Is the Real Issue Oil?

A number of commentators have begun to speculate about the role of oil in the developing U.S. war against Afghanistan. They point out that plans to build an oil and gas pipeline from the southern Caspian region to Pakistan hinge on the pacification of Afghanistan.

Similar theories were presented in the case of the Gulf War and the U.S. interventions in the Balkans.

No doubt there is some truth to these theories. Control of energy sources has always been crucial to any capitalist power seeking to expand its economic and political domination. Capture of the oil fields of Rumania and the Caucasus and access to the oil of the Middle East were central to the plans of Nazi Germany. The policy of the U.S. towards the Middle East has, likewise, revolved around oil.

But access to sources of energy for purposes of consumption or export is only one reason that imperialists strive to control energy supplies. The other reason is to be able to deprive their competitors of energy at crucial times.

The continuing U.S. war against Iraq is an obvious case of the latter. The U.S. already had secure access to Saudi Arabian oil and imported almost no oil from Iraq. However, Japan, which in 1990 was rivalling the U.S. in economic power, relied on Iraq for 25 percent of its oil imports. Within months of the destruction of the Iraqi oil industry, Japan entered an economic slump from which it has still not recovered. Whether this was a conscious U.S. objective or not, at the very least it has been a form of collateral damage that has served U.S. economic interests very well.