U.S. Imperial Strategy in the Middle East

Monthly Review

Volumn 55, Issue 9, 2004, Pages 23-36

  Achcar, Gilbert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 8   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1142278633     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-055-09-2004-02_3     Document Type: Review

References (30)

1. On the Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement as well as the road traveled from Oslo to Sharon, see Tanya Reinhart's Israel/Palestine: How to End the 1948 War (New York Seven Stories, 2002).
2. Joshua Hammer, "Words & Deeds," Newsweek (international edition), June 9, 2003.
3. Elected leader of the Labor Party for one year in June 2003, Shimon Peres reportedly aspires to negotiate his return to government through a new coalition with Sharon.
4. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Armitage, Bolton, Dobriansky, Khalilzad, Perle, Rodman, Schneider, and Zoellick.
5. This is not the place to prove this assertion. We mention only that the Rockefeller group has played a central role in U.S. foreign policy. David Rockefeller was for many years president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the main U.S. foreign policy think tank. His company finances the council together with other companies like Bechtel, the big construction firm that has managed to ingest all sorts of contract tidbits in the oil-producing countries and is now in charge of rebuilding Iraq.
6. OPEC Reference Basket price.
7. OPEC, Annual Statistical Bulletin 2001, 119.
8. The nominal price dropped back again the following year (to $23.12) while remaining above the 1990 price. But it rose once again in 2002 (to $24.36) and reached $27.87 a barrel on July 16, 2003, despite record Russian oil exports.
9. See Michael Klare, Resource War (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).
10. CSIS Panel Report, The Geopolitics of Energy into the 21st Century (Washington: CSIS, 2000), "Executive Summary," xvi.
11. CSIS, Geopolitics, xix. Incidentally, the same considerations explain the Bush administration's eagerness to mend fences with Libya, and their hesitating attitude toward Iran.
12. The kingdom has an unused, installed capacity today of 3 million barrels a day, without counting its much more considerable potential capacity.
13. Edward Morse and James Richard, "The Battle for Energy Dominance," Foreign Affairs 81, no. 2 (March-April 2002), 20. See also the debate around this article, "Does Saudi Arabia Still Matter?," Foreign Affairs 81, no. 6 (November-December 2002), 167-78.
14. Edward Morse and James Richard, "The Battle for Energy Dominance," Foreign Affairs 81, no. 2 (March-April 2002), 20. See also the debate around this article, "Does Saudi Arabia Still Matter?," Foreign Affairs 81, no. 6 (November-December 2002), 167-78.
15. See Gilbert Achcar, "Operation Oil," and "War Drive" in Eastern Cauldron (New York: Monthly Review, forthcoming), See also Achcar, "Le nouvel ordre impérial ou la mondialisation de l'empire états-unien," 15-24, in Achcar ed., Le nouvel ordre impérial, Actuel Marx, no. 33, 1st semester 2003, as well as John Bellamy Foster, Harry Magdoff, and Robert McChesney, "U.S. Military Bases and Empire," Monthly Review 53, no. 10 (March 2002).
16. See Gilbert Achcar, "Operation Oil," and "War Drive" in Eastern Cauldron (New York: Monthly Review, forthcoming), See also Achcar, "Le nouvel ordre impérial ou la mondialisation de l'empire états-unien," 15-24, in Achcar ed., Le nouvel ordre impérial, Actuel Marx, no. 33, 1st semester 2003, as well as John Bellamy Foster, Harry Magdoff, and Robert McChesney, "U.S. Military Bases and Empire," Monthly Review 53, no. 10 (March 2002).
17. See Gilbert Achcar, "Operation Oil," and "War Drive" in Eastern Cauldron (New York: Monthly Review, forthcoming), See also Achcar, "Le nouvel ordre impérial ou la mondialisation de l'empire états-unien," 15-24, in Achcar ed., Le nouvel ordre impérial, Actuel Marx, no. 33, 1st semester 2003, as well as John Bellamy Foster, Harry Magdoff, and Robert McChesney, "U.S. Military Bases and Empire," Monthly Review 53, no. 10 (March 2002).
18. On this aspect of the situation, which goes beyond the scope of this article, see Achcar, "The Strategic Triad: The United States, Russia and China," and "Rasputin Plays at Chess: How the West Blundered into a New Cold War," in Tariq Ali ed., Masters of the Universe? (London: Verso, 2000). See also Achcar, "A trio of Soloists," Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2001.
19. On this aspect of the situation, which goes beyond the scope of this article, see Achcar, "The Strategic Triad: The United States, Russia and China," and "Rasputin Plays at Chess: How the West Blundered into a New Cold War," in Tariq Ali ed., Masters of the Universe? (London: Verso, 2000). See also Achcar, "A trio of Soloists," Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2001.
20. CSIS, Geopolitics, xvi.
21. OPEC, Annual, 10, 12.
22. The current situation is quite similar to the situation after the mujahedeen overthrew the Najibullah regime in 1992; see Achcar, "After the Fall of Najibullah," in Eastern Cauldron.
23. Achcar, "Washington and London: The Problems Have Only Just Begun," and "Letter to a Slightly Depressed Antiwar Activist," in Eastern Cauldron.
24. Niall Ferguson, "The Empire Slinks Back," New York Times Magazine, April 27, 2003.
25. Thom Shanker, "Officials Debate Whether to Seek a Bigger Military," New York Times, July 21, 2003.
26. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Touchstone, 1998), 94.
27. Achcar, "The Arab Despotic Exception," in Eastern Cauldron.
28. George W. Bush, "Remarks by the President in Commencement Address at the University of South Carolina," Washington: Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, May 9, 2003.
29. Richard Mably and Tom Ashby, "Iraqis Agree on Role for Oil Majors, OPEC," Reuters, April 5, 2003.
30. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "Attacks Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq," Washington Post, December 28, 2003.