http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/oil/2004/0204quest.htmIn Quest for Energy Security,
US Makes New Bet: on Democracy
By Andrew Higgins
Wall Street Journal
February 4, 2004
In April 1975, America's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins, sent a confidential cable to Washington denouncing as "criminally insane" an idea then being floated in the media: America should seize Saudi oil fields to break an Arab oil cartel and ensure a supply of cheap energy to fuel the U.S. economy.
Scoffing at the bravado of what he called America's "New Hawks," he warned that any attempt to take Arab oil by force would lead to world-wide fury and a protracted guerrilla war. This "could bring only disaster to the United States and to the world," he wrote.
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FDR and the King
America has been fretting about dependence on foreign oil since the early 1940s, when Interior Secretary Harold Ickes wrote a gloomy article titled "We're Running out of Oil!" It warned: "If there should be a World War III, it would have to be fought with someone else's petroleum." Soon thereafter, geologist Everette Lee DeGolyer returned to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia and reported that "the center of gravity of world oil production is shifting ... to the Middle East."
With this in mind, Franklin D. Roosevelt, though seriously ill, made a stop on his journey home from the 1945 Yalta conference to meet the Saudi king, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. Their encounter on a battleship in the Suez Canal established bonds that, for more than half a century, would tie the two countries: oil and security. It also raised an issue that would divide them for just as long -- establishment of a Jewish state. Roosevelt wanted it in Palestine. The king suggested Jews get land in Germany.
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Saudi Arabia also disappointed. On Oct. 17, 1973, Mr. Kissinger met with other top U.S. officials to discuss the Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli war and possibility of oil-supply disruptions. Reporting on a meeting held earlier in the day with Arab envoys, he described the Saudi foreign minister as a "good little boy," according to recently released transcripts, and predicted confidently: "We don't expect an oil cutoff in the next few days." Minutes later, an aide rushed in with a bulletin: Saudi and other Arab oil producers had announced an immediate cut in output. Prices leapt 70% overnight and later quadrupled. The U.S. sank into a recession. Mr. Nixon launched a plan to end all imports by 1980. It flopped: Imports rose 40% by the target date. Mr. Kissinger turned to the Soviet Union for help, offering wheat in return for oil. The "bushels for barrels" plan fizzled.
The Military Option
Behind the scenes, officials mulled a more robust response to Arab cuts. Ambassador Akins says he knew something was afoot after a barrage of articles appeared championing war against Saudi Arabia. Particularly belligerent was one that appeared in Harper's under the byline Miles Ignotus, a pen name. Titled "Seizing Arab Oil," it argued that "the only countervailing power to OPEC's control of oil is power itself -- military power."
Britain's National Archives last month released several secret reports on America's likely response to the oil crisis. A December 1973 assessment by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee said Washington might use subversion to "replace the existing rulers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi with more amenable men" or try "gun-boat diplomacy" to intimidate existing rulers. But an invasion to seize Arab oil fields was "the possibility uppermost in American thinking," the report added. It said Mr. Schlesinger had told Britain's ambassador "it was no longer obvious to him that the United States could not use force."
Relations With Iraq
When Mr. Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, Washington initially stayed aloof, but grew worried when the tide turned and Iraq faced defeat. The U.S. then provided Iraq with satellite pictures and other help. Donald Rumsfeld, as President Reagan's special Mideast envoy, visited Baghdad twice. He discussed the idea, never followed up, of building a pipeline out of Iraq through Jordan. "I noted that Iraq's oil exports were important," Mr. Rumsfeld reported after a 1983 meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, according to a cable obtained by the National Security Archive. Mr. Rumsfeld visited again the following year, despite an uproar over Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons against Iran.
A 1988 national-security directive enshrined the wooing of Iraq as policy. "Normal relations" with the Hussein regime, it said, "would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East." But this courtship, too, ended in tears: Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, seized its oil fields and began moving troops toward Saudi Arabia. Once again, a partner had become an enemy.
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