From: rakeshb@stanford.edu
Date: Mon Feb 17 2003 - 19:58:32 EST
On Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article in which one of leading myths or justifications for war was elaborated. This is the idea that the US should invade Iraq in order to impose a US-approved government which will allow foreign, especially American, direct investment and step outside of OPEC and then ramp up the production of oil... which will in turn break the putative quasi monopoly power of the alleged Saudi-dominated OPEC... which will in turn accomplish two things--first, lower the price of oil and stimulate the world economy and, two, reduce the rents now seized by the Sa'udi state and used to finance jehadis and Islamic terrorism. That is, the US propaganda machine is now selling the invasion of Iraq as an attempt to break up putative monopoly power and to prevent the Sa'udi dissipation of rent in the financing of anti-Western terrorism. In my opinion the propaganda machine has no other justification left for war. No one believes in the the imminent danger posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and no one believes that there is a connection between the Ba'ath Party and Al-Qaeda. In fact after Kanan Makiya's (aka Samir Al-Khalil) recent break with his former CIA sponsors, no one even believes that the US will impose a democratic regime in Baghdad. But this anti-monopoly, anti-terrorism justification is based on the dubious premise that OPEC is a price-fixing cartel. Of course this premise has been blasted by Cyrus Bina as well as Hans Singer and Kunibert Raffer in their recent book on the North South divide (see chapter on oil as a special commodity). So in my opinion the most important contribution for OPE-L to make is in the popularization of Cyrus' theory of the workings of the global oil market. It was nice to see that Cyrus has recently posted to OPE-L. All the best, Rakesh
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