IT'S NOT ABOUT OIL
JOHN CHUCKMAN | 13.01.2003 20:35
IT'S NOT ABOUT OIL
Printed on Monday, January 13, 2003
By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)
(YellowTimes.org) – I do get tired of reading claims that oil is the reason why Mr. Bush wants to attack Iraq. Perhaps, commentators pick oil because it seems to give clarity where there is so little, evoking the slightly romantic image of 19th century troops in pith helmets scrambling for colonial resources.
I don't want to be guilty of discouraging Americans from giving up on their horribly wasteful and polluting SUVs, for there are many important reasons to encourage them to do so, but at least for now, oil supply is not one of them.
Yes, of course, Bush's light-truck constituency cares about oil, and Iraq's reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's. But the notion that a great power needs physically to control sources of a plentiful raw material is simply outdated. The nationalization of oil reserves, a world-wide phenomenon of a few generations ago, is something not likely to be undone, and, besides, a very comfortable modus vivendi has grown up between producing and consuming governments.
Anything resembling American expropriation of Middle East oil fields would produce tidal waves, not just in the Arab world, but in places like Mexico and Venezuela. I cannot think of a better way of causing al Qaeda recruits to line up in a dozen countries much the way alarmed, idealistic young Britains lined up in 1914 to fight "the damned Bosch." Even with the hillbilly-crowd running the White House, I think it safe to say this approach is not on.
Iraq's reserves are of no value to Iraq unless their production is for sale. No matter who runs Iraq, it is a sure bet that its oil will flow for as long as the reserves hold out, at prices worked out under those cozy arrangements of producing and consuming countries. In recent years, it has only been America's harsh economic restrictions on Iraq that prevented a possible glutting of the oil market.
Iraq's reserves represent a gigantic future revenue stream, many hundreds of billions of dollars. Bush's crowd definitely wants this future revenue stream put into hands that are friendlier to American policy.
The uncertainty that Saddam Hussein represents for American policy-makers is not uncertainty over the availability of oil, it is uncertainty over what Hussein may choose to do with the revenue stream over the decade or so possibly left to his rule, and it is the uncertainty of what Israel may do in response.
Hussein's army is not a serious threat to Israel. Its leadership and equipment make it inferior in almost every respect to the IDF, and it certainly doesn't have the United States supplying round-the-clock military intelligence, new technical capabilities, a bottomless supply of spare parts, and diplomatic pouches full of cash.
But Hussein with a small nuclear arsenal is quite another matter. Israel is a small country, and just two or three nuclear devices could devastate its highly-urbanized population. And you wouldn't need missiles to achieve this. School buses, delivery trucks, aircraft, or fishing boats are all more accurate delivery systems than Iraqi Scuds.
That is the reason why Israel not only has nuclear weapons but has more of them than it would at first appear to need as a deterrent. The concept at work here is having a deterrent that compensates for Israel's small size vis-à-vis a threat from a much larger country or a group of countries.
The United States, it seems almost childishly unnecessary to say, does not care about how wicked or unpleasant Hussein may be. Nor does it care about his record on human rights. The truth is that he is no worse than the many cutthroats the U.S. cozily does business with.
The problem with Hussein is that he won't play the game under rules the U.S. has laid down. Oh, he has cooperated in the past, and for considerable periods of time he was treated as one of America's useful clients, receiving many special favors. He was especially useful when he went to war against revolutionary Iran and ground down that nation's ardor and resources and young people with years of bloody conflict.
America's role in that conflict was the same utterly amoral one it has so often taken where it saw that the shedding of someone else's blood might achieve some desired dirty work.
But when it became clear that Hussein was working to arm himself with nuclear weapons, an excuse to flatten him and remove his capacity had to be found. Ergo, America's secret diplomatic wink at his intention to invade Kuwait, setting him up for Desert Storm. This was a conflict that also had little to do with oil, except that possession of Kuwait's reserves would swell Hussein's revenue stream and speed the day when the U.S. would be required always to address him as "sir."
After killing perhaps a hundred thousand innocent people with its bombing, destroying much of Iraq's water and sanitation systems (something not widely known in the U.S.), its electricity grid, and much other infrastructure, the U.S. never expected Hussein to survive in power. How much better to let internal pressures do the work rather than U.S. troops, it being certain that the coalition would have collapsed over an invasion of Iraq itself. All the arguments militating against an invasion today were the same then. No-fly zones, intended to irritate and embarrass him, CIA plottings, and, most of all, a murderous embargo were supposed to quicken events.
The policy has miserably failed. Hussein remains firmly in control, and no opposition worth mentioning exists. And talk about evil, more than a million Iraqis have died prematurely since Desert Storm as a result of America's embargo combined with the devastating effects of bombed water and sewer facilities. The U.S. unquestionably bears a terrible moral responsibility for all that death.
So despite clear evidence that Hussein had nothing to do with al Qaeda, had no nuclear weapons, had no ready prospect of having any, and ignoring the many valid arguments against invasion, the Bush crowd seized the opportunity offered by the angry haze around 9/11 to topple him.
Bush displays classic American impatience and petulance about having a problem cleared away as quickly as possible, even if it is done at the cost of other people's lives. What Bush is really telling the world is that instead of allowing a patient U.N. regime of inspections continue until the day Hussein departs the scene, he would rather start a war that will kill tens of thousands more innocent Iraqis, infuriate millions of people in other countries, and be done with the matter.
Bush has no reasonable successor to put in Hussein's place, and, as with almost all the U.S.'s inglorious postwar interventions, the poor people of Iraq will certainly be left afterwards in their smoking, rat-infested ruins to cope. The U.S. has no more patience for long-term assistance and planning than it does for the long-term efforts at diplomacy and international cooperation that could readily maintain the status quo.
Of course, Mr. Bush has a very noisy cheering section in Mr. Sharon and Mr. Netanyahu and their American supporters. It really is not possible for America to damage and cripple Iraq enough to satisfy them.
Were the policy summed up in concise and accurate terms, "Do you favor killing maybe another hundred thousand people (mostly civilians as is always the case in modern war) in order to get Iraq quickly off our diplomatic plate?" I wonder just how many Americans would continue supporting Bush? Of course, Mr. Bush's teams of hacks and propagandists do not use such terms when addressing Americans, and all Mr. Bush's words to them are charged with cheap emotions rather than facts.
But many of the world's leaders have conspired to blunt Mr. Bush's drive to war. We now hear from Mr. Bush an entirely different argument from what we heard not many months ago. The issue now is clearly weapons, not garbage about terror or evil or the need for democracy in the Middle East. But, of course, if the issue is truly weapons, an efficient inspection regime is all that is required, not a major war. In effect, Mr. Bush's pathetic arguments have been turned diplomatically on their heads.
This change is thanks to the brave efforts of some genuine statesman. Perhaps, it is most of all is owing to the heroic efforts of Mr. Blix and his team of U.N. inspectors. If Mr. Blix succeeds in stopping Bush's rush to war, he will be one of the most deserving candidates for the Nobel peace prize on record.
The inspectors work against tremendous odds. Bush has pulled out all the stops in trying to browbeat, coax, or bribe others nations to support his goal. He has forgiven loans, dropped strictures, hinted at reprisals, and thrown around tons of money, and Mr. Blix has worked against a nasty White House campaign to harass and vilify him.
Of course, Bush's attitudes are inextricably linked to the experience of his father. If you don't think that such highly personal attitudes often play a role in history, you haven't studied enough of it. But in this case, they are embarrassingly evident to the whole world and should have no influence in a matter of such profound consequences.
John Chuckman encourages your comments:
jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source,
http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated.
Printed on Monday, January 13, 2003
By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)
(YellowTimes.org) – I do get tired of reading claims that oil is the reason why Mr. Bush wants to attack Iraq. Perhaps, commentators pick oil because it seems to give clarity where there is so little, evoking the slightly romantic image of 19th century troops in pith helmets scrambling for colonial resources.
I don't want to be guilty of discouraging Americans from giving up on their horribly wasteful and polluting SUVs, for there are many important reasons to encourage them to do so, but at least for now, oil supply is not one of them.
Yes, of course, Bush's light-truck constituency cares about oil, and Iraq's reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's. But the notion that a great power needs physically to control sources of a plentiful raw material is simply outdated. The nationalization of oil reserves, a world-wide phenomenon of a few generations ago, is something not likely to be undone, and, besides, a very comfortable modus vivendi has grown up between producing and consuming governments.
Anything resembling American expropriation of Middle East oil fields would produce tidal waves, not just in the Arab world, but in places like Mexico and Venezuela. I cannot think of a better way of causing al Qaeda recruits to line up in a dozen countries much the way alarmed, idealistic young Britains lined up in 1914 to fight "the damned Bosch." Even with the hillbilly-crowd running the White House, I think it safe to say this approach is not on.
Iraq's reserves are of no value to Iraq unless their production is for sale. No matter who runs Iraq, it is a sure bet that its oil will flow for as long as the reserves hold out, at prices worked out under those cozy arrangements of producing and consuming countries. In recent years, it has only been America's harsh economic restrictions on Iraq that prevented a possible glutting of the oil market.
Iraq's reserves represent a gigantic future revenue stream, many hundreds of billions of dollars. Bush's crowd definitely wants this future revenue stream put into hands that are friendlier to American policy.
The uncertainty that Saddam Hussein represents for American policy-makers is not uncertainty over the availability of oil, it is uncertainty over what Hussein may choose to do with the revenue stream over the decade or so possibly left to his rule, and it is the uncertainty of what Israel may do in response.
Hussein's army is not a serious threat to Israel. Its leadership and equipment make it inferior in almost every respect to the IDF, and it certainly doesn't have the United States supplying round-the-clock military intelligence, new technical capabilities, a bottomless supply of spare parts, and diplomatic pouches full of cash.
But Hussein with a small nuclear arsenal is quite another matter. Israel is a small country, and just two or three nuclear devices could devastate its highly-urbanized population. And you wouldn't need missiles to achieve this. School buses, delivery trucks, aircraft, or fishing boats are all more accurate delivery systems than Iraqi Scuds.
That is the reason why Israel not only has nuclear weapons but has more of them than it would at first appear to need as a deterrent. The concept at work here is having a deterrent that compensates for Israel's small size vis-à-vis a threat from a much larger country or a group of countries.
The United States, it seems almost childishly unnecessary to say, does not care about how wicked or unpleasant Hussein may be. Nor does it care about his record on human rights. The truth is that he is no worse than the many cutthroats the U.S. cozily does business with.
The problem with Hussein is that he won't play the game under rules the U.S. has laid down. Oh, he has cooperated in the past, and for considerable periods of time he was treated as one of America's useful clients, receiving many special favors. He was especially useful when he went to war against revolutionary Iran and ground down that nation's ardor and resources and young people with years of bloody conflict.
America's role in that conflict was the same utterly amoral one it has so often taken where it saw that the shedding of someone else's blood might achieve some desired dirty work.
But when it became clear that Hussein was working to arm himself with nuclear weapons, an excuse to flatten him and remove his capacity had to be found. Ergo, America's secret diplomatic wink at his intention to invade Kuwait, setting him up for Desert Storm. This was a conflict that also had little to do with oil, except that possession of Kuwait's reserves would swell Hussein's revenue stream and speed the day when the U.S. would be required always to address him as "sir."
After killing perhaps a hundred thousand innocent people with its bombing, destroying much of Iraq's water and sanitation systems (something not widely known in the U.S.), its electricity grid, and much other infrastructure, the U.S. never expected Hussein to survive in power. How much better to let internal pressures do the work rather than U.S. troops, it being certain that the coalition would have collapsed over an invasion of Iraq itself. All the arguments militating against an invasion today were the same then. No-fly zones, intended to irritate and embarrass him, CIA plottings, and, most of all, a murderous embargo were supposed to quicken events.
The policy has miserably failed. Hussein remains firmly in control, and no opposition worth mentioning exists. And talk about evil, more than a million Iraqis have died prematurely since Desert Storm as a result of America's embargo combined with the devastating effects of bombed water and sewer facilities. The U.S. unquestionably bears a terrible moral responsibility for all that death.
So despite clear evidence that Hussein had nothing to do with al Qaeda, had no nuclear weapons, had no ready prospect of having any, and ignoring the many valid arguments against invasion, the Bush crowd seized the opportunity offered by the angry haze around 9/11 to topple him.
Bush displays classic American impatience and petulance about having a problem cleared away as quickly as possible, even if it is done at the cost of other people's lives. What Bush is really telling the world is that instead of allowing a patient U.N. regime of inspections continue until the day Hussein departs the scene, he would rather start a war that will kill tens of thousands more innocent Iraqis, infuriate millions of people in other countries, and be done with the matter.
Bush has no reasonable successor to put in Hussein's place, and, as with almost all the U.S.'s inglorious postwar interventions, the poor people of Iraq will certainly be left afterwards in their smoking, rat-infested ruins to cope. The U.S. has no more patience for long-term assistance and planning than it does for the long-term efforts at diplomacy and international cooperation that could readily maintain the status quo.
Of course, Mr. Bush has a very noisy cheering section in Mr. Sharon and Mr. Netanyahu and their American supporters. It really is not possible for America to damage and cripple Iraq enough to satisfy them.
Were the policy summed up in concise and accurate terms, "Do you favor killing maybe another hundred thousand people (mostly civilians as is always the case in modern war) in order to get Iraq quickly off our diplomatic plate?" I wonder just how many Americans would continue supporting Bush? Of course, Mr. Bush's teams of hacks and propagandists do not use such terms when addressing Americans, and all Mr. Bush's words to them are charged with cheap emotions rather than facts.
But many of the world's leaders have conspired to blunt Mr. Bush's drive to war. We now hear from Mr. Bush an entirely different argument from what we heard not many months ago. The issue now is clearly weapons, not garbage about terror or evil or the need for democracy in the Middle East. But, of course, if the issue is truly weapons, an efficient inspection regime is all that is required, not a major war. In effect, Mr. Bush's pathetic arguments have been turned diplomatically on their heads.
This change is thanks to the brave efforts of some genuine statesman. Perhaps, it is most of all is owing to the heroic efforts of Mr. Blix and his team of U.N. inspectors. If Mr. Blix succeeds in stopping Bush's rush to war, he will be one of the most deserving candidates for the Nobel peace prize on record.
The inspectors work against tremendous odds. Bush has pulled out all the stops in trying to browbeat, coax, or bribe others nations to support his goal. He has forgiven loans, dropped strictures, hinted at reprisals, and thrown around tons of money, and Mr. Blix has worked against a nasty White House campaign to harass and vilify him.
Of course, Bush's attitudes are inextricably linked to the experience of his father. If you don't think that such highly personal attitudes often play a role in history, you haven't studied enough of it. But in this case, they are embarrassingly evident to the whole world and should have no influence in a matter of such profound consequences.
John Chuckman encourages your comments:
jchuckman@YellowTimes.org YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source,
http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
that's crap
13.01.2003 23:07
SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA
(All thinking people
oppose terrorism
both domestic
& international…
But one should not
be used
To cover the other)
They say its some terrorist, some
barbaric
A Rab, in
Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn't
the gonorrhea in costume
the white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say? Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar, who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble
Who created everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest
Who define art
Who define science
Who made the bombs
Who made the guns
Who bought the slaves, who sold them
Who called you them names
Who say Dahmer wasn't insane
Who/ Who / Who/
Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
Who owned the slave ship
Who run the army
Who the fake president
Who the ruler
Who the banker
Who/ Who/ Who/
Who own the mine
Who twist your mind
Who got bread
Who need peace
Who you think need war
Who own the oil
Who do no toil
Who own the soil
Who is not a nigger
Who is so great ain't nobody bigger
Who own this city
Who own the air
Who own the water
Who own your crib
Who rob and steal and cheat and murder
and make lies the truth
Who call you uncouth
Who live in the biggest house
Who do the biggest crime
Who go on vacation anytime
Who killed the most niggers
Who killed the most Jews
Who killed the most Italians
Who killed the most Irish
Who killed the most Africans
Who killed the most Japanese
Who killed the most Latinos
Who/Who/Who
Who own the ocean
Who own the airplanes
Who own the malls
Who own television
Who own radio
Who own what ain't even known to be owned
Who own the owners that ain't the real owners
Who own the suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
WHO/ WHO/ WHOWHO/
Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who decide
Jesus get crucified
Who the Devil on the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Who the biggest terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival
Who have the colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
Who the biggest executioner
Who/Who/Who ^^^
Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie
Who/ Who/ ???
Who fount Bin Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA,
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
Who know why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion
Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere
Who make the credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?
Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani,
the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,
Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,
Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane , Betty Shabazz, Princess Margaret, Ralph Featherstone, Little Bobby
Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo,
Assata, Mumia,Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton
Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton,
MedgarEvers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney,
Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel
Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed
Who put a price on Lenin's head
Who put the Jews in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said "America First"
and ok'd the yellow stars
WHO/WHO/ ^^
Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt
Who murdered the Rosenbergs
And all the good people iced,
tortured , assassinated, vanished
Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,
Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo
Who invented Aids Who put the germs
In the Indians' blankets
Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"
Who blew up the Maine
& started the Spanish American War
Who got Sharon back in Power
Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
Chiang kai Chek who WHO W H O/
Who decided Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal, The New
Frontier, The Great Society,
Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere
Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop,
Who poison Robeson,
who try to put DuBois in Jail
Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs, Garvey,
The Scottsboro Boys, The Hollywood Ten
Who set the Reichstag Fire
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away ?
/
Who,Who, Who/
explosion of Owl the newspaper say
the devil face cd be seen Who WHO Who WHO
Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national oppression and terror
violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever
Seen God?
But everybody seen
The Devil
Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog
Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell
Who and Who and WHO (+) who who ^
Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!
AMIRI B 10/01
return to amiribaraka.com
dh
interesting
14.01.2003 01:06
Might be worth reading
an establishment document on the new US definition of the task of the military. The new task is to defend the right of their people to continue to enjoy their normal way of life, including security of cheap oil supply, using pre-emptive military strikes against anyone if it furthers that end. Also includes an interesting historical analysis of the continuing need for the president to lie to the people by disguising naked self-interest as humanitarian intervention. I suspect this should not be online, and will be removed shortly.
On the point - I think oil is more central than you say. But also its about exports. The war is an export of US labour, munitions and other high-tech weaponry. It is all exported to Iraq. They will end up paying the US for it in Oil. In addition there will be huge devastation. This will eventually have to be made good. Nice kind US will provide aid for this, but as a loan. It will be repaid in Oil, taking a decade or so to repay. Another great export to an unwilling client. Another pretence of humanitarian motives.
So they get the oil they need. They get the boost to the economy for all the exports. They ket the kudos of being the good guy. Well done all round.
As for you, Amiri. I enjoyed it. It was beautiful. But to me it said nothing more than that the devil is behind all the evil in the world. So what ? Thats just restating the definition of the word.
Commentator
respect your enemies
14.01.2003 12:33
Respect Your Enemies--The First Rule of Peace:
An Essay Addressed to the U. S. Anti-war Movement
Midnight Notes
P.O. Box 204
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
USA
www.midnightnotes.org
The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Fear of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary for commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them.
-Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
1. Introduction.
There is now a fledgling anti-interventionist, anti-war movement in the US. It will have a lot of work to do in the near future, although the present threat of war on Iraq is the most pressing issue it faces. The question is: can the antiwar movement do its work effectively and successfully? At the moment it is not completely marginalized, if the votes in Congress are any indication. On October 9, between one-quarter to one-third of the congressional representatives voted against granting George W. Bush "war powers." But in order to show itself as expressing the majority perspective in this country, it needs new arguments, a new respect (as in "look again") for its opponents, a deeper understanding of the reasons for the actions of its opponents, and a realistic assessment of their weaknesses. For its old arguments do not seem convincing to the majority of US citizens, and its lack of curiosity about its opponents and their reasoning is dulling its strategic sense.
2. Losing Arguments.
In the run up to the Iraqi war, the anti-war movement has put forth a number of arguments to the U.S. public to justify its opposition to the Bush Administration's position. Two of the most important are: (1) an invasion of Iraq will lead to the death of many innocent civilians (on top of the hundreds of thousands killed in the last decade directly or indirectly by the sanctions) and that is immoral; (2) the important principle of national sovereignty will be violated by such an invasion (even if it is done with UN approval), and that threatens to bring the world back to a Hobbesian "state of nature" where nations will war against nations with the excuse that they do not like each other's treatment of their populations. Neither of these arguments has had much persuasive effect. Why?
The first argument is sound. It is true that a U.S. attack on Iraq under conditions of contemporary warfare, especially in the way the U.S. military fights war so that it will suffer no casualties from enemy fire, would involve the death of thousands of innocent civilians. It is also true that such deaths are immoral, since a government's intentional inflicting of civilian casualties is a war crime.
But unlike the picture that logicians paint, sound arguments are not necessarily winning arguments. Perfectly reasonable people can agree that it is immoral to kill innocent Iraqi civilians but also come to the conclusion that it is more immoral to leave Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party in power since it can cause even more Iraqi and non-Iraqi (including U.S. civilians') deaths. At the moment, it appears that the second argument is trumping the first within the minds of many moral and reasonable (and immoral and non-reasonable) people in the US.
The "national sovereignty" argument is also problematic. It is true that national sovereignty is an important political value, especially since the period of decolonization. Third World governments have rightly appealed to this principle to criticize the tendency of old and new colonial powers to intervene in their internal affairs and bring about "regime changes" favorable to the past and future imperialists. People in the antiwar movement are likely to have been in one or more efforts to oppose U.S., British and/or French interventions in the Third World, so they are sympathetic to this argument.
The problem is that these very same people are strong supporters of human rights doctrines that contradict an absolute "national sovereignty" principle. Antiwar activists do not in general believe that any government which violates the human rights of its population or is preparing to threaten the human rights of people outside its territory ought to have sovereignty. Consequently, any use of this argument has a tendency to divide the movement internally. We saw this in the NATO-Kosovo and the U.S.-Afghanistan wars. Defending the Taliban's national sovereignty, for example, was hardly an easy pill for the feminists in the antiwar movement to swallow. So, this argument is even weaker than the first, since is it both unconvincing to those outside the movement and tends to divide the movement from within.
This means that new arguments must be devised that both trump the counter-arguments of the opposition and do not divide the movement internally. But why has the antiwar movement been so inadequate in its arguments? We think it is due in large part to the antiwar movement's lack of respect for its opponents in the Bush Administration and to its failure to grasp the underlying imperative propelling the administrationís actions. It looks at the ungrammatical President, the secretive Vice-President, the Dr. Strangelovian Secretary of Defense and the Lady Macbeth-like National Security Advisor and concludes they are just lackies of a right-wing conspiracy fueled by the oil industry. However, the greatest error in any struggle is to disrespect your opponents. This adage is especially true when the other side is winning!
3. Oil, War and Neoliberalism.
We are told that Communism collapsed in 1989, but many have argued that the political economy of post-WWII capitalism, Keynesianism, collapsed a decade before to be replaced by a system that was called at first Thatcherism and Reaganism, and later neoliberalism and/or globalization. This system claimed that the basic institution of modern society ought to be the Market not the State, and that the best form of all social interactions is the commodity form. This conception of social life had a great propaganda triumph with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist bloc. More importantly, it set into motion a remarkable shift in the economic policies of most Third World countries (under the name of Structural Adjustment Policies) that opened them to foreign investment, lower tariffs, and unrestricted movement of money across their borders. Finally, it undermined the guarantees of subsistence (early retirement, unemployment benefits, health care, free education, etc.) that the working class in Western Europe and North America had won in a century of struggle (Midnight Notes, 1992).
The early 1990s was a remarkable period of triumph for neoliberalism and globalization. Never before had the economic policies of the planet been so homogenous, while institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization were given the financial and legal power to keep the governments of the planet true to the rules of the neoliberal global economy.
Up until July 1997, the supporters of this political economy seemed invincible. Then, the "Asian Financial Crisis" struck. Ever since, there have been breathtaking reversals that have put neoliberalism into question more rapidly than the rapid pace of its triumphs. We need not detail the recent stock market bubble burstings, the recessions, the financial system collapses, the dramatic devaluations, and the dot.com fiascoes. They constitute an international crisis of neoliberalism and globalization -- but not simply because the 1990s globalization boom ended in the "loss" of trillions of dollars in a very short time.
First, they signaled a serious ideological defeat, for at the very moment of this collapse an international anti-globalization movement had taken to the streets of the major cities of the planet to contest the institutions of the neoliberal order (Yuen et al., 2001). This post-Cold War oppositional movement, especially after the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle at the end of 1999, voiced a powerful critique of the system whose truth literally materialized before the world's eyes at the instant of its articulation.
On top of that, the fraudulent nature of neoliberal capitalism revealed itself in the so-called scandals involving Enron, Arthur Anderson, Tyco, WorldCom, etc., showing that the corporate "masters of the universe" had taken the neoliberal gospel of deregulation to be synonymous with a license to defraud their workers and, much more worrisome for the system, their investors.
Equally problematic was the inability of this neoliberal regime to actually increase wages and income for a decisive part of the U.S. proletariat and the "middle classes" in the Third World in the 1990s. Neoliberalism is often called a 20/80 system. If it can dramatically increase the incomes of at least 20% of a country's or the world's population, then the other 80% could be forced to go along with the project. Whatever the wisdom of this cynicism, by the beginning of the 21st century neoliberalism's failure to do even this was becoming clear.
In the U.S., for example, the more than twenty years of wage decline was reversed in 1997, and for the following two years the average wages increased modestly. This was the first consistent multiple-year increase since the 1960s (Caffentzis, 2001). But by 2000 this increase had halted, and wages have stagnated since. A similar problem revealed itself in Africa, Latin America and much of post-1997 Asia (with China as an exception): the "middle classes" were being decimated. This failure was especially revealed in the Argentine bank deposit freeze in the last year which reversed the gains of Argentina's 20% and have made them sworn enemies of neoliberalism.
Often when one system enters into crisis, ruling classes' strategists have something else in place. But not always. In the case of neoliberalism/globalization, there is no alternative system waiting in the wings, for the moment at least. It has to be preserved, or elseÖ
The Bush electoral coup of 2000 made it clear that there were very powerful forces in the world (from the Supreme Court to the major corporate CEOs) which were willing to face governmental illegitimacy at the heart of the system in order to put the Bush group in the position to deal with the crisis.
That should give the antiwar movement pause. The Bush Administration takes power not in a moment of business-as-usual, but in the midst of a systemic crisis that transcends a mere recessionary blip in the US.
The Bush Administration's answer to the crisis of liberalism is simple: War. The 1980s and 1990s saw the building of an elaborate international regime of trade, capital transfer and money flow, but it did not see the development of an institution of violence that would enforce the rules of neoliberalism. Certainly the UN was hardly the vehicle for such a job, since the important players (the permanent members of the Security Council) were not a unified collection of states that could or even want to enforce the rules of neoliberalism. Nor was there on the historical horizon an international body of armed men and women that would have the global monopoly of violence. The Clinton/Gore effort to create a such body ñ one the U.S. government could control from behind the scenes under the guise of a formal equality among national participants -- was anathema to the most powerful fraction of the U.S. ruling class. Its suspicion of Clinton's efforts was behind the extraordinary animus expressed in the impeachment proceedings of 1998 and the electoral coup of 2000. There was a genuine fear that the Clintonites would sign away, on a formal level at least, the U.S.'s imperial role in the 21st century.
Supporters of the Bush administration often described this role by analogy with the place of the British empire in the 19th century world system. That century's international gold standard and free trade (called economic liberalism) required a hegemonic state that would make sure that the rules of the system were followed. That state was Great Britain. A central ideological problem with liberalism both old and new is that it presents itself as an autonomous, self-regulating system, but it is not. It needs to have an enforcer, since individuals and governments, especially those who are being put into crisis or are chronic losers, are tempted to break the rules. In the 21st century, according to this reasoning, the only state that could play Great Britain's role is the United States. (For a sophisticated presentation of this argument see Ferguson, 2001; for a discussion of the military aspects of the U.S. role in this scenario see Armstrong, 2002.)
Of course, history is over-determined (i.e., there are multiple causes for most historical events) and "it is no accident" that Iraq has become the first major test case of this policy. After all, Iraq, a member of OPEC, has the second largest proven oil reserves on the planet. Therefore, Iraq's fate is of vital interest to anyone interested in the oil industry, and the Bush family, Vice President Cheney and National Security Advisor Rice were and are all deeply involved with oil. They are familiar with the oil industry's problems and sympathetic to the oil companiesí desire to return to the world before the nationalization of the oil fields that took place throughout the world in the early 1970s. Certainly a quick "regime change" in Iraq leading to US-imposed privatization of the oil fields would help set the clock back before 1970, and not only in Iraq.
However, increasing the immediate profits of the oil companies, though important, is not the consideration that makes Iraq the first object of the new Bush policy. Oil and natural gas are basic commodities for the running of the world's industrial apparatus, from plastics to chemicals, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and energy for cars and electric power plants. Whoever controls the commodity, its price and the profits it generates, has a powerful impact on the whole capitalist system. Yet oil is an unusual commodity. It is exempt from the rules of neoliberalism. The trading rules of the WTO do not apply to oil; and OPEC, a self-proclaimed if not completely successful oligopoly, is tolerated in a period when the "free market" ought to be determining the price of all commodities, especially basic ones. How could it be that even though OPEC now controls about 80% of the "proven oil reserves," it operates in contradiction to the larger rules of the neoliberal game? No wonder neoliberalism is in crisis.
This peculiar singularity is intensified by the nature of the main political figures in OPEC (aside from Iraq's Ba'ath regime): in Iran there are the desperate Islamic clerics, in Saudi Arabia there is a ruling class that is divided between globalization and Islamic fundamentalism, in Venezuela there is the populist government of Chavez, in Ecuador there is a government that was nearly seized in a rebellion by the indigenous, in Libya there is Ghaddafi (need more be said?), in Algeria there is a government that just narrowly repressed an Islamist revolution, and in Nigeria and Indonesia there are "democratic" governments with questionable legitimacy that could collapse at any moment. This list constitutes a "rogues galleryî from the point of view of the thousands of capitalists who send a tremendous portion of "their" surplus to OPEC governments via their purchases of oil and gas. With such a composition, OPEC is hardly an institution to energize a neoliberal world.
Of course, OPEC was not always a political or economic problem. In the 1960s and in the early 1970s, OPEC was a relatively pliable organization, and nationalization and monopolistic pricing were still acceptable elements of the accepted Keynesian political economy of the day. Iran was under the Shah, the Ba'athists had just lost their Nasserite zeal, Ghaddafi's fate was still undeveloped, Venezuela was a tame neo-colony, Indonesia was under the communist-killer Suharto, Nigeria was under the control of General Gowan, and the Saudi Arabian monarchy's Islamic fundamentalism was considered a quaint facade under which the movement of billions of "petro-dollars" could be recycled back into the U.S.-European economies (Midnight Notes, 1992).
But that was then and this is now. From the Bush Administration's viewpoint, OPEC needs to be either destroyed or transformed in order to lay the foundation of a neoliberal world that would be able to overcome the crisis and truly control the energy resources of the planet. The Bush administration is putting as much pressure as possible on OPEC's members. In April of 2002, there was a U.S.-supported coup d'etat in Venezuela against the Chavez government, the leading price hawk in OPEC. It failed. In August 2002, it was Saudi Arabia's turn. The RAND corporation issued a report claiming that the Saudi Arabian monarchy was the "real enemy" in the Middle East and should be threatened with invasion if it did not stop supporting anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli groups. However, that verbal threat has been nullified by the Bush Administration as its war plans have unfolded.
The Iraq government is clearly the weak link in OPEC. It lost two wars it instigated. It is legally in thrall to a harsh reparations regime, it cannot control its own air space, and it cannot even import freely but must have UN accountants approve every item it wants to buy on the open market. Ideologically and economically it is prostrate.
A US-sponsored Iraqi government committed to neoliberal policies would definitely be in a position to undermine OPEC from within or, if it leaves OPEC, from without. Such a transformation would make it possible to begin a massive investment in the energy industry that might be an alternative to the spectacular failure of the high-tech sector that has dissolved hundreds of billions of dollars. Rather than the now-uncertain computer- and bio-technology sectors, the more ìtraditionalî oil-driven sectors will be given primacy in re-launching profitability.
There is an additional reason for Iraq having the dubious honor of being the first test case for the hegemonic role of the US: weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein's regime has been very interested in investing in industrial development that has in the past also been used to develop chemical and biological weapons. These weapons were used extensively in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The Bush administration has put forward a doctrine with respect to Iraq that, if generalized, would look something like this:
(1) Almost any advanced technological production process can be used to create "weapons of mass destruction."
(2) Any such production process not directly controlled by a multinational corporation (MNC) headquartered in the US (or Japan or Western Europe) can be used by a government to create weapons of mass destruction.
(3) No government outside a list agreed upon by the US government ought to have the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore, no government (whether democratically elected or not) outside of the agreed list can be allowed to exist unless its advanced technology is controlled by an acceptable MNC.
This argument means that the US government has taken on the role of overseeing and vetoing all forms of industrial development throughout the world in perpetuum. Autonomous industrial development not controlled by an approved MNC by any government is out of order. Hence this "war on terrorism" doctrine becomes a basis for the military control of the economic development policies of any government on the planet.
The consequences of such a doctrine are, of course, enormous, although their immediate impact is on the Hussein regime (and any of its successors). For even if Saddam Hussein could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there were no chemical, biological or atomic weapons in Iraq at this moment, the Bush doctrine would not be satisfied. The mere existence of industrial capacity not owned and controlled by MNCs in Iraq that could be used in the construction of weapons of mass destruction would violate the doctrine.
This doctrine shows us that the struggle now unfolding in Iraq is not only about oil. What is at stake is the shape of planetary industrial development for decades to come. The combination of the restoration of oil-driven accumulation with the imposition of the Bush doctrine on global industrial development ensures that the "suburban-petroleum" mode of life we are living in the U.S. (and increasingly in Western Europe) will lead to endless war.
4. An Antiwar Strategy
Given the over-determined character of the moment, an antiwar movement must look for arguments and allies that would not deal with Iraq alone but direct its attention to the Bush Administration's policy as a whole. What are its weaknesses? They lie in two areas: money and people, and both involve the military.
It is not clear how many regions of the world in the coming years will be put into crisis, condemned to such a chronically low and unsustainable position that the people of those regions will be tempted to break the rules of the neoliberal game. Thus, the Bush Administration has been careful to reject any suggestion that the U.S. is the military force of last resort for neoliberalism. Instead of locating the rule-breakers n the vocabulary of neoliberal economics, they are presented as threats to the security of US citizens. The U.S. has labeled its enemies using moral and political categories like "evil," "rogue," "terrorist," and "failed."
There are different types and levels of these enemies, according to the political criminology provided in the speeches of Bush and his advisors. First there are the "axis of evil" countries (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) and the "rogue states" (Cuba, Libya and, previously, Sudan). The "failed states" category (which includes Sierra Leone and Somalia) is very open, since much depends upon the definition of "failure." For example, is either Haiti or Argentina now a "failed state"? Finally, there are the unspecified "forty or fifty countries" that might harbor (more or less actively) international terrorists. This articulation of the enemy in the endless war against both ìterrorismî and states with potential for creating weapons of mass destruction is open ended and can include more than a third of the nation states on the planet.
With Communism, it was relatively clear what constituted the enemy, i.e., states ruled by Communist parties, and one could plan for the financial requirements of the conflict. While the project of the Bush administration outlined above necessitates a substantial increase in military investment, the uncertainties of the neoliberal order make it impossible to predict the required size of the increase.
At the moment, the projected military budget allocation for 2003 is $372 billion. This means that in real terms the US has returned to the ten-year average (1982-1991) of the Reagan-Bush years of $370 billion (O'Hanlon, 2002: 2). What will the 2007 budget allocation for defense be? It is now slated to be $406 billion (in constant 2002 dollars) (O'Hanlon, 2002: 2). But how can we take seriously a five-year projection that depends upon the vagaries of "failed states," "rogue states," "countries harboring terrorists," etc. -- or, in our reading, those states and peoples who have broken with the rules of the neoliberal order due to necessity or desire.
This uncertainty is a basic weakness of the Bush Administration's policy. Undoubtedly there will be the possibility of pillage in the case of Iraq, through the seizure of its oil fields to defray the costs of the adventure. Perhaps this possibility of pillage has convinced many in the U.S. that an invasion is acceptable. But pillage will not be possible in most future applications of the doctrine. Consequently, the future of education, social security, Medicare, agriculture, and ecology will be held hostage to the open ended demands of the hegemonic role. There will be many who will not.
The second weakness of the Bush Administration's policy lies with its assumption that U.S. soldiers will not be casualties in the coming wars of neoliberalism. This assumption is part of the social contract of contemporary U.S. life--you are not going to die fighting on foreign soil in a war--and is often called the "Vietnam Syndrome." It is one of the most peculiar victories of the U.S. working class in the 20th century. The fact that the government fulfilled its side of the bargain has made it possible to keep more than a quarter million soldiers outside U.S. territory after the end of the Cold War (O'Hanlon, 2002: 8). Between 1989 and the present, only a small number of U.S. troops have been killed by enemy fire in Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan, largely because very few were exposed to direct enemy fire.
We are clearly in a time similar to the Era of Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century when European armies equipped with machine guns, long-distance artillery, and gun boats that could penetrate rivers, attacked poorly armed peoples in Africa, Oceania and Asia, slaughtering and conquering them with almost no losses. It was only after World War II that the colonized rebels could hold some technological and strategic "parity" with the colonial power, as can be seen in the two Vietnam Wars of independence (first from the French, then from the U.S.). The U.S. military now is so superior technologically to its opponents that it can carry on its activities without a loss from enemy fire, just so long as it does not have to occupy a particular territory. But this is exactly what U.S. troops will have to do in order to bring about the "regime changes" U.S. foreign policy requires. The Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation should make quite clear that the most sophisticated of armies will suffer a regular flow of casualties when occupying a hostile population.
The fate of thousands of Gulf War veterans who were made chronically ill by their own army speaks to another aspect of the issue of war casualties: A military machine that takes no casualties from the enemy inevitably inflicts casualties on its own personnel. The reason for this is very simple. The process of protecting against an enemy's aggression is (1) to anticipate it or (2) to respond to it in an extremely short period of time. Both options, when taken to extreme, lead to self-inflicted casualties.
The actions required to prepare for anticipated future threats eventually lead to a logic that accepts small risks of self-inflicted casualties in order to counter an enemy threat. But the act of anticipating possible threats causes the anticipations themselves to multiply. Consequently, the small, separate preventative risks will multiply until self-inflicted casualties become a certainty. Thus, vaccinations designed to prevent the consequences of biological attacks will themselves kill some soldiers; etc. Similarly, if reaction speed to an enemy threat must be reduced to a minimum, the ability to detect the true identity or source of the perceived threat is reduced as well. This invariably leads to friendly fire incidents. As the drive for adding new threats and reducing reaction time intensifies, the military machine will become perhaps the greatest enemy to its own constituents.
Therefore, the assumption that U.S. troops will be casualty-free is exactly what will be challenged by the new U.S. hegemonic role in the war for neoliberalism and globalization. The U.S. military will have to occupy Iraq for a long period of time in order to guarantee that the oil fields will be privatized and that a "regime change" would lead to a dissolution or transformation of OPEC. Further, the action of a military machine operating under the Powell Doctrine of "overwhelming force" can become its own troops' worse enemy. These factors, not the immediate invasion itself, will lead to a substantial loss of U.S. soldiers' lives and a violation of the "no casualties" social contract. The antiwar movement needs to warn the U.S. working class of this danger, clearly and distinctly.
More troubling than this danger is the increasing violation of worker's contractual rights that will be the inevitable immediate casualty of this militarization. It is a trend that started in the Reagan years and was intensified during the Clinton Administration (Caffentzis, 2001). This trend is often euphemistically called a crisis of "civil liberties." But if we examine the increase in the prison population, the attack on habeas corpus, the end of welfare rights and the draconian changes in immigration policy, we see that a new era of non-contractual semi-slave work has been introduced in the U.S. during the 1980s and '90s. The Bush Administration has intensified this trend by attacking workersí contractual rights under the rubric of the "war on terrorism." The post-9/11 mass arrests based on no charges, the refusal to provide "terrorist" prisoners legal counsel or habeas corpus relief, the imposition of Taft-Hartley provisions on the West Coast dockworkers, and many other actions shows the Bush Administration's direction: the extreme restriction of contractual freedom.
A continued contraction of these rights will parallel the inevitable rise in ill-health and death among residents of the U.S. In response to war costs and tax cuts, everything from access to medical care to public health, occupational and environmental safety regulations and interventions will be reduced or eliminated. Tamed as the U.S. media is, these facts are already being printed with growing regularity. The deaths that will inevitably follow should be counted as casualties of war.
We believe that if the antiwar movement emphasizes the fact the Iraq invasion is part of an overall strategy of endless war that will jeopardize the U.S. population's life, liberty and property in order to try to secure an economic system that will continue to be in deep crisis, then we can lay the foundation for a major change in the political debate and sentiment in this country. (And lest we be misunderstood, we do agree that one continuing, necessary task of the anti-war movement will be to bring to the attention of the U.S. population the massive casualties around the planet that will ensue from the endless war to preserve capitalism.)
5. Conclusion: No Fear
The Bush Administration's policy is not a product of crackpots, it is a desperate initiative to try to militarily save a failing world economic system. Many people in South and Central America, Africa and Asia have lost hope in finding themselves in this system and are trying to recreate their lives outside the precincts of neoliberalism. The same threatens to happen here in the U.S. That possibility, and not the machinations of Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, is the Bush Administration's deepest fear.
Now it is time to learn from the wisdom of an enemy philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, the defender of the absolute state. In the epigraph we quoted, Hobbes locates the source of peace in three passions: Fear, Desire, and Hope. The Bush Administration has effectively used Fear to stifle opposition. It correctly claims that the right not to be killed is the greatest human right. It has asked for a carte blanche to defend that right and impose Peace on the world through the sword. Bush often pointed to the cinders of the World Trade Center towers to win the "war powers against Iraq" resolution, for the Fear is real. Not accidentally, however, the Bush Administration spokespeople have forgotten the other passionate sources of Peace--Desire and Hope. They know that they cannot stimulate these passions even rhetorically without rousing derision throughout the planet. Their economic and social system is that bankrupt. This is the Bush Administration's deepest weakness: it cannot win on the basis of Fear of Death alone.
That is why our movement cannot simply trade Fear for Fear with the Bush Administration, or be amplifiers of the Fear on which the administration thrives. We cannot best them in this game. Of course, it is our civic duty to point out bureaucratic failures and hyperboles that endanger people in the U.S. or abroad and, if we have good evidence, to point out past, present, or future U.S. government complicity with Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime. But unless we can call to the other passionate sources of Peace, we will be bankrupt as the Bush regime and its supporters.
The antiwar movement should, therefore, speak to the Desires and Hopes of the people of the U.S., from universal healthcare to a healthy environment. We also need to bring the demands of the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s into our demonstrations, forums and programs, especially the wisdom behind the slogan, "This Earth is Not For Sale," i.e., an end to the privatization of the gifts of the planet and its history. We can work out the details, it is the direction that is crucial now.
We leave you with a historical example in support of our thesis. The most effective way the threat of nuclear terror was answered in the 1950s was not the antinuclear war movement, but the black revolution in the U.S. and the anti-colonial movement around the planet. Black people in the U.S. and colonized people in the rest of the world made it clear that B-52 bombers and their hydrogen bombs were not liberating them, and they refused to be delayed by them. They declared that their civil liberation was a precondition for the "Desire of such things as are necessary for commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them" that could lead to Peace. Indeed, it has been the thwarting of this Desire and this Hope by the imposition of a neoliberal economic order that has been the source of most of the War of the last two decades.
Bibliography
Armstrong, David. 2002. Dick Chaney's Song of America. Harper's Magazine (October): 76-83.
Caffentzis, George. 2001. From Capitalist Crisis to Proletarian Slavery: An introduction to the U.S. Class Struggle, 1973-1998. In (Midnight Notes 2001).
Ferguson, Niall. 2001. The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World 1700-2000. New York: Basic Books.
Midnight Notes. 1992. Midnight Oil: Work Energy War, 1973-1992. New York: Autonomedia.
Midnight Notes. 2001. Auroras of the Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles in the Fourth World War. New York: Autonomedia.
O'Hanlon, Michael E. 2002. Defense Policy Choices for the Bush Administration. Second Edition. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Yuen, Eddie, et al. 2001. The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization. New York: Soft Skull Press.
midnight notes
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