10/09/14 – Michael Klare – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our next guest on the show is Michael Clare, writing again at Tom Dispatch.
And wait, let me fast forward to the end of the article so I get his bio right here.
He is professor of Peace and World Security Studies.
What a great name of a title of a professorship.
Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and the author most recently of The Race for What's Left.
And you find him all the time at Tom Dispatch.
Welcome back to the show, Michael.
How are you doing?
Pleasure.
Pleasure to be with you.
Yeah, good to have you here.
You need in your title here and oil.
Well, I guess the race for what's left that betrays it right there.
Real expert on global energy resources here and especially what all it has to do with American foreign policy, which is a hell of a lot, of course.
So this one is called Obama's New Oil Wars.
Washington takes on ISIS, Iran and Russia.
So, well, actually, I like the way you start this article by going back to 1973 and talking about the oil weapon.
Remind us about that for a minute.
OK, well, when we talk about the oil weapon, at least back over time, we're usually talking about efforts by the Arab countries, the Arab members of OPEC, to punish the US for its support of Israel by cutting off the flow of oil from the Middle East to the USA.
And they did that most spectacularly in 1973 after the October war of 1973, Arab-Israeli war to punish us for supporting Israel in that conflict.
And it created those famous long gas lines in the United States when oil was scarce and it triggered a global recession.
So it had a tremendous impact on the US and the rest of the world.
Wasn't that mostly them just trying to adjust the price of oil to the real value of the US dollar at that point?
They did that as well.
The OPEC countries as a whole raised oil prices to get a larger share of the income.
But the Arab members of OPEC went further and they actually cut off the flow of oil to the United States at that time.
I see.
And so, well, and then I guess it was after that that they well, see, 73.
Yes.
So this was two years after they went off the gold standard.
At what point had they worked out the so-called oil standard for the dollar where the Saudis would promise to only denominate in dollars?
That was before this.
And they kept to that part of the deal, even during the boycott.
They didn't really change that.
Do I understand right?
Well, yeah, they didn't change that because what you're talking about was something that all of the oil producing countries were involved in.
And, you know, and their aim was to increase the share of profits for oil sales that went to the home country instead of the oil companies, the Western oil companies that were getting all that money in the past.
But the decision, the oil embargo of 1973 was was done only, as I say, by a group of those countries, not all of them.
Right.
I see.
All right.
So then now what you're saying is, I guess, that Washington learned a lesson from that, which they should already understood quite well.
Right.
With all the Rockefeller influence in the government, especially in the 70s, that, hey, oil is a hell of a weapon, isn't it?
And so that really does.
I don't know.
I guess I'll put in the form of a question.
How much exactly does oil have to do with the American empire and its policies around the world?
Oh, well, that's a topic I love to discuss, Scott.
And I wrote a book about it called Blood and Oil, that I tried to show that American foreign policy and military policy has largely been shaped by America's need for Middle Eastern oil, and as a result, a determination to control that part of the world as much as possible to dominate the Persian Gulf area militarily and politically.
And that's behind virtually everything that's happened for the past 50 years.
The first Gulf War in 1990, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and just about everything else that's happened in that area is a consequence of America's desire to dominate and control the oil producing countries of that region.
But what's happened lately is that oil production in the U.S. has risen so much that we're much less dependent on those countries.
And that leads some policymakers to believe that now we can wield the oil weapon against people we don't like, like Iran and Russia and other countries and groups like ISIS.
The question is whether this position we have is temporary or not, because other countries are also going to see what we're doing and they're going to retaliate.
Yeah, isn't that funny that instead of, yeah, now that we have all this natural gas and we're, you know, virtually, you know, right around self-sufficient when it comes to energy resources in the United States and Canada anyway, that this isn't a time where now we can back off and just let the Middle East go to hell if it wants to, or do great if they want to make deals with whoever they want to, because it doesn't affect us.
No, now we're just, as you put it, freed up to abuse the oil weapon, to use it to choke off and to wage kind of proxy war against adversary states even more than before.
Yeah, I think that's the belief of some in Washington that we're in this powerful position and we could do what we want.
I would say that's a very dangerous attitude to hold, because even though we're getting more of our oil from Texas and places in the U.S., North Dakota, through fracking, other countries are going to copy our behavior and ultimately we're all dependent on a price of oil that's affordable, and even if we get our oil at home and there's a scarcity somewhere else, we're still going to see rising prices in oil.
So I believe using oil as an instrument of power is a bad idea in general.
Yeah, well, and so it's funny because you have a gigantic continent like Africa and you can see where in the West, America, I don't know what's the percentage, it's a pretty big one, right?
Like 20 percent or something of America's daily oil supply comes from Nigeria, the Niger Delta there, is that right?
That was the case up until a few years ago.
However, because of the fracking boom, that has diminished.
We're no longer quite as dependent on Africa as we once were, and we're getting more oil in the form of tar sands oil from Canada.
So the balance of imports has shifted away from Africa and the Middle East for the United States.
But our allies, Japan, the Europeans, they get their oil from Africa and the Middle East, and so we have to worry about the global picture, not just, you know, think that we can get by by ourselves.
That's not going to happen.
Well, when you see American moves in places like Uganda, where we're not getting oil from them, they're about as landlocked as hell, and to build a pipeline through a bunch of warring territories and this and that, it seems like the only thing that they can do, the only thing they can accomplish there, is to try to prevent the Chinese from establishing too much of a dominant presence for a long term, just so that they can, what, choke the Chinese off someday.
But it's surely not about making sure that I can pump that gas at the local 7-Eleven.
Yeah, well said, Scott.
My sense is that there is a real debate about what the U.S. view should be on China's pursuit of oil.
There are some who say is that, you know, that China is inevitably going to be our enemy, and we should do everything to contain China, to prevent its rise, to deprive them of resources.
But I think that's not in our best interests.
I think we want to see China be able to get oil from other places in the world, because the whole economy of the world will benefit that way.
Right.
Yeah, as Rhys Ehrlich said on the show the other day, hey, you look at how major powers deal with each other, they make deals, because what are they going to do, nuke each other?
But when it comes to the poor and weak countries, look out.
All right, now I'm sorry, we got to take this break.
We'll be right back with more with Michael Clare, writing again at TomDispatch.com.
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Hey, cool.
Remember how Clive was talking about his colleague, Corey Kreider, from Reprieve there?
She's being interviewed by stupid old Amanpour right now on CNNi, if you want to set your DVR there.
She's the one who got the judge to rule they got to release the video of what they've done to this guy down at Guantanamo with the force feeding there.
All right, now we're talking with Michael Clare.
His piece at Time Dispatch is Washington Wields The Oil Weapon, and it'll be running on antiwar.com tomorrow.
And so, well, let's see.
It's not your fault.
It's mine.
We're kind of all over the place here, but let's talk about the strikes against ISIS and their oil resources, such as they are.
How much of an oil-producing state is Syria or, I guess, Western Islamic State nowadays, anyway?
Well, Syria was never among the major oil producers, but it produced enough to have some exports, and those exports were at one time one of the primary sources of income for the current regime, the existing Syrian government, Bashar al-Assad.
But they've lost control over those oil fields.
ISIS has taken over, and some by the Al-Nusra Front as well, and so they're reaping the benefits of oil production in Syria.
Now, it's not a huge amount.
I calculate it is about one thousandth of world's oil consumption, what ISIS is able to produce in its captured oil fields.
But hey, that's still at $90 a barrel, and they're producing, say, 100,000 barrels.
That's a huge amount of money they're making every day, and that's where they get the money to pay all of these foreign volunteers that are coming in to join ISIS.
They get paid a lot more, in many cases, than they would being unemployed kids somewhere in Europe or in Beirut or in Egypt or those countries.
So the oil is enough to give ISIS its working capital.
And now, but how much is that exactly?
Because I read this thing.
It was not the actual Rand Corporation study, but it was an article by the author of it, anyway, and he was pretty alarmed saying these guys are making as many as $2 million a day, which I think Travis County, Texas, pulls in every, you know, four or five minutes or something like that, that their total budget this year may be as high as $2 billion, which even he said, yeah, that's probably just enough to pay the wives of the dead fighters their pensions for a little while.
And basically, we're talking about the flattest, brokest, wannabe state in the whole wide world here, right?
I think you have to put this into perspective.
I can't think of another terrorist organization, which ISIS is, that has that kind of a money.
Biggest terrorist organization, smallest government.
Yes, it's probably the smallest.
The Islamic State is the smallest state, and it's a state ruled by terror.
It's not a really functioning state.
But the fact is that they're able to attract fighters to their cause, not necessarily out of ideological commitment, which is the case in most of the other terrorist groups, but because you get paid a damn good salary for somebody who's 19 years old, has no education, and no job prospects, they're getting, I'm told, 100 euros, about $125 a week.
And, you know, that's a lot more than mostly that their other young men like that in their part of the world ever are going to see.
So it is attracting, they are producing enough wealth to finance their army, and it makes them a formidable opponent as a result.
Mm-hmm.
That sounds like it could be an important weakness, though, too, if their whole army is simply mercenary, and it's only their very core that are actually the true believers of this thing.
Although I guess it depends on whether their fortunes are on an upswing at any given moment.
Yes, I think that's the right way to look at it.
I think that while their fortunes appear to be on the upswing, they're going to attract people, and they're going to be able to pay them, and this is looking like a good thing, a promising thing.
I believe that this will not last for very long, because their methods are so demonic, so horrific, that they're alienating people who are within the state.
I mean, not only are they making enemies on the periphery in all directions, but they claim to be a state.
But a functioning state that survives for any length of time has to have the support of the people to a certain point, or at least their cooperation, even if they're unhappy.
But if you're terrorizing the population, they're going to rebel against ISIS, and I think its days are numbered over the next coming years.
Sure, yeah, absolutely.
I know you know well that back in 2006 and 2007, and certainly many things have changed since then, but back then, when they first renamed al-Qaeda in Iraq the Islamic State of Iraq, everybody laughed at them, and especially the local Sunni tribal leaders and religious authorities and so forth, who said, yeah, right, you guys are a bunch of Libyans and Syrians and Saudis, come to help us, and you're welcome to help us.
In fact, maybe not so much now, but you sure as hell aren't the bosses of us.
We are the tribes of Iraq.
You are not the Islamic State of Iraq, they said, and so there's no reason to think they're going to do much better this time.
I mean, they're in a better position this time, obviously, power-wise, but there's, I agree with you that, you know, that's why I'm recommending, hey, everybody, listen to what he said.
Hands off.
We don't have to support the Iranians.
We don't have to support anybody, the Saudis or Assad or anybody against these guys.
The local Sunnis they're attempting to voice their rule on are going to be the end of them sooner or later.
They're outnumbered, and like you said, their methods are so horrible that there cannot be popular sovereignty of any kind, anywhere they go.
They can rule only by terror, and that only goes so far, unless you have a German Reich to use against people, which they don't.
Yeah, well, I think you said it better than I could, and that reflects my sense of where things are going.
Already some of the Sunni tribes are turning against them, even though in Iraq, even though those tribes were very bitterly opposed to the al-Maliki regime in Iraq, the Shiite-dominated al-Maliki regime.
But now there's been a change in Baghdad, a greater effort to reach across to the Sunnis, and I think under those circumstances, there'll be increasing revolt against ISIS in the territory it claims to control.
All right, now we're almost out of time.
What about you?
Could you stay one more segment, or do you need to run?
I need to run, Scott.
I have to teach.
Well, okay.
Well, good for your students.
I guess we'll have to get back to the discussion about Iran and Russia later, because there's a lot of very important stuff there, too.
But thanks very much for your time again on the show and for writing this great article.
Good talking to you.
Great.
Bye-bye.
That's Michael T. Clare, everybody.
He is at TomDispatch.com, Washington wields the oil weapon, and he's a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, and the author most recently of The Race for What's Left.
Oh, he also has a book called Blood and Oil.
Yeah, I really think you guys will appreciate this article.
It'll run tomorrow at AntiWar.com.
And so now the music starts.
I cut them off a little bit early, didn't I?
Oh, John Kerry's Mideast peace talks have gone nowhere.
Hey, all.
Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at Councilforthenationalinterest.org.
U.S. military and financial support for Israel's permanent occupations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is immoral, and it threatens national security by helping generate terrorist attacks against our country.
And face it, it's bad for Israel, too.
Without our unlimited support, they would have much more incentive to reach a lasting peace with their neighbors.
It's past time for us to make our government stop making matters worse.
Help support CNI at Councilforthenationalinterest.org.
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