Speaking of Christmas
Roger Kaplan’s "argument" that we seize "the oil fields" in the American "Spectator" today is a whole "tree" full of presents for the connoisseur of meanness and "idiocy" on your "guest list." I particularly enjoy the unselfconsciousness that lets him include the following in his article:
Let the stupids talk to the stupids . . .
Oh by all means! But keep doing it where the rest of us can hear you.
Kaplan argues that we should "seize" the oil fields like Lincoln and Douglas did in 1858. This will lead to no end of benefits on Kaplan’s planet, where the last five years have not shown everyone how impractical it is to secure oil production and transportation infrastructure in the absence of broad social consent at every stage of the supply chain, and where the basic economics textbooks elucidate a principle called "The Law of Supply and Dammit I Can’t Remember the Other Part I Could Swear It Was on the Tip of my Tongue a Minute Ago!"
Seriously, if you love high-falutin’ lunacy, read the whole thing.
Comment by josephdietrich —
May 6, 2008 @ 9:33 am
Someone notify Doug Feith. Kaplan is challenging him for his title.
Comment by The Modesto Kid —
May 6, 2008 @ 9:39 am
like Lincoln and Douglas did
Wait, don’t you mean Lincoln and Douglass?
Comment by abb1 —
May 6, 2008 @ 11:27 am
Is this really so stupid? It sure is evil, but it doesn’t seem stupid to me.
A direct grab without “democracy promotion” bullshit would certainly remove some of the constrains under which they have to operate now. They could, for example, wipe out the whole Sadr city, all 2 million people, just in a couple of days of a massive bombing campaign – end of story. The British and Roman empires managed to remain intact and grow for hundreds of years; I don’t see why an American empire couldn’t do that too.
Comment by William Burns —
May 6, 2008 @ 11:35 am
Nah, it’s stupid as well as evil. It’s a strategy with the declared goal of lowering the price of oil that would actually increase the price of oil. It’s like Iraq never happened.
Comment by First Little Pig —
May 6, 2008 @ 12:06 pm
Maybe we would have better luck (and really be greeted as liberators) if we were to seize the Mexican oilfields.
Comment by William Burns —
May 6, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
FLP,
I hope you’re not serious about that, because its pretty unlikely that the Mexicans will react well to being invaded by a country that’s already taken a huge amount of territory from them.
Comment by Justin Slotman —
May 6, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
Let’s seize the Albertan oil sands instead, I hear they’re totally itching to throw off the yoke of Ottawan tyranny. Target of opportunity and all that.
Comment by Barry —
May 6, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
I’ve heard that Mexico doesn’t even *have* flowers. They’d have to toss prettily-painted rocks, instead.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 6, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
OTOH, if we offered green cards in exchange for the oil fields…
Comment by Derek Copold —
May 6, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
It’s stupid, alright. It’s evil as well in that he’s proposing the slaughter of possibly millions with little to no thought of the consequences.
Lord knows, such a move would solidify the rest of the world into an alliance, against us. Things are already moving that way. This would confirm it.
Comment by Derek Copold —
May 6, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
Ah, yes, also, it’s nice to get a vibrant reminder of why I, a paleoish conservative, so badly want the GOP to go down in flames this year. For all the heartburn the Democrats may cause me, THESE. BASTARDS. MUST. GO. DOWN.
Comment by Athlon —
May 6, 2008 @ 2:37 pm
Who is this immoral, would-be butchering imbecile Kaplan? Does anyone listen to him? And how have we moved in 5 years from ‘we gotta invade to save ourselves from being nuked’ to ‘we gotta invade to save them from themselves’ to ‘we gotta invade to steal their oil and sell it at cost price, [leading to an acceleration of the global-warming catastrophe]‘? I thought the whole point of neo-conservatism was that you thought of a few noble-sounding lies and then stole the oil…
Comment by abb1 —
May 6, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
…such a move would solidify the rest of the world into an alliance, against us.
Not necessarily. Hannibal was ravaging Italy’s countryside for years, the Romans couldn’t beat him, he was destroying one of their army after another. Sometimes two armies simultaneously. And yet the Italian tribes remained loyal to Rome. They realized it was in their interests to stick with Rome. It’s that simple.
Comment by Derek Copold —
May 6, 2008 @ 3:47 pm
I don’t think the Chinese, the Russians or even the Indians will appreciate our taking sole possession of the world’s principal energy supply through illegal military force. The rest of Europe won’t go along so quietly either, as they have their own interests to look after.
Comment by Alex —
May 6, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
They could, for example, wipe out the whole Sadr city, all 2 million people, just in a couple of days of a massive bombing campaign – end of story.
Like when they so wiped out Hanoi, right? Read a book.
Comment by josephdietrich —
May 6, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
Another thing that occurs to me after coming back to this: Kaplan is basically recommending an American version of Saddam’s 1990 plan for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (with strange socialist overtones; what do you mean no profits?!?). I guess that’s not the dictionary definition of “ironic,” but it’s pretty sweet nonetheless.
Comment by abb1 —
May 6, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
Why, Hanoi had Soviet anti-aircraft guns and missiles. In Iraq it would be exactly like shooting fish in a barrel.
Comment by Mojo —
May 6, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
Where do you dig up these trolls, Thoreau?
Comment by Glaivester —
May 6, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
Boy, does Kagan like to hear himself talk. It seems like 50% of the piece consisted of little tangents or asides.
If the Sauids have rigged their oil wells so they can explode them if someone tries to take them, as some think they have, this plan could certainly backfire.
Comment by Jennifer —
May 6, 2008 @ 9:48 pm
This plan would backfire even if we somehow successfully grabbed all the oil in the Middle East. There would be no doubt left in anyone’s mind that the US was openly and officially the type of nation that would do anything to anybody so long as we thought we could benefit. Why should anyone trust or feel comfortable around us, ever again?
Comment by bill —
May 6, 2008 @ 11:24 pm
Glaivester, its Kaplan not Kagan.
It is a little short on detail, what oilfields exactly is he talking about? All the Saudi fields, the rest of the Gulf? Iran? What about Venezuela?
Who exactly is going to run them? The locals? They probably aren’t too keen at seeing their nations patrimony stolen by the Great Satan and sold at the cost of production.
Maybe they can recruit all the young Republicans that flocked to the CPI to rebuild Iraq in the mirror image of the Great Republic. We know how well that worked.
I like that phrase “Great Republic”. Maybe you can legally change the name of the country. Not even to “Great Republic of America”, but just “The Great Republic”
Comment by abb1 —
May 7, 2008 @ 5:44 am
Why should anyone trust or feel comfortable around us, ever again?
But why do people join the mafia? Why do they want so much to become a made-man, wise-guy, good-fella?
And why do people outside the mob cooperate with the mob? Because they feel it’s the best alternative for whatever it is they want to achieve.
Comment by Glaivester —
May 7, 2008 @ 8:02 am
Sorry. I had another article that was by by Kagan I am thinking about blogging about, and I must have gotten my wires crossed.
Comment by Barry —
May 7, 2008 @ 9:14 am
Comment by Athlon —
“And how have we moved in 5 years from ‘we gotta invade to save ourselves from being nuked’ to ‘we gotta invade to save them from themselves’ to ‘we gotta invade to steal their oil and sell it at cost price, [leading to an acceleration of the global-warming catastrophe]’?”
Well, really, we didn’t. The post-9/11 view of most Americans was (IMHO) ‘payback’. With little concern about who ‘they’ were, as long as lots of ‘them’ were killed. The words were just cover, like when country A is attacked by country B, but purely by happenstance country A just happens to have its military mobilized on the border, leading to a ‘defensive counterattack’ roughly five minutes later.
Comment by bill —
May 7, 2008 @ 9:31 am
Barry, if you loved the Great Republic you would realize that it doesn’t matter who you attack in retaliation. America is the greatest and free-est nation, so anytime an American kills a non-American, the amount of freedom in the world increases.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 7, 2008 @ 12:03 pm
I don’t know if I’d go quite as far as Barry’s analysis of our national mindset going into Iraq. I agree with him that the underlying motive was revenge: Go to the Middle East and kick some ass. But I think that a mix of fear and good intentions were also a big part of it. Many people know how ugly revenge is, so sometimes they like to persuade themselves that it wasn’t really revenge.
The cover story was as important for maintaining self-respect as it was for maintaining some illusion of credibility with everybody else. If Americans could persuade themselves that there really were WMD being loaded onto toy airplanes, then they wouldn’t have to see murderers when they look in the mirror.
Comment by bill —
May 7, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
Thoreau
I think you’re right but anybody who seriously pushes that thesis is considered a traitor.
Comment by abb1 —
May 7, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
Murderer is the mirror? So what. Bonnie and Clyde, wild-west gunslingers – they are practically national heroes. Just a matter of spinning the story in the right way.
Comment by Jennifer —
May 7, 2008 @ 3:30 pm
But why do people join the mafia? Why do they want so much to become a made-man, wise-guy, good-fella? And why do people outside the mob cooperate with the mob? Because they feel it’s the best alternative for whatever it is they want to achieve.
But look at the number and type of people who do. To keep with your analogy, if we take the Middle Eastern oil fields for ourselves we’ll be viewed as the equivalent of the mafia by the rest of the world. A criminal element rather than a legitimate force to be reckoned with.
Compare this to just a few years ago when we were sometimes called the “world’s police force.” Yes, that sucks in its own way but overall, being viewed as the police is better than being viewed as the mafia.
For all the many, many complaints I have against police abuses in the US, I can definitely imagine realistic situations wherein I would willingly cooperate with the police for some reason or other. I can’t think of any situations where I’d voluntarily cooperate with the mafia.
Comment by abb1 —
May 7, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
Police and the mob quite often are one and the same. For the US to become legitimate police force in the world, it has to be fully controlled by some independent and universally recognized international entity, a world government. That has never been the case.
Neocons argue that maintaining the pretense of legitimacy is not worth it: it imposes significant limitations without providing any real benefits. Pure, direct, naked power projection is more efficient for a nation as powerful as the US.
Besides, there’s always a “coalition of the willing” of some sort; there will always be states (and probably plenty of them) that find it profitable to join the US. Different groups of states for different adventures.
That’s the argument.
I don’t see anything illogical in it. It is wicked, sure, and it should be regarded as such – but stupid? I dunno. Why?
Comment by Athlon —
May 7, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
a. Barry, my shock was purely that at least one neo-con had stopped weaving cover stories completely. It’s a bit like the old saw ‘hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue’ – I just found it disturbing that we were now so far down the rabbithole that people aren’t even pretending any more. Pretending that it’s all for their own damn good is a very old American tradition, and at least leaves open the line of argument that we should stop ‘it’ as ‘it’ is not, in fact, for their own good.
abb1, I see where you are coming from, but you are forgetting the fact that US dominance is a relative thing. For example, the US defense budget is by far the biggest in the world largely because everyone else spends 1-3% of GDP, which is historically very low. Should the Europeans and the East Asians be sufficiently spooked (and the kind of naked theft described would probably do it) they could strongly exceed current US defense spending without really wrecking their economies. Sure, it would take them a little while to get the stuff built (with their superb manufacturing bases) and people trained, but in 10-15 years we would be looking at a properly multipolar world. The impressive result of foreign policy in 90s is that by being relatively restrained the US was able to build up an amazing dominance and a lot of freedom of action without a proper arms race occurring to wipe it out again.
Comment by Jennifer —
May 7, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
Neocons argue that maintaining the pretense of legitimacy is not worth it: it imposes significant limitations without providing any real benefits. Pure, direct, naked power projection is more efficient for a nation as powerful as the US.
As Athlon pointed out, one reason we’re as powerful as we are is that thus far, despite our shenanigans over the last few years, the nations who could seriously challenge us if they were willing to make the effort never felt they needed to.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor it was said they awakened a sleeping giant. The guy who wrote this crazy essay is suggesting that now America should awaken not one sleeping giant, but several.
Comment by abb1 —
May 8, 2008 @ 4:12 am
Your objection is valid, and the neocons, of course, understand it too. That’s why they advocate preventive actions (preventive wars) to head off the emergence of a rival, a state or coalition with a strategic advantage. See Wolfowitz’s infamous strategy paper published recently; it’s all in there.
You could argue that the US is not powerful enough to follow this strategy, but that’s obviously a matter of judgement. It may not be powerful enough the way it is now, but with higher level of national mobilization, unity, discipline, militarism it could be much, much stronger (unless it falls apart, of course, like it almost did in the 1970s).
Again, they have a plan. It’s a matter of judgement. It doesn’t seem illogical, it has been done before, by the Rome, by the British, I don’t know, Genghis Khan; it’s not without a precedent.
Comment by Jennifer —
May 8, 2008 @ 9:56 am
Your objection is valid, and the neocons, of course, understand it too. That’s why they advocate preventive actions (preventive wars) to head off the emergence of a rival, a state or coalition with a strategic advantage.
But the neocons fool themselves. When analyzing data hoping for a certain outcome, it’s very easy to unintentionally cook the results to get what you want. On paper, bombing Pearl Harbor looked like a good preventive measure from the Japanese perspective–here’s a nation full of isolationist backwoods hicks, and if we give a good bombing to their main Pacific base we’ll knock out their Navy and they won’t be able to interfere with our plans. And this would’ve worked, if America on Dec. 8, 1941 had the same attitude as America on Dec. 6.
But in retrospect, it was suicidally stupid to assume that even a non-interventionist nation would shrug off an attack on their major Navy base. And it’s just as stupid to assume that the rest of the world would shrug off an attempt by an already-out-of-control state to grab the rest of the world’s supply of oil. Not that mere stupidity will stop the neocons, of course.
Those here who have met me in person know that physically, I’m small and weak and non-threatening. I’m smart, though, and I could probably write up a paper making a very, very compelling case to how I can mug Mike Tyson and steal his wallet. Certainly I’m far more clever than Tyson, and could beat him in any battle of wits, so let me explain how I’ll be crafty and kick him in the testicles and grab his wallet and . . . well, point is, I can write up such a paper, and my neocon friends will be convinced that it’s right and accurate and my financial problems will soon be over courtesy Mr. Tyson. And then, when I try to attack him and get my butt whipped, my followers and I can insist that our plan was valid all along and would’ve worked if not for those goddamned traitors in the media and their “Jennifer can’t beat up Mike Tyson” propaganda stories. The thought “this plan never had a chance of succeeding” will never, ever occur to them.
Comment by abb1 —
May 8, 2008 @ 10:59 am
But the US, arguably, has more military power, conventional military power, than all the rest of the world. So it’s far less problematic than Japan vs. US and you against Mike Tyson. They are not obviously wrong.
Comment by Jennifer —
May 8, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
But the US, arguably, has more military power, conventional military power, than all the rest of the world.
Because the rest of the world thus far has no desire to beat plowshares into swords. That’ll change if we give them a reason to, just as the US decided to majorly ramp up military spending after Pearl Harbor.
And the “me/Tyson” analogy was meant to describe neocon tendency toward self-delusion, not a comparison of different world military capacities or potentials.
Comment by Athlon —
May 8, 2008 @ 4:51 pm
abb1, your point might hold if we were playing some game (and I admit that some neocons think that way) but in the real world
a) there would be almost zero domestic support for attacking the Europeans or the Japanese (or even the Chinese) just because they had pushed their defense spending up
b)the US armed forces have not engaged a large power in combat since the Korean War. I wouldn’t be too sanguine about whether they could e.g. overrun Western Europe or, even Japan. Trying to wipe out a major power at the end of a long logistic chain is really hard. Even for the US. The stompings that have been dealt out to third-rate, Third world powers are not a clear guide to how this would turn out
c) Most of the major powers that are economically big enough to start any kind of arms race either have long range nukes or could put some together in short order. That will encourage reflection (see Korea, North)
More generally, my point is that the US, while large and well armed, only has 20-25% of world GDP. If every major nation uparmed to at least the US level of GDP, the Europeans would have a bigger military than the US, the Chinese would start catching up fast and several other powers would become quite dangerous. If they panicked and boosted defense spending to Israel-type levels (and Israel survives quite well economically, give or take a bit of US aid) even the Japanese could get close to parity. It’s a big, productive, world out there, and it’s a long time (1945) since the US was half of world GDP. Let’s hope everyone keeps building those plowshares
Comment by abb1 —
May 8, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
Domestic support can be stirred, created, that’s trivial.
They are not planning to attack Europe or China, they are not idiots. They merely are calling for a naked aggression in the middle east (and Persia, I suppose) for now, read the article. I don’t see any reason to believe that the Europeans and Chinese would become openly hostile and start arming themselves to defend or liberate Saudi Arabia if this were to happen.
Comment by Athlon —
May 8, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
I did read the article (my head still hurts). And yes, it’s not hard to get sufficient domestic support to knock about some distant brown folks. I buy that too. My only point is that a second order effect of truly blatant and continuous levels of US warmongering (especially around global energy chokepoints) is the risk (not a certainty, granted) of driving a slow but steady remilitarisation of the major nations of the world, and as a result a serious and more rapid erosion in relative levels of American power. This is not such a bad thing in itself; however a world of 3-6 remilitarised and nervous Great Powers is probably, all things considered, more dangerous than the one we live in at the moment. I’ve read enough history to know that when it comes to dealing out truly vast amounts of death, misery and destruction, you just can’t match two or more big states slugging it out to the finish.
Comment by Jennifer —
May 8, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
I don’t see any reason to believe that the Europeans and Chinese would become openly hostile and start arming themselves to defend or liberate Saudi Arabia if this were to happen.
I doubt the Europeans or the Chinese give a damn about Saudi Arabia, but I’ll bet they DO care about the world supply of oil, which they need just as much as we do.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 8, 2008 @ 6:40 pm
It’s worth noting that the French are building more bases in the Persian Gulf area.
Comment by abb1 —
May 9, 2008 @ 3:29 am
Jennifer, that’s why they are more likely to participate than to oppose:
Athlon, I absolutely agree with what you said in 39. But I guess they are willing to risk it.
To seize the ME oil field and subjugate the Arabs … to destroy what’s left of the post-WWII consensus, world order and risk the possibility another global war in the future. Is it worth it? Hmm. No, to me it doesn’t even come close, but, again, it’s a matter of judgment…
Comment by John Spragge —
May 9, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
You miss the most disastrous result. If the mere possession of oil reserves can attract the attention of the US Department of Defense, the following things will happen:
1) Governments will classify oil reserves and associated geological data secret.
2) Legislatures will rush through laws requiring licenses to prospect for oil. They will issue those licenses only to companies under control of their own nationals, who will pledge to keep their discoveries secret.
3) American planners will therefore have little or no idea what global reserves they can purchase. As long as the US military runs on oil, and as long as the US faces a very resentful and hostile world, American strategic planners will allocate the supply of oil to ensure the success of their military. As a result, the American civilian sector will have less, leading to higher prices and a lower standard of living.