7 PERSPECTIVE Is the ISIS War About Oil After All?
TuEsday
THE MORUNG EXPRESS
28 July 2015
NEWS ANALYSIS, FEATURE AND DISCOURSE
The unfolding intervention against the Islamic State shows that oil doesn't just guide U.S. foreign policy. It constrains our ways of thinking about it
WANTED: A BAREFOOT MINISTER
T
Jack Werner
F
Foreign Policy in Focus
oreign intervention is 100 times more likely if oil reserves are present in a country experiencing civil war. That’s the conclusion of Vincenzo Bove of the University of Warwick, coauthor of a recent study published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. “Before the ISIS forces approached the oil-rich Kurdish north of Iraq, ISIS was barely mentioned in the news,” Bove points out. “But once ISIS got near oil fields, the siege of Kobani in Syria became a headline and the U.S. sent drones to strike ISIS targets.” Bove is not identifying something new. The “American Century,” a phrase popularized by Henry Luce in Life circa 1941, entailed U.S. ownership and control of oil. From 1920 to 1970, the United States produced two-thirds of the world’s crude oil and housed five of the seven major oil conglomerates that dominated the oil industry. Yet if crude oil was foundational to U.S. military predominance, it has now proved to be the Achilles heel of strategic interests. Oil is quite literally fueling our newest enemy, the Islamic State (ISIS), in its expansion into Iraq and control of small oilrigs. In the world of U.S. hegemony, oil not only guides our foreign policy but constrains our ways of thinking about it. Controlling Iraqi Oil The Islamic State’s seizure of Tikrit and the surrounding oil fields in Ajil and Himrin after the fall of Mosul last summer dramatically changed the U.S. military posture in Iraq. President Obama waited nine months before formally asking Congress for an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF). However, U.S. service members already deployed in the region were engaging ISIS as early as June 15, 2014 — just four days after Tikrit fell and, along with it, partial control of Iraqi oil. News reports surfaced as early as July that ISIS was earning $1 million a day from its control over marginal oilrigs. By August, CNN warned that the figure was now closer to $3 million a day. Oil quickly became the centerpiece of the media narrative about ISIS, with little else making headlines. Arguments for President Obama’s intervention against ISIS and the continuation of the war on terrorism oscillate between humanitarian reasons and winning the “ideological war” against ISIS. That every major power justifies its actions on humanitarian grounds is a truism, as Noam Chomsky aptly points out in his book Hegemony or Survival. The first narrative focused on an imminent humanitarian catastrophe when ISIS forces trapped an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 Yazidis, a religious minority, on Sinjar Mountain on August 7, 2015. President Obama responded by announcing strategic airstrikes but pledged not to allow “the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.” A humanitarian intervention was staged on the alleged grounds of protecting the Yazidis. No U.S. citizens were at risk. Yet on September 10 the rhetoric of war dramatically shifted as Obama pledged to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. This rhetorical moment was more than just a change in counterterror strategy. It was an affirmation of U.S. oil interests in the MENA region. Since 1976, according to
“Arena of Mind” portrays a space for idea germination, a field where ideas from multi-disciplinary viewpoints fertilize the world of intelligence. The writers aspire to envision a new future by exploring the mind, discovering new seeds of insights and unleashing them to enlightenment.
believes that curbing ISIS’ access to oil will decrease the size of the organization and, with it, the possibility of civilian causalities. At the same time, the United States will attempt to increase U.S. access to oil with the understanding that American corporate power and decisionmaking will expand the size of the economic pie for all. This second half of this strategy was applied during the Iraq War when KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton — an oil exploration company that former Vice President Dick Cheney served as chairman and CEO of — received $39.5 billion in federal contracts for reconstruction and oil production and expansion. In the eyes of U.S. policymakers, private oil conglomerates were integral to rebuilding Iraq and achieving the stated goals of constructing democracy. According to this approach to foreign policy, the purpose of restricting ISIS’ oil access becomes the end itself, equivalent to protecting civilians and ensuring world peace. But fighting over access to oil, in this case by the United States, was a major precipitating factor for the earlier military intervention in Iraq and the civil strife and bloodshed that followed. The market for oil, with U.S. consumption rounding nearly 18.6 million barrels per day, can’t in the end be divorced from any U.S. interest in human rights. In September 2014, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Resources dedicated an entire public brief to outlining “The Problem of ISIS Oil Sales.” They were searching for answers to how oil could possibly fund our enemies (Who is buying it? Why?), instead of examining why oil motivations for the Iraq War created structural pressures and instability in the region that needed to be addressed by any coalition vying for power. As an integral component to U.S. consumer capitalism, oil steers U.S. foreign policy and often functions as a tool of American nation building, at home and abroad. Although oil has served as an underlying rationale for the use of military force, the black hydrocarbon has no nationalist ties. Its awesome power is now being harnessed against the United States. Cutting ISIS’ access to oil is not the solution to this problem. Fighting over acIntersection of Oil and Humanitarianism cess to oil, after all, helped create the social and political President Obama views U.S. oil interests and human- environment that gave birth to ISIS. History repeats with itarian efforts as one and the same. As such, Washington appalling consistency. Roger Stern, professor of energy and security at the University of Tulsa, the United States has spent roughly $7.3 trillion in military expenditures to maintain access to oil in the region. The latest venture, as Steve Coll suggested in The New Yorker, was not about saving the Yazidis but protecting oil-rich Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government — where top American oil conglomerates such as ExxonMobil and Chevron have production fields. The second line of reasoning, the so-called “ideological war” justification, was applied to protecting U.S. citizens from terrorist threats from abroad. The Islamic State “could pose a growing threat beyond the region, including to the U.S. homeland,” as President Obama said, which was less jingoistic than his predecessor but still based on the tacit assumption of us versus them. The “ideological war” justification has longstanding problems. The well-known story of U.S. funding, training, and overall support for the Afghan mujahedeen to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s demonstrates the blowback effects of U.S. policy in the region. USAID funding, for example, was used to create textbooks celebrating the mutilation of Soviet troops in the name of theology. The connection of distorted theology and terrorism was solidified in Afghanistan with U.S. support. It’s no stretch to say that Islamic terrorism was, and continues to be, a byproduct of the Cold War. But even the recent war on terrorism is problematic. Pentagon officials knew at least a year before ISIS launched its campaign that NATO-trained “moderate” Free Syrian Army rebels were defecting to ISIS or al-Qaeda to fight Assad, but the United States continued to fund them anyway. Turkey, a major U.S. NATO ally, was sponsoring ISIS with military and medical equipment while working with the United States to train 15,000 Syrian rebels. The connections between U.S. efforts to curb Islamic terrorism and the reproduction of the extremist ideology are astounding. In the name of fighting terrorism, the United States invariably creates more terrorism.
he Rural Employment Guarantee Bill is one of the most important pieces of socio-economic legislation in the post-independence India. If the bill can be amended purposefully, India can achieve to reduce poverty to less than 10 percent of our population in the next seven to eight years which will become an unprecedented achievement in India’s history. However, I will mention that, the hope of these can be realized only when proper action is taken to administer the proposed scheme launched in the past with high promises but with poor results. It is fortune that the bill was introduced years ago in the Lok Sabha and it is already high time for the standing committee, media, economists, sociologists and other experts to examine the Bill. At this stage, I want to make two “Core” Points for further considerations by the government. Firstly, since the purpose of the bill enjoys vast support in the country, mere legislations however good the drafting, is not enough. Unless we monitor its implementations closely and remove the lucanae, the bill will fail to achieve its objectives. Secondly, the most important problem in governance and administration of projects or schemes launched with great hopes is the involvement of a number of agencies and ministries in decision making and implementation with a very common experience of conflicting objectives. Likewise, there are many schemes that has been introduced but have not achieved what was promised. Today there are number of agencies that are involving in the disbursement of funds and appointment of staffs to run the schemes which is mis-leading the objectives of the schemes to be achieved. The government should look into this matters seriously while appointing agencies at the centre to be implemented for the proposed schemes by adopting models of management and administration to ensure proper outcomes. For example, inorder to deliver essential products through wholesale channels the Indian Oil Corporation should have firstrate executives chairperson with successful records of handling projects efficiently assisted by high-level of board directors. Thus, to monitor the effectiveness of implementation of the programme, the government should appoint a full-time minister who would be responsible and accountable to the cabinet and parliament. The minister would be a ‘barefoot minister’ like the old analogy of barefoot doctors, without red lights and other ostentatious paraphernalia. This administrative models could be unconventional unless proper opportunities and funds are utilized to bring about great advantage specially to the remote areas of our country. However the government should not cut essential expenditures in areas like education, health, power in rural areas which is very important for poverty alleviation. We have already witnessed too many different kinds of taxes which have made our fiscal system one of the most complex in the world. So, if we need more resources for Employment Guarantee Schemes; it is far better to get these directly and explicitly by raising the rates of existing taxes in a transparent manner. Kevizase Edward Kehie, Asst. Prof. SJC Jakhama Dept. of Political Science
If World Leaders Can Skip Deadlines, Why Can’t I?
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Carl Honoré
HE other day I missed the deadline to renew my parking permit and was slapped with a hefty fine. My first thought: Serves me right for dragging my feet. My second thought: This isn’t fair! Why should I pay up when global statesmen are missing deadline after deadline with apparent impunity? I cannot be the only person wondering that right now. When it comes to meeting deadlines, the world’s power brokers are hardly setting a shining example. Whether negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, an economic bailout for Greece or a cap on carbon emissions, they seem trapped in the same pantomime of procrastination. Granted, a final deal eventually was reached with Iran, but only after years of talks punctuated by missed deadlines. Which is why we are all so familiar with the deadline-buster’s version of the perp walk: bleary-eyed and short-tempered, suits rumpled and creased, male jaws darkened with stubble, the negotiators shuffle out of the final session in Vienna or Geneva or Brussels or Washington, vowing to soldier on and hinting that the next deadline will be the last. After a setback in the talks earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry said he was striving to hammer out the best deal possible but would not negotiate “forever.” Diplomats have a long tradition of flirting with the clock. The winding road to peace in Northern Ireland was paved with so many missed deadlines that I heard one veteran observer recently note: “I’ve been right (down) to the wire more times than an electrician.” What has changed is that deadline-busting now feels like the norm, which may be a blessing in disguise. I am an advocate of what has come to be known as the Slow Movement. I travel the world speaking on the benefits of slowing down, taking time and unplugging, often in venues full of people itching to check their phones. To me, the spectacle of world leaders blowing
deadlines like teenage slackers feels like a strike against the tyranny of the clock. But it also invites a deeper question: If deadlines can be missed so easily, what is the point of having them at all? Long ago, honoring a deadline was genuinely a matter of life and death. Most scholars agree that the word was coined to describe the boundary past which inmates were forbidden to venture in Civil War prison camps. Guards fired on those who stepped over the so-called dead line. In the early 20th century, the term made its way into the newspaper world, where it retained its make-or-break menace. But then the word went mainstream, and deadlines became more of a movable feast. That is certainly the case in our private lives. Just look at how often we disregard “deadlines” by arriving late to social engagements. One reason: smartphones have made it easy to shrug off tardiness with a stream of cheery updates: “Sorry, bad traffic, running late!” “Just a few minutes now!” “Almost there!” Even in the workplace, not all deadlines are set in stone. This is true in professions where you might least expect it, such as publishing. Most book contracts fix a
delivery date but everyone knows it’s elastic. Some authors even take a perverse pleasure in submitting their manuscripts late. Douglas Adams, the author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” once quipped: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” I am cut from different cloth than Mr. Adams, who once had to be locked in a hotel room until he finished a book. Unlike many writers I know, my style has always been to deliver the goods in a calm and timely fashion. Once my deadline is set, I map out what needs to be done and do it. Nevertheless, I am not above coveting the adrenaline rush and bragging rights generated by a last-minute dash to the finish line. That’s why, in college, I once engineered a deadline panic by leaving a history paper about the Cuban missile crisis unwritten until the night before it was due. As everyone else went to bed, I brewed the first of several pots of coffee and the words started flowing. I enjoyed the buzz of the final sprint and boasting over breakfast with my friends, but the result was a second-rate paper. The truth is that deadlines are useful. They
signal that something is important enough to deserve our immediate attention; they can also focus minds and spur us to action. But too much deadlining can backfire. Setting do-or-die deadlines and then routinely missing them is like crying wolf: People lose interest and the deadlines lose their bite. What’s more, study after study has shown that too much time pressure, whether in the office, the college dorm or the global summit meeting, makes us less creative and more sloppy. Teresa Amabile, professor and director of research at the Harvard Business School, has spent decades studying the workplace, and her conclusion is loud and clear: “Extreme time pressure can stifle creativity.” Think about it: In the mountain range of human achievement, how many of the highest peaks have been scaled because someone stuck to an all-or-nothing deadline? No one bullied Albert Einstein to crack the theory of relativity by a fixed date. And the same is true in more recent times: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web without anyone really breathing down his neck with a stopwatch. Which brings us to the essential paradox of deadlines. We need them as a cattle prod, but we also need to be able to miss them, and missing them means they’re not really deadlines. Maybe the time has come to reconsider deadlines altogether. To stop falling into a mind-narrowing panic when they approach. To start using them as a lever not for getting stuff done by a fixed time but for getting it done right. Mr. Kerry seems to have grasped this. When a breakthrough with Iran finally began to seem possible, he refused to play Deadline Dash: “We will not rush,” he said. “And we will not be rushed.” It’s a good reminder that the clock does not always have the final word, and that missing a deadline is not just for deadbeats.
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