BEYOND REGIME CHANGE
Sandy Tolan
Apomie comment: It is now even more apparent how Israel’s
interests control our foreign policy.
“The administration
doesn't simply want to oust Saddam Hussein. It wants to redraw the Mideast
map.”
From the Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/sunopinion/la-op-tolan1dec01.story?null
BERKELEY -- If you want to know
what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do
with weapons of mass destruction than with implementing an ambitious U.S.
vision to redraw the map of the Middle East.
The new map would be drawn with an eye to two
main objectives: controlling the flow of oil and ensuring
Israel's continued regional military superiority. The plan is, in its
way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot
agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the region
at the fall of the Ottoman
Empire. The neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the writings of
key administration figures and their co-visionaries in influential conservative
think tanks, includes not only regime change in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil,
a possible end to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and
newly compliant governments in Syria and Iran --either by force or internal
rebellion.
For the first step -- the end of
Saddam Hussein --Sept. 11 provided the rationale. But the seeds of regime
change came far earlier. "Removing Saddam from power," according to a
1996 report from an Israeli think tank to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, was "an important Israeli strategic objective." Now
this has become official U.S. policy, after several of the report's
authors took up key strategic and advisory roles within the Bush administration.
They include Richard Perle, now chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy
Board; Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser,
special assistant in the State Department. In 1998, these men, joined by
Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (now the top two officials in the
Pentagon), Elliott Abrams (a senior National Security Council director),
John Bolton (undersecretary of State) and 21 others called for "a
determined program to change the regime in Baghdad."
After removing Hussein,
U.S. forces are planning for an open-ended occupation of Iraq, according
to senior administration officials who spoke to the New York Times. The
invasion, said Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya, would be "a historic
opportunity that is as large as anything that has happened in the Middle
East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire." Makiya spoke at an
October “Post-Saddam Iraq" conference attended by Perle and
sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.
Any occupation would
certainly include protecting petroleum installations. Control of the
country's vast oil reserves, the second largest in the world and worth
nearly $3 trillion at current prices, would be a huge strategic prize. Some
analysts believe that additional production in Iraq could drive world
prices down to as low as $10 a barrel and precipitate Iraq's departure
from OPEC, possibly undermining the cartel. This, together with Russia's
new willingness to become a major U.S. oil supplier, could establish a
long-sought counterweight to Saudi Arabia, still the biggest influence by
far on global oil prices. It would be consistent with the plan released
by Vice President Dick Cheney's team in June, which underscored
"energy security" as central to U.S. foreign policy. "The Gulf
will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy," the
report states.
Some analysts prefer to
downplay the drive to control Iraqi oil. "It is fashionable among
anti-American circles ... to assume that U.S. foreign policy is driven by
commercial considerations," said Patrick Clawson, an oil and policy
analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in an October
talk. Rather, Clawson said, oil "has barely been on the
administration's horizon in considering Iraq policy.... U.S. foreign policy
is not driven by concern for promoting the interests of specific U.S.
firms."
Yet Clawson, whose institute
enjoys close ties with the Bush administration, was more candid during a
Capitol Hill forum on a post-Hussein Iraq in 1999: "U.S. oil companies
would have an opportunity to make significant profits," he said. "We should not be embarrassed about the
commercial advantages that would come from a re-integration of Iraq into the
world economy. Iraq, post-Saddam, is highly likely to be interested in inviting
international oil companies to invest in Iraq. This would be very useful for
U.S. oil companies, which are well positioned to compete there, and very useful
for the world's energy-security situation."
Indeed, Iraqi National Congress
leader Ahmad Chalabi, whose close ties with Perle, Wurmser, Rumsfeld and Cheney
predate the current Bush administration, met recently with U.S. oil executives.
Afterward, Chalabi, the would-be "Iraqi Karzai" and the hawks'
long-standing choice to lead a post-Hussein Iraq, made it clear he would give
preference to an American-led oil consortium. He also suggested that previous
deals -- totaling tens of billions of dollars for Russia's Lukoil and France's
TotalFinaElf -- could be voided.
Next month, key Iraqi exiles will
meet with oil executives at an English country retreat to discuss the future of
Iraqi petroleum. The conference, sponsored by the Center for Global Energy
Studies and chaired by Sheik Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, will
feature Maj. Gen. Wafiq Samarrai, the former head of Iraqi military
intelligence, and former Iraqi Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, now executive
director of the center.
Fadhil Chalabi estimates that
total oil reserves in Iraq could exceed Saudi Arabia's and that daily
production one day could reach 10 million barrels, making it the world's
largest producer. Hence, on the center's conference agenda is a discussion of
Iraq as a "second Saudi Arabia," and the prospect of a world without
OPEC. Oil executives and analysts heading to the country retreat will also be
able to purchase the center's 800-page analysis of the prospects for
exploration in Iraq. The cost: $52,500.
But taking over Iraq
and remaking the global oil market is not necessarily the endgame. The next
steps, favored by hard-liners determined to elevate Israeli security above all
other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to destroy any remaining perceived
threat to the Jewish state: namely, the regimes in Syria and Iran. "The War Won't End in Baghdad,"
wrote the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen in the Wall Street
Journal. In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security Council and Oliver
North, Ledeen helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by
setting up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel. In the current war, he
argues, "we must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus."
In urging the expansion of the
war on terror to Syria and Iran, Ledeen does not mention Israel. Yet Israel is
a crucial strategic reason for the hard-line vision to "roll back"
Syria and Iran -- and another reason why control of Iraq is seen as crucial. In
1998, Wurmser, now in the State Department, told the Jewish newspaper Forward
that if Ahmad Chalabi were in power and extended a no-fly, no-drive zone in
northern Iraq, it would provide the crucial piece for an anti-Syria, anti-Iran
bloc. "It puts Scuds out of the range of Israel and provides the
geographic beachhead between Turkey, Jordan and Israel," he said.
"This should anchor the Middle East pro-Western coalition."
Perle, in the same 1998
article, told Forward that a coalition of pro-Israeli groups was "at the
forefront with the legislation with regard to Iran. One can only speculate what
it might accomplish if it decided to focus its attention on Saddam
Hussein." And Perle, Wurmser and Feith (now in the Pentagon), in their
1996 Israeli think tank report to Netanyahu, argued for abandoning efforts for
a comprehensive peace in favor of a policy of "rolling back" Syria to
protect Israel's interests.
Now, however, Israel is given a
lower profile by those who would argue for rollback. Rather, writes Ledeen,
U.S. troops would be put at risk in order to "liberate all the peoples of
the Middle East." And this, he argues, would be
virtually pain-free: "If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran as
liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support." Perle concurs on
Iraq -- "The Arab World ... will consider honor and dignity has been
restored" -- as well as Iran: "It is the beginning of the end for the
Iranian regime." Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has joined the
call against Tehran, arguing in a November interview with the Times of London
that the U.S. should shift its focus to Iran "the day after" the Iraq
war ends.
The vast ambition of such changes
to the Middle Eastern map would seem an inherent deterrent. But it is precisely
this historical sweep, reminiscent of Sykes-Picot and the British arrival in
Iraq in 1917, that many close to the
administration seek. Publicly, Perle and Ledeen cling
to the fantasy that American troops would be welcomed in Baghdad, Tehran and
Damascus with garlands of flowers. Yet they are too smart to ignore the rage
across the Arab and Muslim worlds that would surely erupt in the wake of war on
multiple Middle Eastern fronts. Indeed, the foreshadowing is already with us:
in Bali, in Moscow, in Yemen and on the streets of Amman. It's clear that even
in Jordan, a close ally of the U.S., the anger at a U.S. attack on Iraq could
be hard to contain.
Indeed, the hard-liners
in and around the administration seem to know in their hearts that the
battle to carve up the Middle East would not be won without the blood of
Americans and their allies. "One can only hope that we turn the region
into a caldron, and faster, please," Ledeen preached to the choir at
National Review Online last August. "That's our mission in the war against
terror."
Sandy Tolan, an I.F. Stone Fellow
at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, reports frequently on the
Middle East. Jason Felch, a student in
Tolan's "Politics and Petroleum" class, contributed to this article. Key
policymakers are motivated by twin hopes: to control oil and to protect Israel.