Military Fuel Pump

Excerpts from Fuelling Fortress America:

Military Fuel Pump

The United States consumes 25% of the world’s petroleum resources, yet has only 5% of the planet’s
population. America’s rapidly escalating military operations are putting additional demands on world oil supplies. Even before September 11, 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney told the London Institute of Petroleum in 1997 that the U.S. would need an additional 5 to 10 million barrels of oil a day by 2010, largely because of expected new fuel demands for an expanded military.

Although Cheney’s predictions remain questionable, the fact remains that the U.S. is undergoing a massive rebuilding of its military industrial base. The period of reprieve following the end of the Cold War is over. The war on terrorism has taken centre stage, becoming the new enemy of the U.S. as the world’s remaining superpower. The invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, followed later by the invasion of Iraq under the guise of finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction, has certainly accelerated the war on terrorism. Both invasions, as we shall see, were also about oil. Spearheading the war on terrorism, the U.S. has taken on the role of “Globocop.”

Indeed, the U.S. military has deployed submarines, ships, and aircraft with surveillance and lethal weapons in strategic locations all over the world. In addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, so-called “rogue states” like Iran and North Korea have become prime targets of the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the threat of China as an emerging industrial and military superpower in its own right looms in the background.

U.S. Military Economy

Almost a half century ago, then outgoing U.S. President General Dwight Eisenhower warned the people of America and the world about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” in the U.S. Although there’s been much speculation since on what Eisenhower meant by his warning, there’s little doubt he was referring, among other things, to the collusion that exists between the Pentagon and the major arms manufacturers and defense industry. Through this partnership, the U.S. government heavily subsidizes the defense industry with lucrative contracts. Then, as now, the petroleum industry is an integral part of this
“military industrial complex.”

With the end of the Cold War, some modest restructuring of the U.S. economy took place. The dismantling of the Soviet Union meant that the U.S. could no longer justify its role as policemen for the “free world.” Although military spending certainly continued to grow throughout the 1990s, it levelled off as the U.S. government shifted priorities under President Bill Clinton. Taking advantage of the “peace dividend,” government spending was focused a little more on social concerns. Even so, the infrastructure for a military-based economy remained intact during the 1990s.

The “Project for a New American Century,” founded in 1997, provided the framework for the rebuilding of the “military industrial complex.” This “project,” whose members included subsequent top-ranked George H. Bush administration figures like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, was designed to pro-actively “maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.” Ever since its inception, “the project” began agitating for war against Iraq, and in 2002 formed
the “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq”. As Duke University political scientist Robert Keohane points out in his book After Hegenomy, the key to this strategy is the degree to which the U.S. is able to gain control over global oil.

A year before being elected president, George W. Bush signalled his intentions to revitalize the military-industrial complex. On September 23, 1999, Bush delivered a comprehensive defense policy statement in which he set three ambitious goals: 1) to “renew the bond of trust between the American President and the American military;” 2) to “defend the American people against missiles and terror;” and 3) to “begin creating the military of the next century.”

Under the Bush administration, U.S. military spending has jumped almost 50%, from US$315 billion to US$445 billion in 2005. According to the World Policy Institute, the U.S. military budget will swell to US$500 billion in 2006. These figures do not include spending for the war in Iraq. The Bush government has spent an additional US$220 billion on the Iraq war for the 2005–6 periods. As a consequence, the United States now spends more on its military production and operations than the next 30 countries combined.

In turn, this massive boost in military spending has greatly benefited the defense industry and arms manufacturers. The U.S. aerospace and defense industry consists of 11 major companies – including Lockheed-Martin, Rayethon, General Dynamics and Boeing – employing 901,258 people. Through lucrative contracts with the Pentagon, these companies design and build new tanks, fighter aircraft, submarines, and battleships, along with smart bombs and other lethal weapons.

As a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute put it: “The whole mindset of military spending changed on September 11. The most fundamental thing about defense spending is that threats drive defense spending. It’s now going to be easier to fund almost anything.” “For a long time, (the defense industry) just
didn’t seem like a sexy area that has a lot of legs to it,” said a partner at one options trading firm. But all that has changed. In response to investor interest, stock exchanges are thinking about creating a new Defense Index.

Oil is War

In order to fuel and maintain the military-industrial complex, the U.S. put top priority on gaining control of global oil sources. By securing greater control over the world oil market, Washington would be in a better position to curb the power of OPEC. As the history of the 20th century shows, securing control over oil sources around the globe involves military invasions and almost continuous war in various parts of the world. The ongoing struggle for control of the oil-rich regions of the Persian Gulf testifies to this fact. Oil is war. The invasion of Iraq is but the latest chapter in this saga.

For the U.S., gaining control over global oil
supplies has been further intensified by the threat of scarcity and the diminishing number of new oil
discoveries. As a result, Washington has gone to great lengths to secure control of supplies by:

• making heavy investments to keep the oilrich
Persian Gulf in its geopolitical orbit;
• propping up unsavoury client regimes with
arms and credits;
• acquiring military bases, marginalizing
those that stand in their way;
• influencing the routing of oil export pipelines;
and
• exercising undisputed control over the sea
lanes through which much of the world’s
oil is shipped.

Since the formation of OPEC in the early 1970s, the U.S. has inserted itself as a dominating force in Middle East politics to regain control over world oil supplies. In the ‘70s, Washington propped up the Shah of Iran as the West’s policeman in the Middle East until the Islamic revolution of 1979. In 1980, the U.S. encouraged Iraq to invade Iran, which bled both countries for eight years, killing hundreds of thousands of people and spending hundreds of billions of petro-dollars on a war that ended in stalemate. In turn, the Reagan administration openly supported Iraq with credits, loans, weapons sales, and intelligence, even when top officials in Washington knew Iraq was using chemical weapons. This phase was followed by the first Gulf War when the U.S. and its allies shifted gears again, this time supplying Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states with massive amounts of military weapons [more than US$100 billion worth since 1990], thereby reversing the trend of the 1970s and 1980s when Iran and Iraq were the leading arms recipients.

The war on terrorism has unleashed new military-based strategies to gain control over oil supplies. Indeed, securing access to oil, pipelines, and shipping lanes has gone hand-in-hand with a new, revitalized, and fast-expanding U.S. military presence. As imported oil grows in demand, rivalries – especially in politically unstable areas – could lead to confrontations, civil wars, and interventions to ensure compliant regimes
in exporting countries. From Pakistan to Central Asia to the Caucasus, and from the eastern Mediterranean
to the Gulf of Guinea and the Horn of Africa, a dense network of U.S. military facilities has emerged, with many bases established in the name of the war on terror.

Oil War in Iraq

Robert Fisk, a journalist for the Independent newspaper in Britain and an expert on Middle East affairs, wrote recently that “analysis of the relationship between the [Iraq] war and U.S.-oil policy and interests has been a distinctly invisible element of war coverage within the mainstream news media.” While media attention has been focused on the connection between the U.S./allied invasion of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, retribution for the 9/11 attacks, and the Israeli-Palestine conflict, there has been little focus on the strategic objective of gaining control over Iraqi oil and one of the main Middle East sources of petroleum. Moreover, The Bush administration has been particularly tight-lipped about the role of oil in its aggressive military occupation in Iraq.

Secure access to Iraqi oil was to have been one of the most lucrative spoils of the invasion. Iraqi oil is plentiful, relatively cheap to produce, and of high quality – in effect, almost everything the Athabasca tar sands are not. Western oil companies and importing countries expected to see a windfall in oil exports and profits from Iraqi supplies. But the Iraqi oil sector is in a dilapidated state after 12 years of war, sanctions, sabotage, and looting. In its desperation to rebuild its starved and shattered country, the new Iraqi government will open the oil spigots as soon as the wrecked installations are repaired. A 2003 UN resolution gave the occupiers sole decision-making powers over the granting of lucrative oil and reconstruction contracts until 2007. Here, U.S. and British oil companies like Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, BP, and Shell, which lost assets in the region during the 1972 nationalization, stand to rake in windfall profits.

At the same time, the military occupation itself has been costly in terms of oil. “The U.S. Defense Department has 27,000 military vehicles in Iraq, and all of them get lousy gas mileage,” writes Robert Bryce, author of several books on the connection between Texas oil, the Bush dynasty, and the death of Enron. The enormous appetite of the U.S. military for fuel consumes 1.7 million gallons a day in Iraq.” (Note: 40 gallons equals one barrel of oil). The Defense Logistics Agency must move huge quantities from Kuwait, Turkey, and Jordan daily by truck convoys, some 2,000 trucks a day from Kuwait alone.

To run this operation 20,000 soldiers and civilian contractors work full-time. Fourteen different varieties of fuel are needed for the 225,000 troops, who, says Bryce, are the most energy- consuming soldiers ever seen on the field of war. Each of the 150,000 soldiers on the ground consumes roughly nine gallons of fuel a day. In contrast, almost 296 million U.S. civilians consume three gallons of fuel a day. On average, Europeans consume 1.4 gallons a day, while the amount of oil consumed by people in non-industrialized countries amounts to an average of 0.2 gallons a day.

Fuelling the U.S. War Machine

Oil is clearly fundamental to this U.S. war-based economy. No other commodity exerts as much leverage over the nation’s financial health. It is not surprising, therefore, to find many analysts claiming that it is because of the continued and growing U.S. dependency on oil that it has to secure oil supplies through military intervention and occupation. By the same token, the Athabasca tar sands are of special interest to Washington. While the extraction and refining of tar sands crude is much more expensive, the resource can
be secured without war, instability, and the costs of military intervention.

Clearly, the U.S. has chosen an energy path primarily based on expanding its supply of fossil fuels in general, and oil and natural gas in particular. The Cheney task force report made this clear: America’s energy future is tied to the petroleum industry and the country’s fossil fuel addiction.

From the standpoint of maintaining a militarybased economy, the Bush energy strategy makes sense. After all, the industrial and military components of the U.S. economy are highly dependent on fossil fuels. The kinds of economic conversion that would have been necessary to transform industrial production in the U.S. to be compatible with soft-path energy sources did not take place during the post-Cold War era when the Clinton administration could have taken advantage of the peace dividend to retool the U.S. economy along these lines.

Instead, the recent rebuilding of a military based economy under the Bush administration has intensified America’s demand for – and dependence on — oil. Given the diminishing state of U.S. domestic oil reserves, this means increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies. For Washington, securing oil supply lines in other parts of the world often requires forms of military intervention and occupation. This is why Canada remains the most attractive option for foreign oil imports. Although oil production from the tar sands is economically costly, it is profitable in terms of current world prices. Fuelling a military-based U.S. economy, therefore, requires a continuous, uninterrupted flow of oil and gas from Canada’s conventional reserves — and the tar sands. From Washington’s standpoint, it is crucial that China does not gain a controlling stake in the tar sands.

In effect, Canada is a major energy supplier for the U.S. military-based economy. Much of our oil and gas exports, of course, go to fuel domestic needs such as driving cars (including “SUVs” and “Hummers”), or the heating of homes, or even running industries. But a great deal of the oil we sell to the U.S. is used to fuel the huge American military machine, which operates on a global basis. Most of these figures are classified, and it is difficult to ascertain what percentage comes from domestic stocks, from imports from Canada and elsewhere, and what is simply purchased at site overseas, primarily in places like Kuwait and Bahrain in the Middle East — but the Canadian oil figures are significant.

In May, 2003, Admiral Cebrowski of the U.S. Office of Force Transformation gave a speech in which he outlined how, given the realities of globalization, the U.S. needs not only to secure its own supplies of oil, but also those of its major markets. This includes Japan and Europe, which are much more dependent on oil imports than the U.S. In effect, control over Middle East oil and supply routes is needed to ensure that America’s major trading partners like Europe and Japan have secure access to the energy they need for domestic production and transportation. Otherwise, if energy flows to these key U.S. markets are imperilled, the U.S. balance of trade would be seriously distorted.

In Pentagon circles, this is known as “security energy.” You have to be able to transport energy in order to use it. Therefore, oil and security are inextricably linked. According to U.S. foreign policy, America trades its security in order to stem the tide of terrorism worldwide, which poses a direct threat to its global markets. Hence, protecting energy flows that support both foreign trade and investment are essential to America’s prosperity. By buying off the threat of terrorism, the U.S. also buys off the threat of deflation. As a result, Canada’s exports of oil and gas to the U.S. are part of a much bigger and more complex network of security energy for the protection of global markets for the United States.

This poses a dilemma for the majority of Canadians who, according to public opinion polls, have been consistently opposed to both the Iraq war and America’s increasing military role in the world.

Bush’s National Security Doctrine

George Bush’s own doctrine on national security served to consolidate these trend lines in terms of U.S. foreign policy. One year after the events of 9/11, Bush issued a new U.S. policy statement on national security, in September 2002. The declaration highlighted three interrelated priorities in defense of U.S. interests:

• that the U.S. had the right to make use of pre-emptive strikes against potential aggressors;
• that the U.S. had the right to act unilaterally if necessary to protect its interests; and
• that, for the U.S., security and trade issues were interlinked to the point where security would trump trade.

In effect, what the Bush doctrine implies is that the U.S. is prepared to deploy pre-emptive military strikes, if necessary, in order to defend or protect U.S. security and commercial interests, especially energy. To a degree, Bush was following policy that dates back to the Roosevelt era. At that time, Saudi-Aramco was formed to make sure the U.S. had a large supply of oil, in return for which it began in the 1970s to supply Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the Persian Gulf states with huge amounts of sophisticated military armaments. Troops were stationed in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to develop an infrastructure
for future interventions to secure the oil order. Since 9/11, U.S. military presence now extends from Pakistan to Central Asia to the Caucasus, and from the eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, creating a security network built in the name of fighting terror, but in actuality following the trail of oil.

As part of its national security program, the U.S. maintains a Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR]. The SPR law says the reserve must contain a legal maximum of one billion barrels of petroleum, authorized by Congress and controlled by the President. In practical terms, the SPR has four large reserve facilities consisting of a combined total of 62 former salt caverns which store the inventory. The facilities are located on the Louisiana and Texas coasts of the Gulf of Mexico. The current capacity is 727 million barrels, and in mid-2005 contained 589 million barrels. Bush ordered them filled to capacity on Sept. 13, 2001, two days after 9/11 tragedy. This was expected to be accomplished by mid-2005, and, when filled, would theoretically give the U.S. 69 days of import protection.

The reserve was established in 1975 in response to the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo. The law says they can only be used in a severe supply emergency, or to meet international obligations, and cannot be used to influence market prices. Obviously, the U.S. military in a war situation would have first call on the SPR, since the U.S. President is commander-in-chief. Although governments with state-owned oil companies, like Venezuela [PDVSA] and Mexico (Pemex), maintain significant oil reserves [earlier we mentioned the reserves held by China and India], the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is critical for U.S. energy security interests.

However, the application of Bush’s national security doctrine to protecting oil interests in Asia has been checkmated by Russia and China. The oil-rich Caspian region has emerged as another potential target area for Big Power politics and military conflict. Both President Putin of Russia and President Hu of China ordered the activation of 10 combat-ready divisions to counter the increasingly aggressive moves being made by the U.S. in the Caspian oil regions, especially Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. maintains bases in both countries. Neither China nor Russia, say regional experts, will give up Central Asia or the Middle East by anything other than military
defeat.

Continental Security Regime

In outlining their plan for a North American energy or ”resource security” pact, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives argued that Canada is not pulling its weight when it comes to continental defense and the global war on terror. Building on NORAD’s record of cooperation, Canada’s big business leaders called for the creation of “a North American defense community of sovereign nations.” Continental defense would defend against missile attacks and airborne threats; share naval protection against seaway invasions; and protect critical infrastructure like pipelines, railways, bridges, hydro-electric and transmission lines from potential terrorist attacks. To carry its share, the CCCE insists, Ottawa must make two major commitments: first, reinvest public dollars in the build-up of Canada’s defense and military capability; and second, ensure the ”interoperability” of Canadian and U.S. equipment on land, sea, and air.

In the war on terrorism, the Pentagon has been calling for greater military support and “interoperability” with U.S. forces on Canada’s part. In effect, this message translates into: “Buy more military equipment from us.” The Canadian Department of National Defence appears anxious to enhance the ability of Canadian armed forces to fit seamlessly into the U.S. military so that they can operate with U.S. forces in wars or military interventions around the world. In terms of equipment, DND has retrofitted its CF-18s with U.S.-made Paveway II laser-guided bombs and purchase SM-2 surface-to-air missiles for its battleships. However, purchasing more sophisticated and powerful U.S. weapons and equipment simply means that the Canadian military can more easily be put under U.S. command.

Since 9/11, Washington has repeatedly insisted that Canada join in creating a common security perimeter in North America. The Martin government moved in this direction by establishing a powerful new Ministry for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in Ottawa, which is modelled after the U.S. Homeland Security Agency in Washington. In addition, Canada has enacted its own anti-terrorism legislation [C-36] patterned after the U.S. Patriot Act; set up a data bank to track foreign air travel by all Canadians [C-23]; and implemented the “Smart Border Accord” which coordinates Canadian and U.S. intelligence operations while overseeing the harmonization of visa, immigration, and refugee policies between the two countries. All these security measures are designed to control the cross-border movement of peoples, and are directly related to U.S. demands for energy security.

From time to time, Ottawa has exercised its national sovereignty by taking a more independent stance on certain public policy issues with Washington. Canada’s refusal to join the U.S.-led coalition in its invasion of Iraq, and the decision not to join Bush’s ballistic missile defense program [better known as Star Wars II], are prime examples of Canada’s willingness to adopt a more independent foreign policy position. But the real linchpin here is Canada’s energy supplies. The question is whether Canadians in general, and Albertans in particular, want this country to continue fuelling the U.S. war economy through ever increasing oil and gas exports.