dittologica

The recent buzz about a swift resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian crisis may tempt you to think that George Bush wants to leave office next January with at least one positive accomplishment under his belt. Perhaps that is the simple motive going through Bush’s uncomplexified brain–but I doubt it. Certainly, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had other things in mind when he welcomed Bush to Israel with praise for his “vision, exceptional courage and determination in the face of evil and terror”. In case anyone doubted what was on his mind, Olmert followed up the Bush visit with an object demonstration of evil and terror. He unleashed the most brutal incursion into the Gaza Strip in over a year; an attempt to impress the most extreme right-wing members of his deteriorating coalition that he wasn’t going soft on Palestine.

During Bush’s stopover in Abu Dhabi, his—or rather his programmers’—real objective in the region was thrust into the spotlight: Iran. Otherwise known as “the world’s leading sponsor of state terrorism”, whose “actions threaten the security of nations everywhere” and which ”seeks to intimidate its neighbours with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric.”

In fact, Iran is a threat to the U.S. dream of a unipolar, Ameri-centric world. But not because of its supposed “meddling” in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor because of its non-existent nuclear weapons program. Rather, it is Iran’s relationship with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that has the cons, both neo- and not-so-neo-, worried. These two mutual security organizations have an overlapping membership which includes Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Armenia and Belarus. In addition, Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mongolia have observer status in the SCO. Although the SCO and CSTO were founded as vehicles for promoting the mutual security of the member nations, the two organizations have become forums for addressing the economic interests of the members.

The reason that Iran’s increasing involvement with these organizations sticks so painfully in the U.S.’s craw can be summed up in one, all-too-familiar word: oil. It’s not just Iran’s own vast oil reserves but the massive oil and gas wealth of the Caspian region and Central Asia that are the issue. The U.S. has been heavily involved in commercial and diplomatic efforts to woo the oil-rich Central Asian republics away from their affiliations with Russia and China and into the U.S. sphere. GE and Bechtel, for instance, have a huge stake in the building of trans-Caspian pipelines, which would direct gas and oil away from Russia and China and into Western markets. But the pipelines are opposed by both Iran and Russia. At the same time, Iran has suggested to Russia that they, as the world’s number one and two gas producers, should consult on the setting of world gas prices. In 2004 China signed a $100 billion deal for the supply of liquefied gas by Iran, and Iran is also one of China’s biggest suppliers of oil.

Clearly, Iran is a major player in the global oil stakes game. If it succeeds in supplying a large part of its own energy needs with nuclear power it will be able to increase its oil and gas exports, which will further enhance its role in the world market. The delirium of the U.S. and Western Europe about shutting down the Iranian nuclear energy program has the dual objectives of undercutting Iran’s energy plans while providing a pretext for a possible invasion to halt the “development” of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

The U.S. is trying every trick to keep the SCO and CSTO from coalescing into dominant players on the world scene. It funds political opposition movements in the former Soviet republics while lobbying client governments for military bases and lucrative contracts. It maintains a cold-war stance with Russia, and vies with China for Central Asian oil. Post-Shah Iran has a special place in the U.S. pantheon of demons. Successive American administrations have failed to get any kind of political or economic foothold there, and thus the U.S. has contingency plans to deal militarily with this “problem”.

Bush’s whistle-stop tour of Middle Eastern autocracies had little to do with furthering Irsaeli-Palestinian peace. And to the extent that it did, it is because the ongoing strife in that fringe of the Middle East is a serious destabilizing influence against U.S.-imposed order in the region. In the unlikely event that some sort of accord between Palestinians and Israelis could be concocted, it would allow the U.S. to turn its undivided attention upon its real objective: the oil of Central Asia and the Caspian.