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<font size=3>The Slippery Slope<br>
Is there enough oil? Or is there just enough oil to keep the Bush regime
going?<br>
<a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0551,ridgeway,71154,6.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0551,ridgeway,71154,6.html<br>
</a><b>by James Ridgeway<br>
</b>December 20th, 2005 12:10 PM<br><br>
American resolve to make the world safe for Western democracy will
increasingly depend on economic control of oil. To that end, the U.S. is
locked in feverish competition with China for the remaining oil and gas
resources in Central Asia and the Middle East. Another huge reservoir of
oil and gas lies under Russian control in Siberia. <br><br>
News last week that Bush crony Donald Evans is on the short list to
become head of Rosneft, the Russian oil giant, could give us added sway
over that oil pool. Evans was commerce secretary and is a longtime pal of
George W. Bush and one of, if not the main, adviser to Bush on energy
matters. To have him running Russian oil would be quite a coup. According
to the Russian press, Vladimir Putin is offering Evans the job of being
chairman of the firm's board of directors. Evans would become the second
major foreigner to manage a big Russian energy outfit. Former German
chancellor Gerhard Schr is the new head of North European Gas Pipeline,
which will pipe natural gas from Russia to Germany. Schr while
chancellor, helped broker that deal. <br><br>
Under Bush, the U.S. is committed to lessening dependence on foreign oil,
especially oil in such faraway places as the Middle East, in favor of
closer-by supplies in Latin America and Canada. <br><br>
In reality, Bush foreign policy aims to make the U.S. more dependent on
foreign oil by domination of remaining supplies. There are any number of
signs that demonstrate this policy in action. For example, in the name of
energy independence, Bush wants to spend billions to build liquefied
natural-gas plants along the U.S. coasts to receive and process gas
imported from the Middle East and Africa. <br><br>
The most likely sources of LNG are in Central Asia, principally
Turkmenistan, along with Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. Another large
reservoir of gas lies in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea. The gas trade
binds us morenot lesstightly to the Middle East. <br><br>
For years the industry has complained that environmental restrictions
result in reduced refinery capacity within the U.S. To enhance refining
capacity, the energy industries are searching for less expensive sites
for refineries abroad, and that leads them to the Middle East, again
another indication of growing, not lessening, reliance on faraway
sources. With Evans in charge of Russian oil, Bush is but a phone call
away from obtaining another enormous reservoir of oil. <br><br>
Meanwhile, China, the world's second-largest energy consumer, is all over
the Middle East and Central Asia, scoring one deal after another. The
most recent was last week's opening of a natural-gas pipeline from
Kazakhstan. China has gas deals in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Earlier
this year it bought Kazakhstan's third-largest oil company. <br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=4 color="#282828"><b>The Condi
Doctrine</b></font><font size=3> <br><br>
Bush energy plans are but part of the administration's foreign-policy
doctrine. Largely overlooked in last week's Iraq developments was a fresh
rendering of this concept in the form of an op-ed in <i>The</i>
<i>Washington Post</i> by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Published
on the eve of the Iraqi vote, Rice's piece presented the Bush
administration's understanding of the 21st-century world and set forth a
policy for dealing with it. Briefly, in this Bush-Rice worldview, nation
states have lost their sovereignty and can only achieve stability through
institutions of democratic government given to them by the U.S., the
world's reigning superpower. Implicit in this view is the
administration's determination to act unilaterally to achieve stability.
Iraq is the prime example. But Iran and Syria appear to be in for the
same treatment. <br><br>
"The Bush Rice international system thus would consist of one in
which the U.S. is accepted by all others as being the pre-eminent
military actor," writes Gerald B. Helman, United States ambassador
to the European office of the United Nations from 1979 through 1981.
"Whether for this or additional reasons, conflict among major states
would be unlikely; these states (which would include Russia and China)
would be increasingly available, under U.S. leadership, to establish
durable global stability that would amount to a balance of power favoring
freedom. Those states that are weak or failing, principally in the Middle
East, would forfeit the traditional protections of sovereignty so that
outside powers can guide them to democracy. By thus abolishing their
'freedom deficit,' the swamps of terrorism would be drained and the
world's security enhanced. Within this world, the U.S. would be able to
operate largely unconstrained, employing shifting, ad hoc coalitions,
monitoring and correcting as necessary national political systems and as
a result preserve U.S. security." <br><br>
It seems a bit far-fetched to think that China and Russia would allow the
U.S. to run the world as it pleases. And as Helman points out, if the
U.S. tosses aside existing treaties and international organizations in
favor of unilateral action, then China, Russia, and others will do the
same thing, and the world will be plunged into even more endless bloody
turmoil. <br><br>
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