Oil
Wars Pentagon's Policy Since 1999
By Ritt Goldstein
SMH.COM
21 May, 2003
A top-level United States
policy document has emerged that explicitly confirms the Defence Department's
readiness to fight an oil war.
According to the report,
Strategic
Assessment 1999, prepared for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the Secretary of Defence, "energy and resource issues will continue
to shape international security".
Oil conflicts over production
facilities and transport routes, particularly in the Persian Gulf and
Caspian regions, are specifically envisaged.
Although the policy does
not forecast imminent US military conflict, it vividly highlights how
the highest levels of the US Defence community accepted the waging of
an oil war as a legitimate military option.
Strategic Assessment also
forecasts that if an oil "problem" arises, "US forces
might be used to ensure adequate supplies".
Although Strategic Assessment
1999 predicts adequate US energy supplies, it also finds that supply
shortages could "exacerbate regional political tensions, potentially
causing regional conflicts".
The Bush Administration has
stated that providing for US energy needs is a priority.
Strategic Assessment was
prepared by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, part of the
US Department of Defence's National Defence University. The institute
lists its primary mission as policy research and analysis for the Joint
Chiefs, the Defence Secretary, and a variety of government security
and defence bodies.
According to the report,
national security depends on successful engagement in the global economy,
so national defence no longer means protecting the nation from military
threats alone, but economic challenges, too.
The fall of the Soviet Union
in the early 1990s brought an end to the US's ideological basis for
potential conflict. In 1992 Bill Clinton urged that "our economic
strength must become a central defining element of our national security
policy".
Since then, members of the
Bush Administration have promoted the need for the consolidation of
the Cold War victory.
In what many may see as an
apparent parallel to present events, Strategic Assessment 1999 drew
attention to pre-World War II Britain's pursuit of an approach where
control over territory was seen as essential to ensuring resource supplies.
However, the Defence Department
policymakers behind Strategic Assessment also appear to recognise the
potential consequences of such policies.
The authors warn that if
the great powers return to the 19th century approach of securing resources,
of conquering resource suppliers, the world economy will suffer and
world politics will become more tense.