Making the World Safe for Capitalism

Christopher Doran

Description

The Iraq war defined the first decade of the twenty-first century – leading to mass protests and raising profound questions about domestic politics and the use of military force. Yet most explanations of the war have a narrow focus either on political personalities or oil.



Christopher Doran provides a unique perspective, arguing that the drive to war came from the threat Iraq might pose to American economic hegemony if the UN sanctions regime was ended. Doran argues that this hegemony is rooted in third world debt and corporate market access. It was protection of these arrangements that motivated US action, not Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction or a simplistic desire to seize its oil.



This book will provide new insights on the war which still casts a shadow over global politics, and will have wide appeal to all those concerned about the Middle East, world peace and global development.
PART I: MAKING SENSE OF THE INVASION OF IRAQ

1. Introduction: Making Sense of Iraq

2. Iraq: A Devastated Country

3. Chile and the Blueprint for Iraq

PART II: IRAQ’S POTENTIAL THREAT TO SAUDI ARABIA

4. Nixon, Saudi Arabia, and the Geopolitics of the Iraq Invasion

5. Petrodollar Recycling and Third World Debt

6. Containing Iraq: the Gulf War and Sanctions

PART III: DOLLAR DOMINANCE

7. Threat to the Dollar: Iraq, the Euro, and Dollar Dominance

8. Dollar Challenge Redux: the Global Financial Crisis and Iraqi Oil

9. Containing Iraq: Oil, Imperialism, and the Rise of Corporate Rule

PART IV: US LOSING OUT POST SANCTIONS

10. Neoliberalism Wounded, US Hegemony Challenged

11. Losing Out: The Geopolitical Significance of Iraq’s Oil

12. Invading Iraq: Bush Agenda from Day One

PART V REGIME CHANGE: CREATING A FREE MARKET STATE

13. Regime Change: the Bremer Economic Orders

14. The Halliburton and Bechtel Contracts

15. Iraq: A New and Improved Saudi Arabia for the 21st Century

PART VI EXPANDING THE EMPIRE

16. The US Middle East Free Trade Area

17. Case Studies: Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Bahrain

18. Egypt and How to Make a Fortune from Hunger and Misery

PART VII A CASE STUDY OF IRAQI AGRICULTURE

19. Order 81 and the Genetically Modified Seeds of Democracy

20. Hunger and Misery: A Profitable Occupation

21. Conclusion: The Corporate Capture of the Democratic State

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Economic Policy
• Public Policy
• International Relations
• Political Science
• Iraq
• Geopolitics
• Political economy
• Irak

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 08 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849646680
• Langue: English

Extrait

Making the World Safe for Capitalism

First published 2012 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Christopher Doran 2012
The right of Christopher Doran to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3223 9 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3222 2 Paperback ISBN 978 1 84964 667 3 PDF ISBN 978 1 84964 669 7 Kindle ISBN 978 1 84964 668 0 ePub
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to the memory of Peter Gray.
Contents




PART I MAKING SENSE OF THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ
1 Introduction: Making Sense of Iraq
2 Iraq: A Devastated Country
3 A Full Scale Economic Overhaul: The Rise of Free Market Neoliberalism
4 Chile and the Blueprint for Iraq
PART II IRAQ’S POTENTIAL THREAT TO SAUDI ARABIA AS A US CLIENT STATE
5 Nixon, Saudi Arabia and the Geopolitical Roots of the Iraq Invasion
6 Petrodollar Recycling, Third World Debt and the Washington Consensus
7 Neoliberalism, Debt and American Empire
8 Containing Iraq: The Gulf War and Sanctions
PART III DOLLAR DOMINANCE: CONTROLLING THE DOLLAR, CONTROLLING IRAQ
9 Threat to the Dollar: Iraq, the Euro and Dollar Dominance
10 Dollar Challenge Redux: The Global Financial Crisis and Iraqi Oil
11 Containing Iraq: Oil, Imperialism and the Rise of Corporate Rule
12 Iraq: Resistance and Revolution
PART IV LOSING OUT: THE US ELIMINATED FROM OIL AND OTHER IRAQI MARKETS POST SANCTIONS
13 State of Play: Neoliberalism Wounded, US Hegemony Challenged
14 Losing Out: The Geopolitical Significance of Iraq’s Oil
15 The Push for War
16 Invading Iraq: Bush’s Agenda from Day One
PART V REGIME CHANGE: OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE A BRAND NEW, NEOLIBERAL, FREE MARKET STATE
17 Regime Change: The Bremer Economic Orders
18 Reconstruction and Corruption: The Next Klondike
19 Reconstruction and Corruption: The Halliburton and Bechtel Contracts
20 Locking Down Iraq: Post Sovereignty
21 Iraqi Oil: A New and Improved Saudi Arabia for the Twenty-first Century
PART VI EXPANDING THE EMPIRE: A NEOLIBERAL FREE TRADE AREA FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
22 The US Middle East Free Trade Area
23 Case Studies: Jordan and Morocco
24 Case Studies: Oman and Bahrain
25 Egypt and How to Make a Fortune from Hunger and Misery
PART VII SOWING THE SEEDS OF DEMOCRACY: A CASE STUDY OF IRAQI AGRICULTURE
26 Neoliberal Authority: Iraqi Agriculture
27 Order 81 and the Genetically Modified Seeds of Democracy
28 Seeds in the Ground
29 Hunger and Misery: A Profitable Occupation
PART VIII CONCLUSION: IRAQ AND THE CORPORATE CAPTURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC STATE
30 The Corporate Capture of the Democratic State
Notes
Index
Part I
Making Sense of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
1
Introduction: Making Sense of Iraq





If you thought the army
Was here protecting people like yourself
I’ve some news for you
We’re here to defend wealth
... We’re making the world safe for capitalism
Billy Bragg, ‘Marching Song of the Covert Battalions’
In April 1917, Woodrow Wilson told the people of the United States that they had to join the carnage of the First World War in order ‘to make the world safe for democracy’. He lied. Wilson’s desire to have America enter the war was in large part to protect American corporate investments in Britain and France, and to ensure that bankers like JP Morgan would get the money back they had loaned those countries. 1 The war was not to make the world safe for democracy; it was to make it safe for capitalism.
Eighty-six years later, in 2003, the US would enter another controversial war to make the world safe for capitalism: Iraq. And like the First World War, an American president would deliberately lie about the real reasons the country needed to wage war, a mainstream media would follow blindly, and in the war’s aftermath people would still be trying to make sense of what had happened, and why.
The 2003 American-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has arguably received the most media attention and analysis of any event in recent history. Yet a decade after the 9/11 attack that launched the US War on Terror and the subsequent Iraq invasion that fundamentally changed the course of US history, there is still a shortage of credible explanations. The key arguments put forward by the Bush, Blair (UK) and Howard (Australia) administrations were proven to be false, and Iraq proved to be the political downfall of all three leaders and their reputations.
What has resulted is a decade of national soul-searching, and a deep divide between left and right, progressive and conservative. Few agendas have been more divisive in American history than Bush’s self-proclaimed global War on Terror. This agenda has continued under the Obama administration, which despite being elected on a platform and promise of change, has continued much of the War on Terror policies of the Bush administration, which it had roundly condemned. Unfortunately, this has included Iraq. Ensuring that Iraq remains a US client state will continue to be American foreign policy regardless of who is in the White House, because a truly free and independent Iraq, unlike the vast majority of the world’s 195 nations, could actually challenge the key underpinnings of America’s global dominance.
Which is the point of this book: that the motivation for the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq in March 2003 was to eliminate the threats a post-UN sanctions Iraq posed to American economic hegemony. This hegemony, rooted in Third World debt and corporate market access, has seen trillions of dollars flow from the Third World to the First via the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and free trade agreements. An independent Iraq, free to develop its own oil resources unimpeded, would have had the potential to challenge Saudi Arabia’s petrodollar financing of the US economy, and directly challenge the Saudi state’s capacity to serve American interests via its dominant oil producer status.
The war has been an extension, and protection, of the same free market neoliberal policies which have driven successive American, British, and Australian governments over the past three decades. It was market access and control of the global economy that motivated the US to invade Iraq, not weapons of mass destruction, or ties to Al Qaeda, or a simplistic desire to seize Iraq’s oil. While consistent with those policies, invasion by military force was also an important – and frightening – new phase of US willingness to guarantee the survival of its global power.
Neoliberalism is the supercharged form of capitalism which emerged as a concerted American corporate response to the anti-Vietnam war, pro-consumer and environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s, to become the dominant government ideology from the early 1980s onwards. Along with Austrian Friedrich Hayek, American economist Milton Friedman is one of neoliberalism’s most famous, and enthusiastic, founding champions. In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Friedman outlines the three key cornerstones of neoliberal policy:


1. Governments must remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of the accumulation of profits.
2. Governments should sell off any assets they own that corporations could be running at a profit.
3. Governments should dramatically cut back funding of social programmes.
These can be succinctly summarised as deregulation, privatisation of public entities, and cutbacks of government services: capitalism on crack cocaine.
Better known in the United States in its various guises of free market ideology, Reaganism, trickle-down economics, or corporate globalisation, neoliberalism, in its most recent ideological incarnation under the Tea Party, is also the fundamental belief that the individual in society is best served by as little government as possible.
Friedman’s formula was applied domestically in the US beginning with the ‘Reagan Revolution’ in the early 1980s and, slightly earlier in the UK, under Margaret Thatcher. It was then applied internationally via the debt control and market mechanisations of the World Bank, IMF, WTO and free trade agreements. Neoliberalism has continued through successive administrations and congresses, including the ‘Yes We Can’ Obama presidency. Fuelled by ever-increasing corporate donations, lobbying and media concentration, the era of free market neoliberalism has seen a massive transfer of wealth from the world’s working class and poor to the wealthiest of the wealthy. Neoliberal policies and their effective implementation have been the basis of US global economic dominance from at least 1982 onwards, when the first World Bank/IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes were instituted under Reagan. Ironically, it has perhaps brought about its own potential downfall through massive unsustainable spending on Wall Street bailouts and military outlay to guarantee its survival.
The election of Barack Obama, the financial markets meltdown and bailouts to Wall Street amid