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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (883)	9/22/2001 3:35:01 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Oh, and I think they're a bit anticapitalist conspiracy-theory oriented when they go on about the connection of all this to oil interests in Central Asia and the Caspian Basin. Do those interests exist? yes. Will they be driving U.S. policy on such a subject as a war? Absolutely not. For background on the Caspian energy issues involved, see here: I like the notion of separating the two arguments, financial interests arguments and foreign policy arguments. But once separated, it helps to try to put them back together, checking argumentation links as one goes. I can think of two sort of sketches of arguments. 1. The obvious. The oil industry ties of the present Bush administration means, at a very minimum, that many members are at least sympathetic to it. They know, I would guess, in some rather gritty detail, the oil reserves in this area, the previous difficulties US companies have had getting it out, and the opportunities that might be presented by this conflict. 2. But more interestingly, at least for me, is that all the relevant actors will carry these notions in their heads. I would guess that one of the underlying themes of all negotiations between the present US administration and various governments in the area will be to watch, carefully. how each govt is positioning itself for future access to the oil. In this regard, it would have been delightful to have been the proverbial fly on the wall during George Bush's conversations today, said to be long by his admin spokesfolk, with Russia's Putin. Thus, one way to read the public revelations we get about these conversations is to look for the oil text in the background. John