دور لوبي شركات النفط الامريكية في رسم السياسة الخارجية للولايات المتحدة الامريكية تجاه العراق ودول الخليج 1900-2005
Date
2009-04-06
Authors
رغدة عصام ابو شهلا
Raghda Isam Abu Shahla
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Al-Quds University
Abstract
This research studies in depth the American foreign policy decision-taking process
including all the factors and conditions contributing in making this decision. It studies in
particular, the role of the American oil companies in determining the American foreign
policy towards Iraq and the Arab Gulf countries during the years 1990 – 2005.
Three Gulf wars took place during the research period, and in all of these wars the Iraqi
and Arab Gulf oil was a fundamental cause if not the sole cause of them. Several elements
contribute to make the case for an oil war in USA: the long-term political influence of the
oil companies, the close personal ties between the companies and the government, the long
history of prior conflicts and wars over the Arab Gulf and Iraqi oil, and the enormous
potential profitability of the Iraqi fields.
Those who deny oil companies’ complicity in the US foreign policy towards Iraq and the
Arab Gulf countries always insist that the companies have little political influence in
Washington, and that they are just one industry group among many others. These
arguments are utterly false. The oil companies have always enjoyed “insider” privileges
with the US government in the name of “national security”. Moreover, US
military/security policy, has served the oil companies. Virtually every US presidential
security doctrine, from Truman to Bush Junior, has aimed at protecting company interests
in the oil-rich Arab Gulf. Recently-released secret papers show that during the oil crisis
and Arab oil “embargo” of 1973, Washington seriously considered sending a military
strike force to seize some of the region’s richest fields – in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu
Dhabi. In addition, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter set up the US Central Command, a
permanent military force designed to intervene in the Middle East on short notice.
Presidents have expanded and strengthened this force several times since. In addition,
given the close political relations between the oil companies and the successive US
administrations, it should be no surprise to find close ties at the personal level binding both
sides together. The administration of President George W. Bush “who was chief executive
of his own oil company” represents an especially close set of personal ties between the oil
companies and the government – at the very highest level. In the earliest days of the
administration, they promoted a number of industry-favourable policy decisions, such as
the rejection of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, the ouster of the head of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the elaboration of a strongly pro-oil
national energy plan.
This research will argue that the Gulf wars were primarily “wars for oil” in which large,
multinational oil companies and USA government acted in secret concert to gain control of
Iraq's huge oil reserves and to gain leverage over other national oil producers. However, in
arguing for the primacy of oil, the research does not imply that other factors were not
involved. The imperial dreams of the neo-cons advisors in Washington contributed to the
final outcome; i.e. the Iraq war did not emerge solely from the Bush administration; it
emerged from a decades-long effort by the world's largest companies to appropriate the
planet's most lucrative natural resource deposits.
This research proves that the interests of the world’s largest US oil corporations mesh
closely with those of their national government. Thus while the US successive
administrations seek secure and adequate supplies of oil to feed the US economy, the
corporations need control over reserves to ensure their future profitability, to deliver
returns to their shareholders.
To understand the special “national security” status enjoyed by the American oil
companies in the US, the research first considered the oil’s economic importance and then
its central role in American foreign policy towards Iraq and the Arab Gulf countries;
bearing in mind the tendency of Americans toward owning private vehicles and that oil
provides nearly all the energy for transportation. Moreover, oil has an important share of
other energy inputs: it is an essential feedstock for industries, such as plastics, paint,
fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. Sometime in the future, the world may switch to renewable
energy and other non-oil inputs, but oil now reigns as the indispensable ingredient of the
modern economy. For this reason, USA governments are nervous about their national oil
supply. The USA seeks to ensure a steady supply of oil and it views the companies’ global
interests as synonymous with the national interests and readily supports the companies’
efforts to control new production sources, to overwhelm foreign rivals, and to gain the
most favourable pipeline routes and other transportation and distribution channels.
Just as the US government wants oil companies to secure a global dominance capacity, so
the US oil companies do need their government’s military power to secure control over
global oilfields and transportation routes. It is no accident, then, that the world’s largest oil
companies are located in the world’s most powerful countries.
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Keywords
Citation
ابو شهلا، رغدة عصام. (2009). دور لوبي شركات النفط الامريكية في رسم السياسة الخارجية للولايات
المتحدة الامريكية تجاه العراق ودول الخليج 1900-2005 [رسالة ماجستير منشورة، جامعة القدس، فلسطين].
المستودع الرقمي لجامعة القدس. https://arab-scholars.com/48ee32