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

To: LindyBill who wrote (88568)	4/1/2003 11:26:52 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Pentagon, State Spar On Team to Run Iraq Rumsfeld Rejects State Dept. Choices By Karen DeYoung and Peter Slevin The NYTimes had a similar article this morning, focusing more on the aid question. At the level these articles are written, the answer seems obvious. The best way to go is to put as much of the postwar reconstruction including delivery of aid in the hands of the UN and/or NGOs. The opposite path makes it appear ever more as a US conquest followed by an occupation. Not a good thing for anyone. There is, however, a second argument about this which is actually about oil. You may recall that Ken Pollack argued that the principle reason, for US self interest purposes, to focus on Iraq was the role of oil in the global economy. Leave him in place, armed, however lightly, with nuclear capability and with his ability to threaten his neighbors, and he has too much control over the fate of the full global economy. The parallel is true as well. If the US controls Iraqi oil through Iraqi surrogates, it also has a strong leverage in the global economy. For instance, I've read in several places that China gets a great deal of its oil from the ME (and, of course, Iraqi oil is a key). Assume that to be true until someone convincingly challenges that. If the US controls that oil flow in some serious way, it has yet another strong bit of leverage to sway the direction of Chinese foreign policy. Since the folk now in control of the Pentagon are on record as arguing that the US should use its large margin of power to cement that advantage, it's not unlikely they think this way. This is the way of empire; of long term occupation of Iraq; of increasing our vulnerability, not decreasing it. It is not the way of a democratic and prosperous ME; rather it is the way of continued long term conflict in the ME with the US as a more direct target than it has been; with several Arab governments less friendly than the present ones; with not only Arab public opinion running against us but cementing the present global public opinion of the US. We should all hope State wins this one.