From: rakeshb@stanford.edu
Date: Tue Feb 04 2003 - 18:33:16 EST
Re: [OPE-L:8433] Thanks Bill for this site; I look forward to reading Nordhaus' account. I should mention that Rai's analysis of the IPC's dog in the manger policy can be found in elaborated form in John Blair's Control of Oil which I think I mentioned in our previous discussion. Iraq's challenging of it seems to have truly bothered Harrington who was one of the directors of Brown Brothers Harrington with which the Bush family has been aligned since its inception. Well I forget the exact linkages; I think they're reported in Blair's account which I don't have with me. The personalities involved in this are not an uninteresting part of the story. If there were to be continued pressures to roll back the US military in the post Cold War era (US military spending had gone from 6 or % of GDP under Reagan to 3 or so % under Clinton), I suppose that military occupation of the Middle East will give the US military something to do other than famine relief and well building, viz., as Rai argues direct and indirect control over the profits and rent from the sale of oil which will likely remain priced in dollars. The center of US military presence will move (or continue to move) from Europe to the Middle East (or West Asia), as Eqbal Ahmad long ago predicted. And if the US and world economy is going to need some kind of American Keynesian stimulus--and the Japanese seem willing to finance US deficits in order to prevent the rise of the yen--Bush has probably reasoned that it may as well come in a military form. Hell with Medicaire and prescription drugs, schools and that kind of stuff. I still don't think Rumsfeld has given (or been asked to give by brave American journalists) any high and low estimates of the Iraqi casualities which will result from the attempt to oust the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. Yours, Rakesh
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