As the clash with Iraq looms ever closer, Britain is having its fair share of anti-war protests. There have been street protests, runway protests (to challenge the arrival of America's B52s), and port protests (to plead with British troops to 'hell no, please don't go'). Now, green-minded anti-war activists have started a new trend: petrol pump protests.
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On 24 February 2003, Greenpeace campaigners caused havoc at Esso petrol stations across London. Over 100 stations were forced to close after activists cut power to the petrol pumps and tied petrol pump nozzles together. Greenpeace activist Anita Goldsmith said the Esso action was a protest against the oil company's support for President Bush's 'war for oil' with Iraq. 'No oil company has done more to fuel the Iraqi crisis than Bush's paymasters at Esso', she said (1).
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The cry 'It's all about oil!' is repeated like a mantra by some in the anti-war movement. On anti-war demos, placards demand 'No blood for oil'. According to anti-war veteran Tariq Ali, 'Underlying America's aggression [towards Iraq] is the crude understanding of what makes the Arab world important: the world's largest reserves of cheaply accessible oil' (2). So is the planned attack on Iraq all about the Bushies getting their greasy mitts on more oil?
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Iraq is certainly oil-rich, and the question of what will happen to its oil reserves after any war is no doubt a big issue for the Bush administration. But the 'war for oil' argument is not the result of a considered economic understanding of the Iraqi crisis. The popularity of the oil theory shows how being anti-war today has become a jaded and cynical stance, a catch-all way to express disdain for political leaders, institutions, capitalism, oil barons, cars or anything else you don't like.
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The anti-war movement is right to say that Iraq is a key 'oil state'. With an estimated 11 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia (which has 25 percent) in the world oil stakes. Iraq is thought to have between 120 billion and 200 billion barrels of oil beneath its surface - enough to keep America's oil needs satisfied for about 20 years.
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But it doesn't necessarily follow that, as anti-war elements claim, America is launching a war 'to get this oil prize'. Since when did Saddam's regime, or anybody else's for that matter, pose an obstacle to American control of oil supplies in the Middle East? Indeed, one of the benefits of Saddam for America during the years he was courted and supported by the White House was that he brought a repressive stability to an area of economic interest for the USA, as well as acting as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East.
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Anti-war protesters point out that Bush has links with oil companies. He is descended from a long line of oil men; his vice president Dick Cheney was chief executive of oil company Halliburton; and his national security adviser Condoleezza Rice even has an oil tanker named after her. But the 'revelation' that the President of the United States of America is supported by capitalists could only shock the most naive of people. From Franklin D Roosevelt's railroad connections to Ronald Reagan's promotion of US business interests abroad, American presidents have always sought support from capitalists.
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 | | According to economists, launching a war for oil makes no sense - or cents |
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According to some economic commentators, launching a war for oil in Iraq makes no sense - or cents, to be more precise. In Newsweek, Michael Hirsh writes: '[T]he expense of a US war and occupation will far outweigh any benefit from Iraq's 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Even a two-term Bush presidency would be long over before Iraq's broken economy realised its full capacity of six million barrels or more' (3).
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Yet the idea that the second Gulf War will spill blood for oil is gaining ground. Why?
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The old left always sought a direct, explicit economic explanation for every Western war. Instead of understanding and challenging the many facets of imperialist intervention, left-wing anti-war critics sought to draw a direct link between an invasion of foreign territory and some tangible profitable gain. This meant that the left often attached a clumsy-sounding economic theory to the West's wars.
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So if the 'war for oil' argument doesn't add up in relation to the Gulf, consider the fact that some anti-war types argued that America's intervention into the dustbowl of Somalia in 1993 might have been another sly oil mission. One journalist, writing at the time, claimed there could be 'significant amounts of oil and natural gas' in Somalia, ripe for the taking 'if the US-led military can restore peace' (4).
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In the 1990s, the recasting of Western interference as 'humanitarian intervention' seriously undermined many of the left's old arguments against war. Throughout the 1990s, military intervention abroad was justified as a humanitarian effort. From Somalia to Bosnia, Kosovo to Afghanistan, Western powers claimed to be intervening, not out of selfish or economic interests, but for the welfare of peoples whose dignity and human rights were being trampled underfoot by brutal regimes.
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In truth, behind the high-minded claims of selflessness, humanitarian intervention was largely staged for a domestic audience rather then being driven by concern for people around the world. In the post-Cold War 1990s, military action became an attempt to invest Western elites with a sense of moral purpose that was lacking in the domestic sphere, and to present foreign wars as just campaigns. Yet the rise of humanitarian warfare caused widespread confusion in the anti-war camp, making its economic arguments against war seem obsolete.
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In the 1990s, many liberals and left-wingers who had previously been vociferous opponents of Western intervention ended up supporting humanitarian wars. Won over by the argument that 'something must be done' about human rights abuses 'over there', some former anti-war protesters and commentators became nothing less than the cheerleaders of modern intervention.
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| | 'Anti-capitalist' campaigns thrive on conspiracy theories |
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For harder left elements, naturally cynical of Britain and America's war talk, the rise of humanitarian warfare was no less confusing. Many spent the 'humanitarian' 1990s desperately seeking a material interest to the West's wars, to 'uncover the truth' about these new conflicts. Faced with confusing wars that were increasingly being justified in human rights language, the 'war for oil' theory became a one-size-fits-all explanation in the 1990s, wheeled out by left-wing campaigners to 'expose' Western imperialism.
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But the 'war for oil' theories were not credible to the wider public. Very few believed that the Kosovo conflict or the Somalia intervention were really oil missions in disguise. Rather, broader cynicism about the US government and its actions abroad took the 'Wag the Dog' form for much of the 1990s, the belief that President Bill Clinton was intervening abroad to cover up his problems at home. Many believed that the bombing of Iraq in 1998 and Kosovo in 1999 were attempts by Clinton to divert attention from domestic sex scandals. Cynicism about UK prime minister Tony Blair's motives were expressed in the accusation that he was kissing up to America, taking part in an international 'love-in' with Clinton.
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Now President Bush is in power, and the 'war for oil' theory has not only been rehabilitated - it has taken off. Bush provides a certain rationale for the oil line: he is a traditional republican oil man, around whom the 'war for oil' arguments appear to make some sense. But behind Bush's personal history in the grubby oil business, the oil issue has become a focus for other, broader frustrations. It is the means through which many express cynicism about America and its actions today - not only among Europeans and other non-Americans, but also within America itself, where the 'war for oil' theory is increasingly widespread. What better way to have a go at America than to use a readymade, if half-cocked, theory that suggests it is addicted to oil and is even prepared to launch wars for it?
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Consider how the oil theory was attached to the Afghan War. Many anti-war protesters argued that the 'war on terror' launched in Afghanistan in October 2001 was really about installing a friendly regime that would guarantee American control of oil reserves from the Caspian Sea. The 'war for oil' idea became the alternative to accepting the 'war on terror' at face value - so rather than challenging the war as it existed or as it was justified by Bush and Blair, anti-war activists and commentators took a stand against the war as they imagined it to be.
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In reality, far from having an ulterior economic motive in Afghanistan, it was the incoherence of the West's Afghan war aims that created the space for speculative conspiracy theories about what they were up to. And the more confusing the war became, with ever-changing aims and botched operations, the more the anti-war movement was tempted to wheel out the oil argument, in an attempt to render the war understandable. This may have provided comfort for protesters - turning a confusing war into a simple issue of oil-greedy imperialists v innocent Afghans - but it did little to further our understanding of the 'war on terror'.
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The anti-war movement's embrace of the 'war for oil' theory during the 1990s was consolidated by the emergence of 'anti-capitalist' groups, and the amalgamation of the two movements. Today's 'anti-capitalist' campaigns thrive on conspiracy theories about the links between evil corporations and evil governments. For all their direct action, they describe a world in the grip of all-powerful corporate forces, where armies, political institutions and oil companies are one and the same thing - which presents the rest of us as powerless players who couldn't possibly do very much to challenge the faceless powers-that-be. For these 'anti-capitalists', claims of 'war for oil' are natural territory.
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Today, as another Gulf War looms, the 'war for oil' theory has gone mainstream. It has become de rigeur to denounce war with Iraq as an oil-grabbing mission. Even Mo Mowlam, the New Labour government's former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, says 'the real goal' in Iraq is the seizure of oil. From newspaper comments to heated pub debates, the 'war for oil' argument has become commonplace.
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| | Today, the 'war for oil' theory has gone mainstream |
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The oil argument has become an expression of frustration, rather than an engaged theory about what is driving the planned attack on Iraq. The oil line is less a political challenge to the West's imperialist interests than a generalised moan about war - or whatever. This reflects what being 'anti-war' has come to stand for today: feeling frustrated and suspicious about our political leaders and institutions, rather than taking a principled stand against Western intervention.
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Under the anti-oil, anti-war banner, many groups express their own concerns. So for Greenpeace, being anti-war can mean berating Esso for destroying the environment. For green activists in the USA, being anti-war means drawing wild links between war in Iraq and the gas in people's cars and having a go at drivers for 'fuelling war' (pun intended). One US anti-war group launched an advertising campaign in January 2003, claiming that drivers of SUVs (sports utility vehicles) were encouraging America's oil-hungry foreign policy by using so much gas in their vans.
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The 'war for oil' theorists not only misunderstand modern conflicts - they also don't oppose them very well. Rather than exploring the internal crises driving the Bush administration to intervene abroad, Greenpeace's Esso demos suggest that the real problem is that Bush and co have become captive to a vested business interest (or are 'addicted to oil', as the modern parlance put its). In this idiot's guide to international affairs, all we have to do is stop using oil and world peace will reign.
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Far from effectively opposing war, anti-war protests become an expression of powerlessness in the face of corporate interests or a collective moan against governments that 'just don't listen'. And what kind of political movement can be built on the basis of opposing a conspiracy of evil oil-lovers? If the world really is controlled by a hidden all-powerful force of politicians and oil men, what chance have we got of changing things for the better?
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It's time the anti-war movement got over its addiction to oil, and challenged modern wars at face value.
Brendan O'Neill is coordinating the spiked-conference Panic attack: Interrogating our obsession with risk, on Friday 9 May 2003, at the Royal Institution in London.
Read on:
A creaky theory, by Brendan O'Neill
Greenpeace's latest battle, by Jim Glassman
spiked-issue: War on Iraq
(1) Greenpeace protest closes Esso pumps across UK, Guardian, 24 February 2003
(2) A naked display of military power, Tariq Ali, Newsweek, 10 March 2003
(3) Blood, oil and Iraq, Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, 10 March 2003
(4) 'The oil factor in Somalia', Los Angeles Times, 18 January 1993
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