Australian
Defence Minister Admits Oil A Key Factor Behind Iraq Occupation
By Patrick O’Connor
06 July, 2007
WSWS.org
Australia’s
Minister for Defence Brendan Nelson yesterday acknowledged that maintaining
control over Iraq’s vast oil reserves was a critical factor behind
the ongoing US-led occupation. His comments came just before Prime Minister
John Howard delivered a major foreign policy address, similarly stressing
the need to ensure “energy security” amid growing “great
power competition” in the Middle East.
Howard and Nelson’s
statements lift the lid on the sordid economic and strategic interests
behind the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, and Australia’s
support for it. In a rare moment of candour, the junior member of the
“coalition of the willing” has shattered the lies advanced
by Washington and its allies. The pretexts used to justify the initial
attack in 2003—including weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda
connections to Baghdad—have long been exposed as outright fabrications.
It is now equally clear that the ongoing occupation has nothing to do
with establishing democracy or security in Iraq, or in protecting ordinary
people from the threat of terrorism.
In his interview on ABC radio
yesterday morning, Nelson was directly asked whether oil was a reason
why Australian troops were still deployed in Iraq. “Energy security
is extremely important to all nations throughout the world, and of course,
in protecting and securing Australia’s interests,” he replied.
“The Middle East itself, not only Iraq, but the entire region
is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of
the world. Australians and all of us need to think what would happen
if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.”
The defence minister’s
statement provides unambiguous confirmation of the criminal character
of the Iraq war. One of the most fundamental precepts of international
law is that wars of aggression—that is, those launched by a government
in order to accrue economic or strategic advantage for its own nation
state—are unlawful. This was firmly established in the post-World
War II Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leadership, which codified the basis
on which architects of “wars of choice” could be prosecuted
on war crimes charges. There is no doubt that senior members of the
Australian government, alongside their counterparts in Washington and
London, deserve to be placed on trial for their actions.
Prime Minister Howard’s
speech, while somewhat more circumspect and far less widely reported,
provided an important insight into the government’s strategic
calculations.
“While terrorist networks
will remain a major threat, nation states will remain the most important
international actors; and the global balance of power will remain the
most important determinant of Australia’s security,” he
told the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “Power relativities,
as always, will go on changing with the continuing emergence of China
and India as major powers reshaping our regional landscape, and tilting
the global centre of gravity away from the Atlantic towards Asia....
“Globalisation could
spur a resurgence of protectionism and increasing rivalry over globally
traded resources, particularly oil... Many of the key strategic trends
I have mentioned—including terrorism and extremism, challenging
demographics, WMD aspirations, energy demand and great-power competition—converge
in the Middle East. Our major ally and our most important economic partners
have crucial interests there.”
Howard’s remarks point
to the real reasons why Washington attacked Iraq. US imperialism, once
the unchallenged global force, now faces mounting pressure from powers
in Europe and Asia, particularly China. The Bush administration’s
drive to war in 2003—which was backed by the entire US political
and media establishment—marked an attempt by the American ruling
elite to overcome its relative economic decline by utilising military
force to seize control of the Middle East’s resources and use
them to dictate terms to its rivals.
The quagmire in Iraq, however,
has only intensified the deep-going crisis confronting the US and its
allies, including Australia. Howard’s references to “power
relativities”, “crucial interests”, and “great
power competition”—terms reminiscent of those that characterised
international diplomacy in the 1930s—point to the escalating global
tensions. His primary concern is that unless the US-led occupiers successfully
oversee the establishment of a sustainable US client regime, other countries
will benefit from Iraq’s lucrative oil resources at Washington’s
expense, thereby undermining the entire strategic orientation of the
Australian ruling elite.
Government backtracks
Shortly after the broadcast
of Nelson’s radio interview, senior government ministers attempted
to place the cat firmly back in the bag.
“We’re fighting
for something much more important here than oil, this is about democracy,”
Treasurer Peter Costello declared. Howard, directly contradicting his
earlier address to the policy think tank, added: “We are not there
because of oil and we didn’t go there because of oil. A lot of
oil comes from the Middle East—we all know that—but the
reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a
possibility of embracing democracy.”
The furious backtracking
was driven by a concern that Nelson’s open avowal on public radio
of Canberra and Washington’s oil interests in Iraq threatened
to definitively expose the already threadbare pretexts for the occupation.
The vast majority of the Australian population opposed the war from
the outset, and hostility has only increased as the scale of the death
and destruction inflicted by the occupying forces has become more widely
known. Facing an election later this year amid plummeting opinion polls,
the government does not wish to go on record backing a war for oil in
the Middle East.
Letters to the editor and
talkback radio calls today registered popular outrage at Nelson and
Howard’s statements.
The media, however, did its
best to play down the story’s significance. Today’s editorial
in the Murdoch-owned Australian, titled “Politics, Oil, and War:
stable energy supplies are critical to world order”, openly defended
the government’s admission of its oil interests. “Mr Howard
has at least offered an honest appraisal of why it is so important that
the West shows resolve in its attempts to bring stability to the region,”
it declared.
Pointing to the contradictory
statements from Howard, Labor leader Kevin Rudd said the government
“simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq”. In fact,
as Rudd well understands, while the public rationale has repeatedly
shifted as each lie has been exposed, the real agenda behind the war
has remained unchanged. Labor has fully subscribed to this agenda from
the outset and, like Howard, remains committed to the US occupation,
notwithstanding the party’s minor tactical differences relating
to the number of Australian combat troops involved.
Likewise, Rudd agrees with
the Howard government’s military interventions closer to home,
in the South Pacific. In another significant foreign policy speech yesterday,
Rudd addressed the Lowy Institute for International Policy and proposed
an intensified push into Australia’s immediate region. Amid obligatory
rhetoric about humanitarian concerns, Rudd made clear that the central
aim was to ensure that Australian imperialism maintained its dominant
role throughout the South Pacific against the growing incursions of
rival powers.
On ABC television’s
“Lateline”, Tony Jones asked Rudd the evening before his
address: “Are you also motivated at all by a fear that regional
competitors, other powers, are moving into the Pacific, increasingly
influential and could in fact supplant Australia’s interests in
some of these places?”
Rudd replied: “Well,
to answer your blunt question equally bluntly—yes... If we fail
to act effectively, then I think we’re going to see a long-term
drift in Australia’s strategic standing right across this region
as well. So the ‘arc of instability’ becomes a vehicle through
which what was once an area in which we were the principal power, we
become supplanted over time by other powers from beyond the region.”
Taken together, yesterday’s
statements of Nelson, Howard and Rudd highlight the real interests behind
the US invasion of Iraq and Australia’s support for it, along
with the equally predatory interests driving their operations in the
South Pacific.
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