4 ms·

I used to believe the Iraq War was about oil too, but the theory doesn't really stand up when you consider that there were several much easier ways for the US t

by tdba 4y ago

I used to believe the Iraq War was about oil too, but the theory doesn't really stand up when you consider that there were several much easier ways for the US to secure an oil supply in the early 2000s (as other commenters have noted). Instead, I suggest you read about the Wolfowitz Doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine), named after Paul Wolfowitz, the man who CNN in 2003 called the "Godfather of the Iraq War" (https://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/29/timep.wolfowitz.tm/ https://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/29/timep.wolfowitz.t...). Enjoy the rabbit hole.

throwawaymaths 4y ago
Exactly. The us did not get any oil out of Iraq anyways, most of it is being extracted by a French company (total) iirc.
- yesbut 4y ago
  Well, it was for oil. We even had the Oil for Food sanctions program in the lead up. The result didn't work out in the US' favor, Iraq basically kicked us out. But ultimately I think the oil was a secondary goal. The goal was, and is, endless military conflict as a means to funnel public funds into the military industrial complex. It doesn't matter if "we win" or not, hell we haven't won a war in decades. The point is to maintain persistent instability as a motivator for continued military budget increases. Ukraine is a prime example. All NATO member spending has increased, as has India, China, Iran, and Brazil. The media and politicians just use the "spread democracy" type rhetoric as a sales pitch for the public.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    The war explicitly ended the oil for food arrangement...?
    - yesbut 4y ago
      US antagonism towards Iraq was due to Iraq moving away from the petrodollar. The Oil for Food sanctions were an effort to force Iraq back to the petrodollar.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Oil-for-food was aimed at allowing payment for humanitarian resources (you know, food) in oil, so Iraq could keep feeding people without receiving money for their oil, since money could (more easily) be used to buy stuff other than food, like tanks and AA systems and aircraft to rebuild their their quite-strong-before-gulf-war-I military, or to do other things we didn't want them to. Did we screw them on the "price" they got for it and so kinda steal the oil? I mean, yeah, probably, but I very much doubt it was any kind of major motivation for anything the "West" did. Iraq War II was bullshit and probably a strategic mis-step, and I'm proud to have been among the minority (in the US, anyway) who opposed it and the even smaller minority who actually got out and protested against it, but we didn't need their oil. The US has plenty. We only really care about foreign oil supplies for market-stabilization reasons—it's not worth the effort and various costs to steal it from other countries by force. Now, there was a lot of corruption and it sure is weird how a bunch of Bush-admin-connected companies landed so many giant contracts related to the war and it 100% does look like "we should invade Iraq ASAP the first time we have even the flimsiest excuse" was indeed one of those actual-in-fact-real conspiracies (multiple top-level Bush admin folks literally signed their name to such sentiments in the late 90s—I'm not even sure you can properly call it a conspiracy given how out in the open it was) but we didn't attack for the oil. As or why the ones who pushed the war wanted it, I think there was a selfish motivation given that a lot of them were situated to make money off such a war, but also a genuine desire to improve the US position in a much longer-term realpolitik great powers game. Oil in the near term was a pretty minor concern—to the extent it was really about oil, I'd say future ability to strangle larger opponents by controlling access to oil was what they had in mind. Maybe a bit of a message to OPEC states, too.
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      > but we didn't need their oil The problem is that oil is sold into a global market, so even if a nation produces as much oil as it consumes, if there is a shortage of oil, the global prices go up, and then your own oil prices go up. So your economy can be thrown into a recession and your standard of living will decline due to Iraq's oil being taken out of the world market even if you don't need to import any oil from Iraq. For this reason, the US sought to control all global oil suppliers, wherever they may be, and whomever they sell oil to. Yes, it's an unsustainable, insane, geopolitical strategy -- but in the heady days of post cold-war hegemony, US foreign policy became controlled by neocon ideologues who thought that absolute control over the middle east was an achievable and moral goal. The result of this policy is millions of dead civilians, functioning secular societies that have been destroyed and handed over to warring religious clans, and global chaos from Libya to Afghanistan.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Perhaps my comment was unclear. The oil supply itself was not the issue, i.e. the physical oil in tankers or pipelines, the issue was where the revenue from Iraqi oil was going to end up, what it was going to be used for, and so on. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp.

by tdba 4y ago

throwawaymaths 4y ago

Exactly. The us did not get any oil out of Iraq anyways, most of it is being extracted by a French company (total) iirc.

yesbut 4y ago
Well, it was for oil. We even had the Oil for Food sanctions program in the lead up. The result didn't work out in the US' favor, Iraq basically kicked us out. But ultimately I think the oil was a secondary goal. The goal was, and is, endless military conflict as a means to funnel public funds into the military industrial complex. It doesn't matter if "we win" or not, hell we haven't won a war in decades. The point is to maintain persistent instability as a motivator for continued military budget increases. Ukraine is a prime example. All NATO member spending has increased, as has India, China, Iran, and Brazil. The media and politicians just use the "spread democracy" type rhetoric as a sales pitch for the public.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  The war explicitly ended the oil for food arrangement...?
  - yesbut 4y ago
    US antagonism towards Iraq was due to Iraq moving away from the petrodollar. The Oil for Food sanctions were an effort to force Iraq back to the petrodollar.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Oil-for-food was aimed at allowing payment for humanitarian resources (you know, food) in oil, so Iraq could keep feeding people without receiving money for their oil, since money could (more easily) be used to buy stuff other than food, like tanks and AA systems and aircraft to rebuild their their quite-strong-before-gulf-war-I military, or to do other things we didn't want them to. Did we screw them on the "price" they got for it and so kinda steal the oil? I mean, yeah, probably, but I very much doubt it was any kind of major motivation for anything the "West" did. Iraq War II was bullshit and probably a strategic mis-step, and I'm proud to have been among the minority (in the US, anyway) who opposed it and the even smaller minority who actually got out and protested against it, but we didn't need their oil. The US has plenty. We only really care about foreign oil supplies for market-stabilization reasons—it's not worth the effort and various costs to steal it from other countries by force. Now, there was a lot of corruption and it sure is weird how a bunch of Bush-admin-connected companies landed so many giant contracts related to the war and it 100% does look like "we should invade Iraq ASAP the first time we have even the flimsiest excuse" was indeed one of those actual-in-fact-real conspiracies (multiple top-level Bush admin folks literally signed their name to such sentiments in the late 90s—I'm not even sure you can properly call it a conspiracy given how out in the open it was) but we didn't attack for the oil. As or why the ones who pushed the war wanted it, I think there was a selfish motivation given that a lot of them were situated to make money off such a war, but also a genuine desire to improve the US position in a much longer-term realpolitik great powers game. Oil in the near term was a pretty minor concern—to the extent it was really about oil, I'd say future ability to strangle larger opponents by controlling access to oil was what they had in mind. Maybe a bit of a message to OPEC states, too.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    > but we didn't need their oil The problem is that oil is sold into a global market, so even if a nation produces as much oil as it consumes, if there is a shortage of oil, the global prices go up, and then your own oil prices go up. So your economy can be thrown into a recession and your standard of living will decline due to Iraq's oil being taken out of the world market even if you don't need to import any oil from Iraq. For this reason, the US sought to control all global oil suppliers, wherever they may be, and whomever they sell oil to. Yes, it's an unsustainable, insane, geopolitical strategy -- but in the heady days of post cold-war hegemony, US foreign policy became controlled by neocon ideologues who thought that absolute control over the middle east was an achievable and moral goal. The result of this policy is millions of dead civilians, functioning secular societies that have been destroyed and handed over to warring religious clans, and global chaos from Libya to Afghanistan.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Perhaps my comment was unclear. The oil supply itself was not the issue, i.e. the physical oil in tankers or pipelines, the issue was where the revenue from Iraqi oil was going to end up, what it was going to be used for, and so on. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp.