Oil wars Pentagon's policy since 1999
By Ritt Goldstein

May 20 2003: (SMH) A top-level United States policy document has 
emerged that explicitly confirms the Defence Department's readiness 
to fight an oil war.  

According to the report, Strategic Assessment 1999, prepared for the 
US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defence, "energy and 
resource issues will continue to shape international security".  

Oil conflicts over production facilities and transport routes, 
particularly in the Persian Gulf and Caspian regions, are specifically 
envisaged.  

Although the policy does not forecast imminent US military conflict, 
it vividly highlights how the highest levels of the US Defence community 
accepted the waging of an oil war as a legitimate military option.  

Strategic Assessment also forecasts that if an oil "problem" arises, 
"US forces might be used to ensure adequate supplies".  

Although Strategic Assessment 1999 predicts adequate US energy 
supplies, it also finds that supply shortages could "exacerbate 
regional political tensions, potentially causing regional conflicts".  

The Bush Administration has stated that providing for US energy needs 
is a priority.  

Strategic Assessment was prepared by the Institute for National 
Strategic Studies, part of the US Department of Defence's National 
Defence University. The institute lists its primary mission as policy 
research and analysis for the Joint Chiefs, the Defence Secretary, and 
a variety of government security and defence bodies.  

According to the report, national security depends on successful 
engagement in the global economy, so national defence no longer 
means protecting the nation from military threats alone, but 
economic challenges, too.  

The fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s brought an end to 
the US's ideological basis for potential conflict. In 1992 Bill 
Clinton urged that "our economic strength must become a central 
defining element of our national security policy".  

Since then, members of the Bush Administration have promoted 
the need for the consolidation of the Cold War victory.  

In what many may see as an apparent parallel to present events, 
Strategic Assessment 1999 drew attention to pre-World War II 
Britain's pursuit of an approach where control over territory 
was seen as essential to ensuring resource supplies.  

However, the Defence Department policymakers behind Strategic 
Assessment also appear to recognise the potential consequences 
of such policies.  

The authors warn that if the great powers return to the 19th century 
approach of securing resources, of conquering resource suppliers, the  
world economy will suffer and world politics will become more tense.

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Source: Information Clearinghouse ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3445.htm


Cheers, Steve..

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