Oil
consumption is seen by most citizens of affluent democracies as an
innocent, almost wholesome activity. Although oil sometimes receives
negative attention - as it did during the Gulf War and following the Exxon Valdez disaster - burning oil as a fuel is seldom viewed as one of the deadly
sins. Smoking, littering and illegal drug use all receive more public
censure than filling the tank.
The use of oil is generally associated with progress and comfort.
Despite traffic jams, breakdowns and deadly accidents, driving is
commonly viewed as a pleasurable activity.
Although slick automobile ads equate personal motor transport with
the Statue of Liberty, the reality is that the power of oil poses a
conflict with freedom in a democratic society.
How Oil Sustains Dictatorships
Oil is critical to the support of dictatorships since it provides the
most abundant form of wealth for repressive governments - income that
does not have to be obtained through taxation. The collection of taxes
generally compels a higher degree of consent from citizens than the
misappropriation of oil revenues.
When big money is needed for the repressive apparatus of
despotism, warrior dictators in the Middle East need not fear taxpayer
revolt because their military schemes are founded on their control over
oil.
All dictatorships in the Middle East are supported in some way by
oil revenues. Egypt’s repressive government receives a third of its
budget from oil. Syria, a significant oil producer in its own right, is
further helped by oil superpower Iran in its sponsorship of terrorism
to derail the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
While repression is in retreat in the post-Cold War world, the
remaining havens of dictatorship are concentrated in oil-rich states,
many of which export war and repression beyond their borders.
Nominal democracies such as Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Peru are aided in their repressive power by oil exports.
Of the five Persian Gulf states that each have more than 70
billion barrels of oil, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia - only Kuwait is rated as “partially free” by the
nonpartisan US humanrights group Freedom House [www.freedomhouse.org]. The rest are ranked as “not free” (the Freedom House designation for absolute dictatorships).
Freedom House’s impartiality is shown by its consistently low
ranking for Saudi Arabia, a close US ally. Since Freedom House began
its annual national rankings for political rights and civil liberties
in 1955, Saudi Arabia has consistently been given the worst ratings.
The Saudi reserves of 258 billion barrels amount to more than double
those of any other country. The United Arab Emirates, another close
ally in the pro-US Gulf Cooperation Council, is also rated by Freedom
House as “not free.”
Other significant oil producers in the rogue’s galley of despotic
states include Iraq, Equatorial Guinea, China, Turkmenistan, Sudan,
Syria, Libya and Myanmar (formerly Burma). Only four of the 16
lowest-ranked countries are not tied to the vortex of oil-financed
oppression.
With the sole exception of Myanmar, these superoil dictatorships
have maintained the most wide-ranging religious persecution of the
post-Cold War period. Dissidents in the superoil states are threatened
by the world’s most ruthless security services.
All these tyrannies continue to practice capital punishment and
use torture. Some make mutilations part of normal sentencing. Saudi
Arabia’s religious intolerance falls harshly on Christians and Shiite
Muslims. Iraq’s secular Arab nationalist government has brutally
relocated many Shiite civilians, driven thousands into exile and
desecrated the faith’s most holy shrines. In Iran, the Shiite theocracy
has exhibited extreme repression against religious minorities.
There are several Islamic majority semi-democracies that lack oil
- Albania, Bosnia, Bangladesh, the Kyrgyz Republic and Turkey. All have
better democratic ratings than Kuwait, the most liberal
Islamic-majority state that exports oil. In Albania and Bangladesh,
governments have been peacefully changed through free elections.
Morocco, an oil-less semi-democratic state, is the only
predominately Arabic-speaking nation that has developed a modern fiscal
system with transparent accounting of public revenues. It is also
unique in having a constitutional government and a long record of
multiparty elections.
Moving from the Middle East to Asia, we find that all four Asian
full democracies on Freedom House’s 1998 list were oil importers, while
every “not free” country was an oil exporter in 1992. All listed
counties that were oil exporters in 1992 had failed to democratize by
the beginning of 1998.
Oil in Latin America
In Latin America, most mainland states that are now rated as only
“partially free” - Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru and
Mexico - have significant oil reserves. All these countries have seen
violent struggles between native communities and oil development
interests, involving horrendous human rights violations by private
armies and death squads.
Latin America’s full democracies - Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Honduras, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Panama - are all oil importers.
In oil-less Costa Rica, the most durable democracy in the region,
environmentalists successfully routed an oil pipeline away from a
threatened rainforest.
Throughout Latin America, nations that have experienced the
greatest success in eliminating poverty, protecting the environment and
establishing democracy lack significant oil wealth. They achieve higher
levels of human development and notably better results in public health
and education. The power of the military, where it has not been
abolished altogether (as in Panama and Costa Rica), is gradually being
reduced.
Chile’s restored democracy recently abolished compulsory military
service, and it was the first Latin American country to elect Green
Party representatives to the national legislature and cabinet.
Costa Rica, Uruguay and Chile were the region’s only relatively
durable democracies for most of the 20th century. Their success in
pioneering social welfare was based on taxation, not on oil wealth.
Today, fully democratic Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina and
Panama have better United Nations “Human Development Index” rankings
than oil-rich Venezuela.
The oil-less democracies of Latin America are developing
impressive green strategies to reduce global warming. Costa Rica is
implementing one of the world’s most ambitious strategies for
greenhouse gas reduction. By 2010, it plans to produce all of its
electricity from renewable power. Costa Rica has already imposed a 15
percent carbon tax on fossil fuels. One third of its revenues supports
tree planting by farmers. Costa Rica has certified some 16 million tons
of carbon credits through the Chicago Board of Trade, which will
generate $300 million in revenues to protect 1.25 million acres of
tropical rainforest.
Argentina plans to spend $700 million for reforestation projects.
Argentina’s announcement that it would not delay action on global
warming until industrial countries acted was widely hailed by
environmental groups. It marked a clear break with past claims by
developing counties that increased carbon emissions were needed for
economic growth.
Oil Royalties: Barriers to Freedom
Petroleum exports are simply the most lucrative form of wealth stemming
from geographic advantage rather than from hard work and creativity.
Royalties from oil extraction do not dominate the economies of the
world’s successful capitalist countries.
Royalties are not the basis for new technologies such as the
microchip, solar power and the electronic information industries.
Royalties dominate the economies of the most repressive tyrannies of
the world. Not one of the 16 Freedom House petrotyrannies is an engine
of new science or technology. Oil does not drive the capitalist dream
machine, protect it from risk or lubricate its liquidity. Freedom, more
than oil, serves to make the world go ‘round.
The oil interests that dominate dictatorships have considerable
influence in the democratic world. Oil’s uneven distribution forces
most industrialized nations to import petroleum. More evenly
distributed coal and natural gas have never been the basis of a
successful cartel such as OPEC.
There are currently 57 free states in the world, among them only
three are net-oil exporters. One, Venezuela, has a shaky democracy,
being rated by Freedom House as only “partly free.” The only two
stable, full democracies are Norway and Trinidad & Tobago.
Democracy in Norway is a product of a long struggle by the
country’s peasant, labor and co-operative movements, which could not be
bought off by a share in oil wealth. Norway and Sweden lead the world
in the high percentage of parliamentary seats held by women.
When it achieved independence from Great Britain in 1962,
Trinidad’s political elite could have used its position as an oil
exporter to cling to power. The fact that the country’s elite did not
succumb to this temptation is a sign of their commitment to democracy.
Democracies vs. Oil
The great threat at the dawn of the new millennium is not a “clash of
civilizations” based on ancient religious teachings that stress
humility in the face of the awesome powers of the universe. The
uppermost dangers are posed by dictatorships kept alive by vast oil
wealth.
The US and its allies may boast of superiority in high-tech
weapons, but their economies are vulnerable to repressive rulers who
control oil. The paralyzing grip that securing access to cheap oil has
on democratic politics is understandable. Voters tend to reward
politicians for low inflation, high employment and booming economic
growth. The easiest way to do this is to have cheap oil. This causes US
bowing and scraping to the Persian Gulf dictatorships.
Since 1973, business cycles have echoed the patterns of oil
prices. The global economic boom from 1993 to 1999, originally thought
to be the product of technological innovations like the Internet, is
now understood as the product of an oil glut and the breakdown of OPEC
discipline.
In their cramped focus on access to oil as the badge of US power,
strategic studies experts ignore how this has blinded the US to the
more critical goals of a democratic peace that would eliminate the need
for continued massive military expenditures and facilitate more secure
business investments. Such an agenda involves the international spread
of the rule of law, safeguarding human rights and discouraging the
proliferation of nuclear weapons.
These more important foreign policy objectives are blunted by
goals like selling cars to China, stretching oil lines across
Afghanistan, petroleum development in Chad or Cameroon and the search
for oil in the Amazon rainforest. All of these narrow, commercial goals
that benefit the oil industry also clash with efforts to halt global
warming.
Democratic power is best enhanced by cutting off the biggest form
of tribute from democracies to dictatorships - payments for oil. The
fortunes of Osama bin Laden, funds for inflitrators into Kashmir, the
scheming for an authoritarian Slavic Federation, nuclear proliferation,
the plotting by terrorists to destroy the Arab-Israeli peace process,
and the September 11 attacks are all paid for eventually by democracies
through their purchase of oil.
Osama bin Laden and UNOCAL
Osama bin Laden’s skill as a mediator enhances his stature among
authoritarian extremists, making him the virtual ruler of
petrotyrannies.
Following the bombing of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and
Nairobi in August, 1998, bin Laden conveniently vanished from his
former Afghan base. Apart from frustrating American revenge, he sought
to reduce the Taliban’s difficulties as they were negotiating with
American investors to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan from
Central Asia to Pakistan.
Ultimately, bin Laden’s moves to help the Taliban in its
negotiations with the US oil company UNOCAL were in vain. The Clinton
administration shut the door on the UNOCAL deal as part of a growing
concern that international terrorism, human-rights violations and the
drug trade should take priority over outdated obsessions about access
to petroleum.
The American Petroleum Institute denounced this evolving
human-security orientation in a study that identified 35 counties in
which US policy banned companies from investing in strategic petroleum
industries, accounting for 10 percent of world oil production.
Osama bin Laden’s success as the man who defies America is
understandable only in light of the support that he gets from
autocracies that have great oil wealth. The bold acts of anti-American
terrorism associated with his name have served to create a
sensationalist unity that covers up the profound differences among the
various groups and states allied with his cause.
What is remarkable about bin Laden is the global nature of his
role in sustaining and spreading petrotyranny - from the Horn of Africa
and Central Asia to the depths of India’s forests in Assam and the
mountains of Kashmir.
Petrotyranny vs. the Greens
In cultures around the world, respect for the sacredness of the Earth
is clashing with a militaristic and toxic oil culture. The strongest
foe of these petrotyrannies is the global environmental movement - the
leading force in the recent wave of freedom.
The struggle between oil companies and their environmental critics
in North America is a battle between giants. Massive oil corporations
with considerable wealth and power clash with vigilant environmental
groups having millions of dedicated members.
Oil companies and enviros keep watch on each other very carefully.
Greens pioneered the use of web pages; oil corporations quickly
followed suit.
The world almost witnessed the elimination of oil in the early
stages of the Cold War under the leadership of Democratic President
Harry Truman. Questioning the need to move away from oil began in 1948,
the start of the USA’s chronic condition of becoming a net oil importer.
During Truman’s formidable leadership, it appeared that green
power would be allied to US struggles against the oil-financed
Communist block. During his presidency, southern public housing
projects commonly began to use solar power. The federal government also
used solar water heating installations in Florida defense facilities.
At the start of the Cold War, the centers of the world’s growing
solar industry were focused exclusively in the democratic free world -
in the US, Japan, Australia and Israel.
Miami was one of the leading centers for development of solar
water heaters, where they outsold electric and gas competitors by two
to one. The Rose Elementary School, built in Tucson, Arizona, in 1948,
became the world’s first solar-heated public building. The
Truman-commissioned report, Resources for Freedom, advocated 13 million solar-heated US homes by 1975.
Republicans In; Solar Out
Truman’s interest in alternative energy was not shared by his
Republican successor. Dwight Eisenhower’s administration was closely
linked to the oil and automotive industries. The confirmation hearings
for installing former auto executive “Engine Charlie” Wilson as
secretary of defense gave rise to the memorable slogan: “What’s good
for General Motors is good for the USA.”
The Republicans turned the thrust of US policy away from Truman’s
social democratic crusade for freedom, toward an oil industry-dominated
strategy for corporate control. This new thrust emerged in
CIA-sponsored coups in Guatemala and Iran, and in the support of an oil
dictatorship in Venezuela (which was overthrown in 1958 in a nonviolent
coup supported by massive popular demonstrations).
The collusion between the US government and repression abroad was
advantageous for US oil corporations but disastrous for stable
international security. The CIA coup in Iran set back democratic
movements in the Middle East, encouraging the later rise of Islamic
fundamentalism. The might of the US oil companies inspired a revolt
among NATO allies in Europe, with France eventually pulling out of the
military command of NATO. Latin America, in response to the US-plotted
Guatemala coup, became stridently anti-American.
Blinded by the power of oil wealth, the Eisenhower-Nixon
administration disregarded human rights in foreign policy, a strategic
blunder that would be repeated later in the Nixon-Ford administration
guided by Henry Kissinger.
The Republicans of the 1950s had no interest in solar power.
Despite the revolutionary discoveries by Bell Telephone Labs in 1956,
which set the basis for current models of silicon-based photovoltaic
cells, no government efforts were made to commercialize this technology.
The Reagan administration put an end to President Jimmy Carter’s
solar-power tax credits and subsidies for energy conservation. Reagan
refused to staff or fund Carter’s Solar Bank, ended programs to
increase energy efficiency in refrigerators and air conditioners, eased
fuel-efficiency standards, slashed funding for renewable energy
research by 90 percent and removed Carter’s solar panels from the White
House roof.
After 12 years of Republican administrations, Democratic President
Bill Clinton returned to the solar policies of Carter. During his first
two years in office, there was a 35 percent increase in funding for
research and development of photovoltaics. Clinton’s attempt to
implement an energy tax was watered down to a four-cent-a-gallon
increase on the gasoline tax. Republicans fought back by exempting
sport utility vehicles from meeting fuel-efficiency standards.
The Clinton administration viewed the development of renewable
energy as a critical battleground in its quest for a democratic peace.
It turned the vast military labs of the Cold War toward researching
renewable technologies to end dependence on foreign oil. Clinton’s
Clean-Car Initiative was intended to redirect the $3 billion being
spent on weapons development into creating vehicles that did not
require oil. Clinton budgeted $6.3 billion for US-made clean-energy
technologies and set a goal of 1 million solar roofs by 2010.
The green civil society that blossomed during the Carter
administration survived the assaults of the hostile Reagan presidency.
Even in the state of Texas, its capital city, Austin, has become an
island of renewable power, where decomposing sewage generates 800 kw
while reducing methane emissions. Photovoltaic panels power Austin’s
homes and traffic lights. Sacramento, Calif., has installed solar water
heaters in 14,000 homes and hosts the world’s biggest solar powerplant,
generating 2 MW of electric power.
Many US communities have become remarkably oil-free. Soldiers
Grove, Wis., a village of 600, has become the first US community
outside of an Indian reservation to obtain all its electricity from
solar conversions. Northwest Missouri State University became the first
university to free itself of fossil fuels.
An archipelago of green-energy outposts - Indian reservations,
Amish communities and university towns - is surrounded by a sea of oil
money and power. Outside such green ghettos, renewable technologies are
simply unheard of in a culture where views are shaped by a
corporate-owned mass media heavily influenced by the energy industry.
Unlike transitional European giants such as BP and Shell, major
US-owned oil companies, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and Texaco,
continue to deny the existence of global warming. Their fundamentalist
oil-worshipping faith even survived a November 1998 corporate exodus
from the pro-oil Global Climate Coalition lead by Ford, General Motors,
Boeing, Enron, Lockheed Martin, 3M and United Technologies.
Although driving is considered to be an American right more
fundamental than the right to clean air and water, its power rests
essentially on a perpetually manufactured consent. Its unspoken
restrictions on freedom are so strong that several television networks
have not permitted the airing of paid anti-car advertisements from
environmental organizations.
The strength of the oil lobby is best revealed by the fact that US
fuel-efficiency standards are still weaker than those of Japan and
Europe. Much of the credit goes to the Coalition for Vehicle Choice,
the lobbying group created by the oil and automotive industries to
fight tougher fuel-efficiency rules.
Although the oil and auto industries ocassionally clash - with car
makers taking more environmentally appropriate stands on issues such as
toxic fuel additives - collusion between the two corporate giants in
opposing greener cars and tougher environmental regulation is more
typical behavior.
Increasing the affordability of solar power is critical to phasing
out fossil fuels. Politicians in Congress who are allied to oil
interests understand this quite well - in a negative sense.
The successful battle to keep oil drilling out of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge and its two complementary Canadian national
parks shows that, in a fully democratic society, oil power ultimately
loses when confronted by a strong environmental movement.
The deadly trinity of oil, war and dictatorship presents the
greatest challenge to humanity at the start of the new millennium.
Fortunately, with conservation and by replacing fossil fuels and
nuclear energy with renewables, it is possible to foster instead a holy
trinity of peace, human rights and environmental sustainability.
Bush’s Petrodollar Conflict
There is a flip-side to the oil equation that Big Oil and the White
House would like to keep hidden: the US money that flows to foreign
Petrotyrannies that is reinvested in the US economy.
Saudi billionaires have invested an astonishing $600 billion in
the US economy - in banks, defense, telecommunications, shopping malls
and real estate. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has invested nearly
$10 billion in Citigroup and nearly $1 billion in AOL Time Warner.
If these Middle East billionaires suddenly decided to “disinvest”
in the US, the impact on the US economy would be devastating.
The $18 billion Carlyse Group handles investments for the bin
Laden family and also pays former President George H.W. Bush to
represent its defense investments.
As the Center for Public Integrity notes, this means that “George
W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own
administration’s decisions, through his father’s investments.”
John Bacher is chair of the Niagra River Restoration Council, past president of the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society. Petrotyranny is available from Science for Peace [122 Hilton Ave., Toronto, M5R 3E7, Canada. $29.95 plus postage].
We don’t have a paywall because, as a nonprofit publication, our mission is to inform, educate and inspire action to protect our living world. Which is why we rely on readers like you for support. If you believe in the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible year-end donation to our Green Journalism Fund.
DonateGet four issues of the magazine at the discounted rate of $20.