If oil were paramount in shaping the US foreign policy then US troops and battleships should have been criss-crossing West Africa for the past 40 years --clue:
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Besides, according to a Newsweek report (I couldn't find an electronic version of it), thanks to the oil-for-food scheme, the US was already Iraq's #1 customer before Gulf War II --to the extent of about 850,000 bbl/day.
Furthermore, as I explained again and again, the oil market is actually a monopsony/oligopsony of sorts, that is, one or a couple of buyers call the shots on a large number of suppliers... And chief among the oil monopsonists is the US itself. Then, the monopsonists' clout is compounded by the fact that, for most oil producers, oil is the only staple export --clue:
The Iraqi government has exercised firm control of the oil sector ever since a centralized socialist system was introduced in 1968, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Oil exports were halted under U.N. sanctions imposed after the Gulf War. But under terms of the U.N.'s food-for-oil deal in 1996, Iraq was allowed to resume limited exportation of oil so that it could have funds to buy humanitarian goods for its people. Traditionally, oil has provided 95% of Iraq's foreign exchange earnings, according to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook 2002. The Hussein regime has unsuccessfully tried to increase the role of agriculture in the economy. The CIA estimates that Iraq's GDP declined 5.7% in 2001 due to the global economic slowdown and lower oil prices.
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So, the point is that oil producers cannot write off their oil exports/revenues and rely on substitutes: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, even Iran to a point, can't count on tourism (like Egypt) or machine-tools or textiles to make up for their oil revenues should they decide to cut off the West's oil supply.
Finally, there's another economical factor that most oil conspiracy theorists overlook: oil is, after all, a mere commodity whose share in the aggregate added-value of most of today's products and services is negligible. Granted, you need oil to ship/deliver all of today's products and services. But tell me, what's oil's share in the price of a Microsoft software? How does oil affect the price of a Nike footwear? How does oil impact Hollywood? Foodstuffs? Healthcare? |
