This map is getting some play around the blogosphere:
Andrew Sullivan linked it under the headline “One Reason We’re Not Leaving Iraq” and comments “Kuwait was worth rescuing, wasn’t it?”
Ezra Klein chimes in with, “Helps explain, for one thing, why the Middle East always dominates the foreign policy agenda.”
Matt Yglesias figures it works both ways, noting, “It’s true that we might well not have been so eager to save Kuwait had it not had the oil, but it’s also unlikely that anyone would have wanted to conquer Kuwait had it not had the oil.”
It’s undeniably true that the Middle East is considered a strategic interest mostly because of oil (there’s also Israel). But the map doesn’t exactly explain everything. Or much of anything, really.
If the thesis is that the United States will go to war to protect countries in direct proportion to the amount of oil reserves they have, Desert Storm rather makes sense: Saudi Arabia is number one and Kuwait is number four.
Then again, Iran and Iraq are numbers two and three, respectively.
We’ve been in a state of cold war with Iran since 1979 and actively supported Iraq against them during their war in the 1980s. We’ve been quite aggressive in working against their nuclearization. Shouldn’t we be trying to appease them, if oil is our main concern?
And what about Iraq? One can explain Desert Storm, since it was #3 versus #1 and #4. But what about Provide Comfort, Southern Watch, and the myriad interventions from 1991 to 2003? Why on earth would humanitarian considerations for the Kurds and Shiites trump oil? Indeed, we supported sanctions against Saddam’s regime that at first prevented Iraq from selling us any oil and later severely curtailed it. That drove up the price of our oil! Then, we invaded to overthrow Saddam and are spending hundreds of billions trying to establish democratic government. That simply makes no sense if cheap oil is our objective.
For that matter, why don’t we invade Venezuela? They’re #6 on the list, in the neighborhood, and that Chavez guy is annoying.
And why aren’t we drilling in Alaska? Why can’t the oil barons use their awesome powers to beat back the environmentalists? Surely, a few felled trees and displaced caribou are easier to sacrifice than American blood and treasure?
