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other countries' politics and economies to get oil.
I think many politicians perpetuate the idea that if we don't engage in imperialist foreign policy, countries like Iraq and Venezuela might withhold oil from us. So, by controlling those countries, we protect ourselves.
I think the truth is that other countries want us to have a functioning economy so that we can buy oil at reasonable price and have regular sustained economic growth. They don't want to deny us oil. They want to sell us oil. Their only difference with Washington is that they want a bigger profit margin for the selling country, and a smaller profit margin for the half-dozen oil companies that control most of the oil business.
How do we know this? Because oil countries, including Venezuela, are donating huge sums of money to help reconstruction to ensure that the US economy doesn't slide into recession, thus dampening economic development and, therefore, the demand for their major source of revenue -- oil.
We actually didn't have to wait until this past week to learn this. The early '70s OPEC oil embargo taught everyone the same lesson. OPEC countries suffered greatly from the constriction on demand caused by the reduction in industrial activity and growth. Their embargo bit the hand that fed them, and they knew it. This is why Saudi Arabia was willing to reinvest so many petrodollars back in the US after the early 70s. They thought they were propping up the US consumer. However, a lot of that money has subsequently concentrated in the hands of the wealthy in a way that Keynes would tell you isn't helping the US consumer very much. But that's another issue.
Katrina, and the oil countries' response to it, raises some other interesting questions. I'm starting to think that Bush is engaging in wealth-concentrating policies at home knowing that it's bad for the economy, but he's holding the American middle class as hostage, knowing that the rest of the world wants to save us and will be willing to pay the bribe to keep Bush from slitting our throats. This is what China's doing. They may or may not agree with the the Bush ideology of wealth polarization in America, but they do need the American middle class desperately, and they're willing to keep buying US debt to stave off a complete collapse of the US economy.
With Katrina, conservative political ideology is responsible for the global warming, and the decay of infrastructure and of social (and emergency) services, and for the creating of an underclass that was extremely vulnerable to this crisis (both the natural disaster and the poor rescue effort that followed), yet countries which depend on the US consumer to buy their oil are tripping over each other donating to the reconstruction effort. They're being blackmailed too. They're willing to be the final insurer of the problems Bush is creating, and I suspect Bush knows this.
But back to my first point: ultimately, it seems, American oil imperialism isn't about protecting the US economy from being denied oil. It's about protecting the profitability of a few large oil companies. So, when politicians tell you we need to be in control of Iraq so that we're guaranteed a cheap source of oil, tell them, the best defense to being denied oil is to have a strong, healthy American middle class. So long as we have people who can purchase oil, Iraq and Venezuela and Iran will always want to sell it to us.
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