pretext for direct military intervention in Afghanistan. But it is not the sole, nor the main, reason the US has gone in. The US, as you have said, wants a stable government in Afghanistan so it can let Unocal (or another oil company) go in and build a new pipeline that will both bring in profits from investment in the project and bypass Iran. This immediate war may not be only about oil, but oil interests underpin it.
Olentzero, so you are saying that had OBL fled to Somalia or Cambodia and the group that controlled the state refused to give him up, we would not have initiated a military response?
I know you backed off of it, and honorably so; that was what confused me when you took issue with my having labelled your original premise as a “conspiracy theory”. It was a conspiracy theory; you recognized it and took action to correct your conflation of events. Certainly my characterization is now moot - that doesn’t mean it was wrong.
If Zbiggy asserted that India to be firmly in the US sphere of influence during the Cold War, Zbiggy was drinking heavily (not an impossibility). India was a founding member of the Non-Aligned movement, and the Soviet Union was India’s primary arms supplier, aid donor, diplomatic ally, etc. Indeed, one of the primary reasons Pakistan allied itself with the US was to counterbalance the assistance India was receiving from the Soviets.
As for Iran, check away. But consider - would a revolutionary theocracy ally itself with an atheistic communist state?
Sua
OK, strike three. I admit I know jack about who aligned with whom as far as spheres of influence are concerned. I need better arguments to back up my assertion. I still maintain, however, that the US involved itself in the Russo-Afghan war in order to keep the Russians out and hence to keep Afghanistan out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Pakistan was apparently the only firm ally in the immediate region; India was chancy, Iran was outright hostile. Not a pretty picture for a superpower jockeying for position in the other superpower’s backyard.
On the other hand, what I was asserting “Zbiggy” admitted to was US intervention in Afghanistan several months before the Russians invaded. The desire was to give the Soviet Union their own version of Vietnam.
For numerous reasons far off the topic of this debate, I do not consider the events of 1979 in Iran to be a revolution. Initially I would think that Iran, being so hostile to the United States, would turn to the other big supplier of arms/goods/what have you in the world, but I will reserve further comment until I read up on what I can find.
No. But Osama bin Laden has been on the US’ short list since the embassy bombings of 1998, and the Taliban has looked less appealing as an ally because of it. Even if bin Laden escaped to another country, I believe the US would have used September as a justification for going in and taking the Taliban out anyway. The trans-Afghan pipeline is just too important to people like Cheney and the board of Unocal.
So you are saying there’s no doubt now the oil pipe will be built now? It will be imposed on Afghanistan even if they don’t want it? So, if it is not built in the next few years would you say you were wrong in your estimation? Or would you still think America and Europe fought for that but did not succeed? Do you think all the allies are also fighting for the oil pipe? Does Italy have any share in that oil pipe? Germany?