UNDERLYING MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES OF THE US ADMINISTRATION

The arguments presented earlier, in The Background, are among the many presented in the mainstream media for an attack against Iraq. Almost never discussed are some of the underlying drives and reasoning behind this conflict, drives that go back to the previously stated (as far back as 1997) and published objectives and world view of those now currently part of — or highly influential in — the George W. Bush administration.

These underlying strategic themes bring into focus a discernible pattern and an explanation of why the US administration is taking action now, against the majority of world opinion and without the backing of the UN. The action is in line with the administration’s perceived self-interest based on a world-view that is founded on US dominance and control of world affairs. We can only assume that the UK’s Blair government shares this point of view: these issues have been openly discussed since 1997 and particularly strongly since September 11, 2001, during which time Blair has consistently concurred with the Bush perspective.

The sources

A key document that goes some way towards explaining the current US administration’s approach is The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, (September 2002, The White House, Washington).

This document in turn refers to several keynote speeches made by President George W. Bush since September 11, 2001. Also, before the current Bush administration came to power on a slim ruling by the US Supreme Court, those who are now key players in this new administration had been setting out their strategic approach to world affairs as part of the “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC). PNAC was set up by a group of neo-Reaganite republicans in 1997 to promote the case for a new, aggressive military and “moral” role for the US in world affairs.  It includes several of the current US administration, such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Forbes and Dick Cheney. Much of its strategy now forms the basis of current US foreign and military policy.

Other elements of the military plans are also set out in the Joint Chiefs of Staff documents Vision for 2020 and Joint Vision 2002, and another document entitled Vision 2020 published by the US Space Command.

There are some very significant threads running consistently through these documents, all of which are freely available for public consumption; see the following Web references.

Project for the New American Century: www.newamericancentury.org;

National Security Strategy of US 2002: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html; Joint Vision 2020 (Joint Chiefs of Staff): http://www.dtic.mil/jv2020/.

The military strategy: strike first

Current US military strategy is one of “full spectrum dominance”. The US military aims to be dominant in any form of conflict by having complete technological supremacy in all spheres: air, sea, land and space.

“The full range of operations includes maintaining a posture of strategic deterrence. It includes theater engagement and presence activities. It includes conflict involving employment of strategic forces and weapons of mass destruction, major theater wars, regional conflicts, and smaller-scale contingencies.” (Section 3, Joint Vision 2002).

The National Security Strategy (NSS) clearly sets out that the US will take pre-emptive action against states that it considers a threat before they have even developed any actual threat.

“The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy — whether a state or non-state actor — to impose its will on the United States, our allies, or our friends. We will maintain the forces sufficient to support our obligations, and to defend freedom. Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” (NSS p.31)

This pre-emptive strategy is in direct contradiction of the United Nations Charter, which states that member nations may only use military force for the purpose of self-defence in the event of an armed attack. This wording clearly precludes pre-emptive strikes from being described as “defensive,” ensuring that militaristic nations are not given carte blanche to declare war on those around them.

The threat that the US says it fears is WMD — Weapons of Mass Destruction. Because of the extreme danger that these weapons pose, the US Administration argues that it is fully justified in taking necessary action without the support of the UN before it is itself attacked. The US is also fully prepared to take action to put in place regimes that are sympathetic to its point of view in what it considers are strategic areas of the world. The NSS specifically refers to Central Asia, the Caspian Region, Africa and the “Western Hemisphere” as strategic areas.

Another way of putting this was encapsulated by Robert Kagan of the Washington Post (September 13, 2002) in the article “Multilateralism, American Style”:

“If you're the kind of person who worries about American unilateralism, here's what should really keep you up at night: even most American multilateralists are unilateralists at the core. Consider what passes these days for a ‘multilateralist’ view on Iraq: Before taking any action against Iraq, the United States should seek the approval of the U.N. Security Council. Then, if the Security Council refuses, the United States can invade anyway. As Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday, the Bush administration will bring the Iraq case to the United Nations, but that doesn’t mean ‘we lose our option to do what we might think is appropriate to do.’ Or, as James Baker put it, ‘even if the administration fails in the Security Council, it is still free’ to make its own decision.

“Fear of the Bush administration's ‘going it alone’ has already begun forcing important Europeans such as Chirac to accommodate themselves to an American-created reality on Iraq. Now Bush's willingness to talk about the United Nations' role may ease the path for Chirac, Tony Blair and others to join in an eventual military action, even if, at the end of the day, there is no explicit U.N. authorization. It's the unilateralist iron fist inside the multilateralist velvet glove.”

Bearing in mind that this article was published in September 2002 it is a startlingly accurate description of how events have unfolded at the time of writing, March 27, 2003.

The article continues: “This blend of unilateralism and multilateralism reflects a broad and deep American consensus. Americans prefer to act with the sanction and support of other countries if they can. But they're strong enough to act alone if they must. That combination may prove to be the winning formula in Europe and elsewhere. Maybe it won't be quite the principled multilateralism Europeans and Kofi Annan prefer. In an age of American hegemony, it will be multilateralism, American style.”

The attack against Iraq is probably the clearest example of this strategy in practice. Another example, perhaps clearer in retrospect, was the attack upon Afghanistan under the cover of an attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden. To quote the NSS again: “The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states” (from the Introduction, signed by President Bush).

According to William Kristol, president of the Project for the New American Century, in a statement on February 7, 2002 to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “And President Bush singled out three regimes, North Korea, Iran and Iraq, as enemies; they constitute an ‘axis of evil’ that poses ‘a grave and growing danger’. Nor will he ‘stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. Time’, he said, ‘is not on our side.’ The President is thus willing to act pre-emptively and, if need be, unilaterally. This is a matter of American self-defense. Yes it is.”

If that isn’t emphasis enough, the US in the NSS clearly states why it does not support the International Criminal Court (ICC):

“We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the ICC, whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept. We will work together with other nations to avoid complications in our military operations and cooperation, through such mechanisms as multilateral and bilateral agreements that will protect U.S. nationals from the ICC” (NSS p.31).

It is clear from these documents that the US has decided it has the right to impose its will on other states, but that other states do not have any right to hold the US to account if its actions are deemed illegitimate.

The protection of “strategic” oil reserves

The National Security strategy specifically mentions “the need to develop and expand the sources and types of energy supplied” (NSS pages 19,20). There is a tie up with the need to develop renewable energy but this element of the strategy is given extremely low levels of funding. (The budget for 2002 involved funding for the Department of Energy’s renewable energy programmes being cut from $376 million to $186 million, according to http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/4096.cfm.) The clear implication is that it is oil supplies that must be developed and expanded.

Gary Schmitt, Executive Director of the Project for the New American Century issued a memo to “Opinion leaders” on May 23, 2002 (which also refers back to William Kristol the Chairman) in which he states a goal of creating an oil-producing Iraq with implications for other states in the region:

“And, as in Kabul but also as in the Kurdish and Shi'ite regions of Iraq in 1991, American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. Indeed, reconstructing Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan.

“The political, strategic and moral rewards would also be even greater. A friendly, free, and oil-producing Iraq would leave Iran isolated and Syria cowed; the Palestinians more willing to negotiate seriously with Israel; and Saudi Arabia with less leverage over policymakers here and in Europe. Removing Saddam Hussein and his henchmen from power presents a genuine opportunity — one President Bush sees clearly — to transform the political landscape of the Middle East.”

And on the importance of other strategic oil producing regions:

“So in addition to hoping for and encouraging change from within Saudi Arabia, we should develop strategic alternatives to reliance on Riyadh. In the military sphere, we have already begun to hedge, with agreements and deployments to other Gulf emirates. Although still the strongest influence on oil prices, other source (sic) in Russia, the Caspian Basin, Mexico and elsewhere …can be developed and brought to market at a reasonable cost. The attacks of September 11 remind us that it is not just what we pay at the pump but what we pay in lives, security and international political stability that comprise the true price of Saudi oil.” See http://www.newamericancentury.org/saudi-052302.htm.

It is therefore clear that for the US, ensuring free-flowing oil from a number of states is an important element of controlling world oil markets and prices, until now at the behest of OPEC and particularly Saudi Arabia. This goes some way to explaining further why Iraq — which is thought to have the world’s second largest oil reserves — has been an early proving ground for the new pre-emptive strategy.

That the desire to offset the power and influence of Saudi Arabia is linked with the attack on Saddam Hussein is substantiated further still:

“In particular, removing the regime of Saddam Hussein and helping construct a decent Iraqi society and economy would be a tremendous step toward reducing Saudi leverage. Bringing Iraqi oil fully into world markets would improve energy economics. From a military and strategic perspective, Iraq is more important than Saudi Arabia. And building a representative government in Baghdad would demonstrate that democracy can work in the Arab world. This, too, would be a useful challenge to the current Saudi regime.“

While oil is by no means the full story, there can be no doubt that it plays a significant part in the overall picture, being one of the keys to economic and therefore overall global dominance. Lest some doubts as to the relevance of oil profits still remain, it is worth noting the interests of the main UN Security Council opponents to the attack on Iraq, according to “The new great game,” The Ecologist, April 2003:

“Russian oil companies …have a lot to lose in Iraq. Russian oil giant Lukoil signed a contract with Saddam to develop Iraq’s giant West Qurna oilfield. …And Chinese and French energy corporations have also been active in Iraq for years. In the 1990s, TotalFinElf made preliminary agreements with Baghdad to develop the oilfields of Majnoon and Mahr Umar in southern Iraq. Moscow and Paris fear that a new Iraqi government indebted to Washington would declare the old regime’s contracts null and void, and offer them to US firms.”

And, looking back in time, from the same article:

“In the mid-1990s the US government supported plans by the US oil company Unocal to build oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. When it became clear in 1998 that the Taliban supported anti-US terrorists, the pipeline plans for Afghanistan were temporarily shelved. Now the US-led so-called ‘anti-terrorist’ campaign in Afghanistan has reopened the Herat-Kandahar corridor, these plans have been dusted off.”

Israel and oversights

Note the view of the US Administration that regime change is the objective of a war on Iraq. The quotes from the PNAC memo referring to Iraq and Saudi Arabia are just examples among many that highlight the “problems” created by the stance of many Muslim states in the Middle East, as seen by the US, while failing to mention anywhere the impact and influence of the state of Israel and the occupied territories. Israel is a key ally of the US and the neo-conservative lobby that gave rise to the PNAC and the existing administration has strongly pro-Israel members. By deliberately ignoring the Israel question, the highly selective view offered by US foreign policy on the problems of the Middle East ignores one of the key underlying causes of conflict in the region. Note that US finance currently supporting Israel every year is roughly double that allocated to restructuring Afghanistan over six years. Israel is one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal year 2003. It has, for years, been getting $3 billion a year. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel. See http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html or http://www.rense.com/general35/israelss.htm.