Myths, Lies and Oil Wars PDF
Preview Myths, Lies and Oil Wars
MYTHS, LIES AND OIL WARS F. William Engdahl edition.engdahl Wiesbaden Copyright © 2012 by F. William Engdahl The rights of F. William Engdahl to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the publisher and author. Library of Congress cataloging in Publication Data applied for Edited by Margot L. White Cover design: Kay Coenen, Infographicmedia.Nl + 06 421 46 0 46 + + http://www.infographicmedia.com + Published by edition.engdahl Wiesbaden, Germany www.williamengdahl.com ISBN 978-3-9813263-6-9 Printed in USA To George L. Mehren— invaluable friend, honest critic and intellectual architect of the concept behind this book and to Vladimir Kutcherov, friend and teacher whose passion for scientific truth guided me in this writing. CONTENTS A UTHOR’S INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1 From Spice Wars to Oil Wars .............................................................................. 1 Oil wars and politics ............................................................................................ 3 1. A CATASTROPHIC BLUNDER REPEATED ....................................... 7 Painful lessons ..................................................................................................... 7 A small oversight ................................................................................................. 8 Secret War for the Baghdad Railway .................................................................. 10 Stealing Mesopotamia for the Empire ................................................................ 11 A little war for rich booty .................................................................................. 13 Grabbing Iraq by ruse........................................................................................ 15 World War II: Catastrophic Blunder Repeated .................................................. 17 Wehrmacht out of gas ....................................................................................... 20 2. A GLOBAL POWER SHIFT ............................................................ 25 A new oil imperialism ........................................................................................ 25 Running Trolley Cars into the Ground ............................................................. 26 The trains next... ............................................................................................... 28 3. S ILENT WEAPONS FOR QUIET WARS .......................................... 33 The new kings of oil .......................................................................................... 33 A fateful Harvard project ................................................................................... 34 Keeping oil prices high ...................................................................................... 36 Big Oil finds a new King ................................................................................... 38 Hubbert’s Malthusian energy model .................................................................. 42 Big oil uses Hubbert .......................................................................................... 44 Seven Powerful Sisters ....................................................................................... 45 4. A DRAMATIC SHOCK ................................................................... 51 A US economy in eclipse.................................................................................... 51 Preparing a dramatic shock ................................................................................ 53 Elites meet in Sweden ........................................................................................ 53 A Dutch Hotel and Atlanticist schemes .............................................................. 57 Kissinger’s Oil Shock ......................................................................................... 58 Germany was a target, not an ally ....................................................................... 60 An almost perfect crime ..................................................................................... 61 Kissinger’s Alchemy – oil becomes the new gold ................................................. 64 Hubbert’s Day in the Sun .................................................................................. 66 5. A MALTHUSIAN ENERGY STRATEGY ........................................... 71 Rockefeller’s paradigm shift ................................................................................ 71 Creating the new paradigm ................................................................................ 72 ‘Limits to Growth’ ............................................................................................. 73 The real enemy: Humanity ................................................................................ 76 Paradigm Shift via NGOs .................................................................................. 78 A mysterious Canadian insider ........................................................................... 81 ‘Silent weapons for Quiet wars’ .......................................................................... 83 6. A HOSTAGE TO CHASE MANHATTAN ......................................... 89 Hiding an oil glut .............................................................................................. 89 Losing the oil lever ............................................................................................. 90 A Trilateral initiative .......................................................................................... 92 A predictable energy strategy .............................................................................. 93 Rockefeller loses, then uses an old buddy ........................................................... 95 7. O IL WARS BY PROXY ................................................................. 103 A very bloody OPEC oil war............................................................................ 103 Saddam, Kissinger and the BNL ....................................................................... 107 CIA ties to Saddam .......................................................................................... 109 October Surprises ............................................................................................. 111 Washington’s ‘reverse’ oil shock ....................................................................... 114 Bringing the Soviets to their knees ................................................................... 116 8. C ONTROLLING ALL OIL, EVERYWHERE ................................... 123 Luring Saddam into a Honey Trap...again ........................................................123 Getting Kuwait on board ..................................................................................124 April’s fateful chat with Saddam .......................................................................127 9. G RABBING SOVIET OIL RESOURCES ......................................... 135 Control of oil, everywhere... .............................................................................135 Washington targets Russia ................................................................................136 Grabbing the oil treasure ..................................................................................138 Chechen oil wars ..............................................................................................140 Washington’s alternative pipeline .....................................................................142 Washington’s proxy wars ..................................................................................143 1994 A Turning Point......................................................................................145 10. A NEW RUSSIAN REVOLUTION .................................................. 149 A Russian revolution in petroleum science ........................................................149 Deep oil origins ................................................................................................153 Oil ‘in all the wrong places’ ..............................................................................154 Russian geophysics comes to Vietnam...............................................................155 Stalin’s Mandate – self-sufficiency in oil ...........................................................156 Oil Fields that refill? .........................................................................................159 11. B IG OIL COUNTERATTACKS—HUBBERT’S PEAK REVIVED ....... 167 An unscientific Scientific American ..................................................................167 Cheney echoes Hubbert’s friends ......................................................................169 Washington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ ..................................................................170 Cheney’s Energy Task Force .............................................................................172 Cheney’s Peak Oil Friend .................................................................................173 ‘Twilight’ in the Saudi Desert?..........................................................................175 The Saudi surprise ............................................................................................178 12. R USSIA AND CHENEY’S OIL WARS ............................................. 183 Going ‘where the oil is’ .................................................................................... 183 Iraq and the China danger ............................................................................... 183 ‘It was about oil...’............................................................................................ 184 War on Terror or War on Oil?......................................................................... 186 The new energy wars ........................................................................................ 187 Brzezinski’s pipeline ......................................................................................... 188 Washington’s Rose Revolution ......................................................................... 189 Tbilisi to Kiev: Ukraine’s Orange Revolution ................................................... 190 13. C HINA BECOMES THE NEW TARGET ........................................ 195 Emerging rival China ....................................................................................... 195 Beijing’s 9/11 shock ......................................................................................... 196 Beijing moves to secure its energy ..................................................................... 199 Wooing Africa ................................................................................................. 201 Darfur: ‘It’s about oil, Stupid’ .......................................................................... 203 AFRICOM ...................................................................................................... 204 14. W ASHINGTON’S GREATER MIDDLE EAST WAR ........................ 209 A Prairie Fire Begins in Tunisia ........................................................................ 209 Washington’s Greater Middle East Project ....................................................... 211 Project for a ‘Greater Middle East’ ................................................................... 213 Washington’s ‘soft’ revolutions......................................................................... 215 Kefaya—Pentagon ‘non-violent warfare’ .......................................................... 216 RAND and Kefaya ........................................................................................... 217 Libya: A NATO war is necessary ...................................................................... 219 The strategic goal ............................................................................................. 222 APPENDIX ....................................................................................... 227 Select Scientifric Papers on Oil Origins and Reserves ....................................... 227 We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and worldbenefaction… We should dispense with the aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and…unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. ⎯ George F. Kennan, US State Department, Policy Planning Study 23 (PPS23), Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948 AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION From Spice Wars to Oil Wars In the words of George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The history of the last century is unique in significant respects, but in terms of manifesting fundamental features of human behavior and actions, it is anything but unique. In September 2001 after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the attack on the Pentagon, President George W. Bush declared a US War on Terrorism, calling it a “new crusade,” a war of good versus evil: “You’re either with us or against us.” His choice of words was revealing as it evoked for the rest of the world — especially the nations of the oil-rich, predominantly Arab Middle East – more than two centuries of European “Holy Crusades” against the Muslim peoples of the Middle East. The historical comparison by Bush was revealing, so much so that Bush was quickly advised to drop the word ‘crusade’ from his rhetoric. Almost eight centuries before the dramatic events of September 2001, the Arab/North African world had been at the center of world geopolitical conflict. Arab traders across North Africa and what is today called by the West the ‘Middle East’ had secured a tightly- controlled monopoly on the most valuable commodity of that day — the spices from Asia. The clever Arab tradesmen kept the origins of their spices— cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg and other spices—a de facto military secret of the highest strategic importance. They went to extraordinary lengths to perpetuate a myth of great scarcity in order to maintain monopoly control of the remote sources of the much desired spices and, thereby, to attain colossal profit margins of as much as 4000% on their trade. Venice, then a City State on the Adriatic Sea, had close ties to the Orient. As a result of its trade ties to Arab spice merchants, as well, Venice rose to a position of unprecedented wealth and power in the 13th Century. Venice became the mightiest naval empire of Europe based on dominating and controlling the European import of oriental spices traded by the Arabs. When Venice was threatened by an Arab cutoff of those spices, the City State launched one of history’s most brutal and grandiose looting operations — the religious crusade of 1204, a naked imperial conquest masquerading as a Holy War.
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