Monthly Archives: June 2009

Jun 02, 2009

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ACAS Blog Series: The Geopolitics of Petroleum

Some of us working on Africa are finding oil issues very much in the forefront of our interests at the moment, and in academic year 2008-2009 we decided to form a discussion group with faculty and students working on other regions to look at oil and interregional issues of development around petroleum.

Oil issues include a very wide range of problems: food security, scarcity of resources (sometimes referred to as the problem of peak oil), global climatic changes as a result of hydrocarbon consumption, human rights, and resource wars over oil (in Sudan, Chad, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, and Western Sahara, inter alia). As the price of oil rose to over $100 a barrel last summer, oil issues came to dominate U.S. foreign policy (competition with China for oil, the Bush Administration’s position on Venezuela, and OPEC), as well as domestic policy (tax policy, energy conservation initiatives, preservation of wilderness, etc.). Some issues have been extensively debated (for example, peak oil), but others—such as the impact of the high price of oil on the oil-importing economies of Africa—have scarcely been mentioned in analyses.

We felt the need to understand more fully both the political dynamics of the contemporary struggles over oil and to provide a framework within which governments, local communities and the oil transnationals can all be held accountable for the consequences of their policies. Ultimately, we hoped that our group could lay out for future research some dimensions of a just and responsible political machinery for national and international governance of this central resource. But in the short term we settled for a better understanding of one dimension– how US foreign policy intersects with energy policy–of this multidimensional, multinational issue.

This collection of brief articles represents some of the work of our study group. Comments may be sent to Professor Meredeth Turshen (turshen@rci.rutgers.edu)

Contents

“Everything Must Change So That Everything Can Remain the Same”: Reflections on Obama’s Energy Plan
By Constantine Caffentzis, University of Southern Maine

AFRICOM and the Geopolitics of African Oil.
By Daniel Volman, African Security Research Project

‘Syriana’ as a Teaching Tool
By Angus Kress Gillespie, Rutgers University

Film Review: Michael T. Klare’s Blood and Oil
By Mark Major, Rutgers University

Reader’s Guide: Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes
By Roy Licklider, Rutgers University

Jun 02, 2009

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AFRICOM and the Geopolitics of African Oil

On 1 October 2008, the new Africa Command (AFRICOM) officially became operational as America’s newest combatant command, with its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, to oversee U.S. military activities on the continent. Until the creation of AFRICOM, U.S.-African military relations was conducted through three different commands: the European Command, which had responsibility for most of the continent; the Central Command, which oversaw Egypt and the Horn of Africa region along with the Middle East and Central Asia; and the Pacific Command, which administered military ties with Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean. This reflected the fact that Africa was chiefly viewed as a regional theater in the global Cold War, or as an adjunct to U.S.-European relations, or—as in the immediate post-Cold War period—as a region of little concern to the United States.

But since the late 1990s, Africa has become an increasingly important source of American oil imports. World oil production has peaked and, as production from older fields declines, there are only two parts of the world where significant new fields will come into production over the next 10-15 years: Central Asia and Africa. Africa now supplies more oil to the United States than the Middle East; it currently provides some 15-20% of total U.S. oil imports and is expected to provide at least 25% by 2015. In 2002, the Bush administration declared that access to Africa’s oil supplies would henceforth be defined as a “strategic national interest” of the United States. As a result, Africa’s status in U.S. national security policy and military affairs rose dramatically.

Administration officials have sought to portray AFRICOM as a demonstration of America’s commitment to help Africa and its benign intentions toward the continent. But the military officers who will run AFRICOM are under no illusions about the purposes of the new command. According to General William Ward and Vice Admiral Robert Moeller—the commander and deputy commander of AFRICOM respectively—the primary mission of AFRICOM are to protect access to oil and other resources, to make Africa a major front in the Global War on Terrorism, and to counter China’s growing economic and political involvement in Africa.

The creation of AFRICOM, thus, represents the globalization of the “Carter Doctrine,” the pledge made by President Carter in his final State of the Union Address in 1980 that the United States would use all necessary means “including the use of military force” to ensure the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. This pledge has now been extended to the entire world, driving the growing U.S. military presence not only in Africa, but in South America, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia as well. It is important to recognize that the United States is not the only country that is responsible for the militarization of African oil production and that China, India, Russia, and other countries are also playing significant roles.

So, what will AFRICOM actually do to fulfill its mission? When AFRICOM became operational in October it took over the implementation of a wide range of ongoing military, security cooperation, and security assistance programs that have already led to a series of U.S. air raids on Somalia as well as the establishment of a new U.S. military base in Africa—located at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti—and a vastly enlarged U.S. naval presence, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. It will also manage the delivery of increasing quantities of U.S. arms to Africa and a host of new programs that have been created in recent years to provide weaponry and military training to African allies. Over the past seven years, the value of U.S. security assistance to Africa has risen from about $100 million each year to an annual level of approximately $800 million.

The Pentagon would like to avoid direct military intervention in Africa whenever possible, preferring to bolster the internal security capabilities of its African friends and to build up the military forces of key states that can act as surrogates for the United States. But it is also preparing for the day when a disruption of oil supplies or some other crisis will lead to further direct military intervention. Washington has substantially increased the size and frequency of U.S. military exercises in Africa and has negotiated agreements to guarantee that U.S. troops will be able to use local military bases in a number of African countries, including Algeria, Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Sao Tome, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia.

It is now up to the Obama administration to decide whether or not to follow the path marked out by the Bush administration—a strategy based on a determination to depend upon the use of military force in Africa and elsewhere to satisfy America’s continuing addiction to oil—or to chart a new path based on an international and multi-lateral partnership with African nations and with other countries that have a stake in the continent (including China and India) to promote sustainable economic development, democracy, and human rights in Africa and a new global energy order based on the use of clean, safe, and renewable resources.

Daniel Volman (dvolman@igc.org) is the Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (www.concernedafricascholars.org). He is a specialist on U.S. military policy toward Africa and African security issues and has been conducting research and writing on these issues for more than thirty years.

From The Geopolitics of Petroleum ACAS Blog Series

Jun 02, 2009

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Film Review: ‘Blood and Oil’

Michael T. Klare’s Blood and Oil. A film by the Media Education Foundation, 2008; 52 mins. Written by Michael T. Klare, Jeremy Earp, and Scott Morris. Directed by Jeremy Earp.

Middle Eastern oil resources have long been considered “a stupendous source of strategic power” by the United States, evidenced by a State Department memo from August 1945. According to progressive energy analyst Michael Klare in the new documentary Blood and Oil, the same oil resources are also a “source of weakness” for the US. Based on Michael Klare’s book of the same name, Blood and Oil examines the relationship between oil and US foreign policy. Serving as the film’s commentator, Klare sheds light on the importance of access and control of oil in presidential doctrines from FDR through the Bush administration. He argues that the control of the world’s energy resources has been foundational to US foreign policy since World War II. Blood and Oil demonstrates how US foreign policy and energy policy are essentially intertwined.

Since 1860, the US has been the leading consumer of petroleum. Despite being a mere 5% of the world’s population, the US oil-based economy consumes 25% of the world’s oil, approximately 20 million barrels per day. Well into the 1960s, the US was largely self-sufficient producing 80-90% of its own oil. However, US reliance on imported oil has drastically grown during the last two decades and, according to the Department of Energy, the US is expected to import 70% of its oil by 2025.

This energy and foreign policy was the product of FDR during World War II. The film shows archival footage of a February 14, 1945 meeting between President Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud. Klare highlights the blatant contradiction of Roosevelt meeting with a man who exemplified the values that the US was fighting against at the time. The meeting solidified the pact of US protection and development of the Kingdom for oil. Klare argues that the modern Saudi military is largely the creation of the US, supplying the Kingdom with weaponry, advisers, and technology. This also highlights how America’s calls for democratization ring terribly hollow as its longest and most steadfast ally in the Middle East is a feudal monarchy.

Across the Middle East, Klare reveals the different mechanisms and policies presidents use to retain America’s hegemonic status in the region. Most presidents’ foreign policies are informed by what Klare calls a “strategy of maximum extraction.” This strategy requires compliant and reliable regimes providing the US with continued access to oil. In other words, Middle East governments are run by those who will ensure that Washington’s objectives are met, regardless of their seeming commitment to democracy.

Africa is given prospective coverage in the film. Given its increasing dependence on imported oil, Klare contends that Africa is of “growing importance” to US geostrategic interests. The documentary implies that colonial renewal is underway, especially in oil-rich parts of Africa. AFRICOM – an African command post created by the Bush administration in February 2007 – is an indication of this development. In addition, China is developing an equally militarized foreign policy to counter US influence in the region.

Despite its political relevancy to US foreign policy, this documentary has limitations. The most troubling limitation of Blood and Oil is that Israel receives absolutely no discussion nor does Klare discuss the leverage the US gains over Middle Eastern regimes by withdrawing material and ideological support from Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinian territories. The film also does not examine the beneficiaries of US oil policy, as it leaves out the role of corporations. The analytical focus is also a bit tenuous. The first half of the film examines presidential doctrines while the second half deals more with recent foreign policy endeavors. Furthermore, too much emphasis is placed on the Saudis at the beginning of the film which makes other significant players like Iran hard to understand in historical context. Also, the connections between Saudi Arabia and other regimes in the region are not concrete. Finally, the film is weak on prescriptions for dealing with the criminal and hazardous nature of US foreign policy.

Klare warns that if the US fails to adopt a different policy direction, then the 21st century is on course to be “very bloody and dangerous and painful.” Considering the recent historic (and exhaustive) presidential election in the US, Klare’s assertion makes it virtually impossible to ignore the foreign policy problems facing the Obama administration. Despite the analytical shortcomings of this film, Blood and Oil makes a compelling case that needs to be confronted and the Obama administration must make this issue central to their agenda. This is all the more imperative considering the remaining world’s oil production comes from politically sordid and unstable regions with two-thirds of world oil reserves being in five Middle Eastern countries. While it remains to be seen, the prospects do not look promising, considering all of the establishment foreign policy hawks that have been tapped to be part of the new administration. At least in the realm of foreign policy, Obama’s campaign declarations for “change” are unfortunately leaning closer and closer to platitudes than new paradigms.

Rather than viewing it as a definitive statement, Blood and Oil should be approached as a way to start a much needed dialogue on some of the problematic characteristics and consequences of US policy.

From The Geopolitics of Petroleum ACAS Blog Series

Jun 02, 2009

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Reader’s Guide: Crude Democracy

Reader’s Guide: ‘Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes‘ by Thad Dunning (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

I apologize for recommending this book to you since it isn’t really on our topic of the impact of oil on American foreign policy (this is, of course, what comes of recommending books that you haven’t read). Nonetheless, since it is an important book I thought I would prepare a fairly short summary of the major points and allow those of you who want to dig deeper to do so on your own.

The central argument of the book is that resource revenues (including but not limited to oil) can support as well as undermine democracy. This, of course, runs directly contrary to the current accepted wisdom of the resource curse, that countries with substantial resources can generate sufficient rents to function as states, often including substantial payoffs to well-connected individuals, without having to get their populations to agree to pay taxes to support them; such efforts would presumably have involved some sort of accountability to the population, leading to democracy.

The central metaphor of the book is a game-theoretic model of elites and masses in a democracy, where elites have to decide whether the benefits of a successful coup are more than the costs and risks involved; the question is how those payoffs change if the state generates significant resource rents. He argues that such rents, on the one hand, generate direct pressures supporting the coup (increased wealth of the state makes it a more attractive target, and masses cannot plausibly commit themselves not to increase future taxes on the elites), and on the other hand generate indirect pressures against coups (the rents make it easier for the government to give benefits for the masses without raising taxes on elites and less likely that masses will feel impelled to tax the elites in the future). He contends, not that this balance always tips one way or the other, but that it varies systematically, depending on certain conditional factors. In particular he theorizes that the democratic effects will be stronger in states which are less economically dependent on the resource (reducing the value of capturing the state and allowing the elites to derive income from other sources) and those which have high inequality (sic) in the non-resource economy (since resource rents can reduce the costs of redistribution for the elites). He then suggests that these conditions are more likely to be found in certain Latin American countries than those of Africa, for example.

The remainder of the book is devoted to testing these notions. Chapter two expands the theoretical argument. Chapter three develops two game-theoretic models from the theory. The first centers on when elites in a democratic state with resource rents will find the risks of staging a coup attractive while the second considers how elites in an authoritarian state with resource rents are likely to respond to the threat of revolutionary change. Chapter four uses cross-national time-series statistics to test the theories. Dunning finds that inequality does indeed predict democracy both globally and within Latin America (“the most unequal region in the world”). He also shows that different operationalizations of the key concepts and adding various control variables do not have much impact on the relationship.

Chapters five and six are devoted to studies of cases where the theory predicts the democratic effects will be strong: Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Botswana. Here Dunning looks, not at the outcome (which he already knows), but for the mechanisms which have been predicted in the theory. For example, the theory predicts that domestic conflict over redistribution should increase as rents decline and decrease as rents increase.
Dunning argues that in Venezuela the rents from oil reduced the incentives for the elites to oppose democracy, not because they gained directly from the oil, but because those rents nearly eliminated any pressure for redistribution of wealth from the elites; the drop in oil prices in the 1980s, however, put the democratic government under increasing pressure. He also argues that the increase in oil prices explains why there has been so little opposition to Chavez’ regime, which he contends has not in fact done much in the way of actual redistribution since the social programs have been funded by oil.

In the case of Chile, Dunning argues that the decline in prices for nitrates in the late 1920s explains the upsurge of internal conflict there. The 1973 coup is a challenge to the theory since copper prices were fairly high; he makes an interesting counterfactual argument that without resource rents the conflict would actually have been more intense. In Bolivia the effects are not felt until the form of ownership changes: because the tin mines were originally owned by a small elite, the revenues did not flow as rent to the state but instead to these individuals. Thus the elites were fiercely opposed to any redistribution of wealth. He argues that after Bolivia nationalized the mines in 1952, rents from tin and later oil helped stabilize democracy there. However, the regional nature of Bolivia has increasingly made oil resources a basis for internal conflict.

In Ecuador Dunning argues that the 1972 coup, which occurred just as oil production was increasing rapidly, was carried out in order to avoid redistribution; however, he contends that Ecuador redemocratized later in the decade, using oil rents for social programs. He also notes the problems of basing democracy on oil, citing the price drops in 1986 with subsequent cutbacks in social programs and considerable unrest until prices rose again a few years later. Botswana is an African case where the resource is diamonds. Dunning notes that the interest in cattle ranching, the main alternative industry, is highly concentrated in the hands of elite members and that they have used income from the diamond mines to support social programs.

Dunning concludes this analysis by arguing that there are crude democracies just as there are crude autocracies, that the differences between them are systematic rather than random, and that therefore we should be able to make reasonable predictions about the kind of political systems most likely to emerge in particular areas. He also discusses a number of cases which present challenges to his theory, including the Soviet Union and Indonesia, and perhaps Iraq. This is, I think, one of the most important challenges to the easy generalizations of the “resource curse” literature that I have yet seen.

Prepared by Roy Licklider for Geopolitics of Petroleum Faculty Cluster, Rutgers University, spring 2009

From The Geopolitics of Petroleum ACAS Blog Series

Jun 02, 2009

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‘Syriana’ as a Teaching Tool

In the fall semester of 2008, Professor Meredeth Turshen of Rutgers University secured a small grant to sponsor the “Geopolitics of Petroleum Faculty Cluster.” A small group of interested faculty and graduate students settled on a study group format with the idea that we would invite the authors of the books we had decided to read to meet with us. It was decided that our study would focus on the intersection of US foreign policy and energy policy, with the possibility of working toward a set of policy recommendations for the incoming federal government administration. We proceeded in this fashion throughout the fall semester—reading relevant books and meeting in a small group with the authors.

To kick off the spring semester and to stimulate interest in our work, we departed from that format. Instead, we began the new semester with a screening of the film “Syriana,” starring George Clooney. Since I was already familiar with the film from my own undergraduate courses, I volunteered to introduce the film and to lead a follow-up discussion. I believe that this film is a valuable teaching tool. Not because it is historically accurate. It is after all a fictional film. But it successfully dramatizes many of the underlying issues of oil and public policy. The screening took place on February 7, 2009, at the Edward J. Bloustein Auditorium in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In order to avoid spoilers, I kept the introduction to the film very brief.

The audience for this screening was somewhat larger than our usual small core of readers, and it was made up mainly of faculty and graduate students. Although this audience was more sophisticated than the regular undergraduate audience, they still had many of the same problems in understanding the film. It is simply very confusing for anyone on first viewing. There are multiple characters and multiple plot lines. The setting jumps rapidly from Tehran to Geneva and to Langley, Virginia. The film goes back and forth from an unnamed country in the Persian Gulf to stateside locations such as Princeton, New Jersey, and Hondo, Texas. Following the plot is challenging and difficult. Many viewers are left with the reaction, “What happened?”

To my way of thinking, the confusion engendered by the film creates a teachable moment. Many Hollywood films are so straightforward that there is little justification for including them in the college curriculum. But this one is so complex as to be a puzzle, an interesting challenge. By the same token, it creates a real opportunity for the discussion leader to serve a real need, to help the students figure out the puzzle. As a discussion leader, I cannot claim any special brilliance or insight. What gives me the edge is the simple fact of watching the film several times. Each time I watch the film, it becomes a bit clearer. On multiple viewing, there are many “Aha!” moments.

In preparing my post-screening remarks, I relied heavily on readily available resources on the internet. One of the best, of course, is the Movie Review Query Engine (www.MRQE.com), a large online database for movie reviews founded in 1993 by Stewart Clamen. The site aggregates reviews associated with particular movies. It is comprehensive and easy to use. Even more helpful in this particular case was the information from Film Education (www.filmeducation.org), a non-profit founded by the UK film industry to promote the use of film in schools and colleges.

I found the “Syriana Study Guide” provided by Film Education to be an invaluable resource. The Study Guide begins by pointing out that “Syriana is a demanding film, requiring some background knowledge.” It then goes on to provide that background knowledge. For example, we are told that a quarter of the world’s oil is consumed in the USA and that US consumes 30 billion barrels of crude a year but produces only four billion barrels from its own fields. Yet the US population is only 5% of the world’s total population. We also learn that Syriana is a term “used by Washington think tanks to describe a democratic, Western-leaning, business-friendly Middle East most suited to US commercial and political interests.”

The Study Guide goes on to provide thumbnail character sketches of some of the major characters. One of the great strengths of the film is that one cannot simply sort the characters into good guys and bad guys. These are three-dimensional characters, each with individual strengths and weaknesses. The Study Guide then goes on to suggest that the discussion leader summarize for students the four main plot strands, specifically: 1) the progress of the Connex-Killeen merger, 2) the hope of a new beginning in the Middle East following Prince Nasir’s bid for power, 3) the power struggles that surround Bennett Holiday at his Washington-based law firm Sloan Whiting, and 4) the slow recruitment of Wasim Khan to the cause of Islamic terrorism. The challenge for the teacher, of course, to show students how these strands all fit together.

In the question and answer session that followed my post-screening prepared remarks, the first few minutes were spent in clearing up questions of the plot structure.

But then the discussion evolved where audience members offered up their own insights.

The group was small enough that everyone had a chance to talk and be heard by the others. Little by little, we all tried to make sense of the film. The experience reaffirmed the value of talking and listening. Good films make for good discussions.

From The Geopolitics of Petroleum ACAS Blog Series

Jun 02, 2009

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“Everything Must Change So That Everything Can Remain the Same”: Reflections on Obama’s Energy Plan

Is President Obama’s oil/energy policy going to be different from the Bush Administration’s? My immediate answer to this prophetic question will be philosophical: a firm “No” and a more hesitant “Yes.” The reason for this ambivalence is simple: the failure of the Bush Administration to radically change the oil industry in its neoliberal image has made a transition from an oil based energy regime inevitable and the Obama Administration is responding to this inevitability. Consequently, we are in the midst of an epochal shift so that an assessment of the political forces and debates of the past have to be revised and held with some circumspection.

Before I examine both sides of this answer, we should be clear as to the two oil/energy policies being discussed.

The Bush policy paradigm’s premise is all too familiar: the “real” energy crisis has nothing to do with the natural limits on energy resources, but is due to the constraints on energy production imposed by government regulation and the OPEC cartel. Once energy production is liberalized and the corrupt, dictatorial and terrorist-friendly OPEC cartel is dissolved by US-backed coups (Venezuela) and invasions (Iraq and Iran), according to the Bush folk, the free market can finally impose realistic prices on the energy commodities (which ought to be about half of the present ones), and stimulate the production of adequate supplies and a new round of spectacular growth of profits and wages.

Obama’s oil/energy policy during the campaign and after his election has the following equally familiar premise, he presented on Jan. 27, 2009: “I will reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs…America’s dependence on oil is one of the most serious threats that our nation has faced. It bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism.” In the long-term this policy includes: a “clean tech” Venture Capital Plan; Cap and Trade; Clean Coal Technology development; Stricter automobile gas-mileage standards; cautious support for nuclear power electricity generation.

The energy policy he outlined in his budget proposal is supportive of a peculiar “national security” autarky (especially when it comes from an almost mythical pro-globalization figure like Obama). Its logic is implicitly something like this: if the US were not so dependent on foreign oil, there would be less need for US troops to be sent to foreign territories to defend the US’s access to energy resources. Obama treats oil in a mercantile way, the vital stuff of any contemporary economy (a little like the way gold was conceptualized in 16th and 17th centuries), long after mercantilism has been definitely abandoned as a viable political economy. In effect, he is calling for an autarkic import-substitution policy for oil while he is leading the main force for anti-autarkic globalization throughout the planet.

A Firm “No”

Obama’s paradigm is problematic since it poses the key question of oil policy as a matter of “dependency” and not as the consequence of the present system of commodity production. It does not recognize that: oil is a basic commodity; the oil industry is devoted to making money profits; the US government is essentially involved in guaranteeing the functioning of the world market and the profitability of the oil industry (not access to the hydrocarbon stuff itself); and energy politics involves classes in conflict (and not only competing corporations and conflicting nation states). In brief, it leaves out the central player of contemporary life: workers, their demands and struggles. Somehow, when it comes to writing the history of petroleum, capitalism, working class, and class conflict are frequently forgotten in a way that never happens with oil’s earthy hydrocarbon cousin, coal. Once we put profitability and working class conflict into the oil story, the plausibility of the National Security paradigm lessens, since the US military will be called upon to defend the profitability of international oil companies against the demands of workers around the world, even if the US did not import one drop of oil.

There will be wars fought by US troops aplenty in the years to come, if the US government tries to continue to play for the oil industry in particular and for capitalism in general the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century British Empire. For what started out in the 19th century as a tragedy, will be repeated in the 21st, not as farce, but as catastrophe. At the same time, it is not possible for the US government to “retreat” from its role, without jeopardizing the capitalist project itself. Obama and his Administration show no interest in leading an effort to abandon this imperialist, market-policing role as his efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan as well as his carte blanche to Israel in its bombing of Gaza initially indicate.

Thus the supporters of the National Security paradigm for oil policy like Obama are offering up a questionable connection between energy import-substitution and the path of imperialism. As logicians would say, energy dependence might be a sufficient condition of imperialist oil politics, but it is not a necessary one. This is Obama’s dilemma then: he cannot reject the central role of the US in the control of the world market’s basic commodity, at the same, the inter- and intra-class conflict in the oil producing countries is making the US’s hegemonic role impossible to sustain. Therefore, Obama’s oil policy will be quite similar to Bush’s.

A Hesitant “Yes”

Up until now my argument has been purely negative, i.e., though Obama’s oil policy and Bush’s are radically different rhetorically, they will have much in common in practice. Obama’s goal of “energy independence” will not affect the military interventions generated by the efforts to control oil production and accumulate oil profits throughout the world. These interventions will intensify as the capitalist crisis matures and as the short-term, spot market price fluctuates wildly from the long-term price, and geological, political and economic factors create an almost apocalyptic social tension.

I do see, however, that there is a major difference between Bush and Obama. The former was a status quo petroleum president while the latter is an energy-transition president, i.e., Obama (like Roosevelt in the 1930s and Carter in the 1970s) is in charge of a capitalist energy transition similar to the successful one that substituted oil/natural gas for coal in many places throughout the productive system in the 1930s and 1940s and the unsuccessful one that failed to substitute coal, solar power and nuclear power for oil/gas in the US of the 1970s. We are at the moment similar to the time when capital began to recognize that coal miners were so well organized that they could threaten the whole machine of accumulation (an experience felt in the British General Strike of 1926 and the coal mining struggle in the US of the 1930s that led to the triumph of the CIO) and had to be put on the defensive by the launching of a new energy foundation to capitalist production, and when Carter despaired of putting the struggle of the oil producing proletariat (especially in Iran) back in the bottle.

In the face of the failure of the Bush Administration’s attempt to impose a neoliberal regime on the oil producing countries, the Obama Administration must now lead a partial exit from the oil industry. It will not be total, of course. After all, the transition from coal to oil was far from total and, if anything, there is now more coal mined than ever before while the transition from renewable energy (wind, water, forests) in the late 18th century to coal was also far from total. Indeed, this is not the first time that capitalist crisis coincides with energy transition, as a glance at the previous transitions in the 1930s and 1970s indicate. It will be useful to reflect on these former transitions to assess the differences between Bush’s and Obama’s oil policies. The different phases of the transition from oil to alternative sources include: (1) repressing the expectations of the oil producing working class for reparations of a century of expropriation, (2) supporting financially/legally/militarily the alternative energy “winners”; (3) verifying the compatibility of the energy provided with the productive system; (4) blocking any revolutionary, anti-capitalist turn in the transition.

In reflecting on these phases, I note that they offer the kind of challenges that were largely irrelevant to the Bush Administration, since it was resolutely fighting the very premise of a transition: the power of the inter- and intra-class forces that were undermining the neoliberal regime. Consequently, they will provide a rich soil for discussion, debate and planning in this period. But the interests of the world market and the oil/energy companies will be paramount in the deployment of US military power–it also applies to my “Hesitant ‘Yes’” side as well, though less directly, since the ultimate purpose of the Obama administration is (pace Rush Limbaugh) to preserve the capitalist system in very perilous times. It just so happens, however, that the “everything” that must change is more extensive than had ever been thought before.

The first element in the transition is to recognize that there will be interclass resistance to the transition from those who stand to lose. Of course, most the oil capitalists will be able to transfer their capital easily to the new areas of profitability, although they will be concerned about the value of the remaining oil “banked” in the ground. This transition has been theorized, feared and prepared for by Third World (especially Saudi Arabian) capitalists ever since the first oil crisis of the 1970s. But what is to be done with respect to the oil producing proletariat? After all, the “down side” of Hubbert’s Curve, in a sense, could be seen as a potential payback for a century of exploitation, forced displacements and enclosures in the oil regions.

The capitalist class as a whole is unwilling to pay reparations to the peoples in the oil-producing areas whose land and life has been so ill-used. Oil capital’s resistance to reparations is suggested by its horror, for example, of paying the Venezuelan state oil taxes and rents that will go into buying back land that had been expropriated from campesinos decades ago and giving it to their campesino children or grandchildren. Capital wants to be able to control the vast transfer of surplus value that is being envisioned in these discussions of transition, and without a neoliberal solution it is not clear that it can. Moreover, will the working class be a docile echo to capital’s concerns? After all, shouldn’t reparations be paid to the people of the Middle East, Indonesia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria and countless other sites of petroleum extraction-based pollution? Will they simply stand still and watch their only hope for the return of stolen wealth snuffed out?

We should recognize as far as phase (2) is concerned that alternative energies have been given an irenic cast by decades of “alternativist” rhetoric contrasting blood-soaked hydrocarbons and apocalypse-threatening nuclear power. But if we remember back to the period when capitalism was operating under a renewable energy regime in the 16th through most of the 18th century, we should recognize that this was hardly an era of international peace and love. The genocide of the indigenous Americans, the African slave trade and the enclosures of the European peasantry occurred with the use of alternative renewable energy! The view that a non-hydrocarbon future operated under a capitalist form of production will be dramatically less polemic is questionable. (We saw an example of this kind of conflict of interest in the protests of Mexican city dwellers over the price of corn grown by Iowa farmers that was being sold for biofuel instead of for “homofuel”!)

As for phase (3), we should remember that an energy source is not equally capable of generating surplus value (the ultimate end of the use of energy in capitalism). Oil is a highly flexible form of fuel that has a wide variety of chemical by-products and mixes with a certain type of proletariat. Solar, wind, water and tide energy will not immediately fit into the present productive apparatus to generate the same level of surplus. The transition will ignite a tremendous struggle in the production and reproduction process; for inevitably workers are going to be expected to “fit into” the productive apparatus whatever it is.

Finally, (4) presents the nub of the issue before us: will this transition be organized on a capitalist basis or will the double crisis opened up on the levels of energy production and general social reproduction mark the beginning of another mode of production? Obama’s energy policy is premised on the first alternative. There are, however, many reasons calling for the negation of this premise that leads to “everything remaining the same.” Consequently, we should be investigating with all our energy and ardor the other alternative. Join us.

Previously Presented at the Geopolitics of Oil Colloquium, Rutgers University, March 4, 2009.

From The Geopolitics of Petroleum ACAS Blog Series