It is not polite to say it, but if Americans knew how many billions they spend their military really for the protection of oil, there WOULD BE more
 | | |
| Peter Maass | ||
| Translated by Raffaella Selmi | ||
| Edited by Fausto Giudice | ||
Shortly after the Marines had entered Baghdad tearing down a statue of Saddam Hussein, I visited the oil ministry. American troops had surrounded the building with sand-colored walls, protecting it as a jewel of strategic importance. Meanwhile, not far from there, looters lightened the National Museum of its real jewels. Baghdad was now the scene of widespread looting. In front of the cordon of American troops had gathered a few dozen Iraqis working for the Ministry of Petroleum and one of them, looking at the protection enjoyed by the place where he worked, and the lack of protection of other buildings, he has addressed this observation: "It 's all about oil."
This man has hit the key point to understand what actually pay for a gallon of gasoline. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico reminded the Americans that the price of gasoline to the distributor is only a down payment, an honest calculation should include pollution of water, earth and air. And the calculation is still incomplete if we do not take into account other factors, primarily what is perhaps the most important of the external costs: the military factor. To what extent is related to the oil wars and half billion (500 billion) dollars annually in military spending? In this period of tremendous deficit, it probably is not pointless to ask what we pay and how much.
The debate is often limited to a dispute as children: "You told a lie / no, you said." Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense insisted that: the invasion of Iraq had "nothing to do with oil." But Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, rejected the statement "It's politically embarrassing to admit what everyone knows" , Greenspan writes in his memoir. "The Iraq war is essentially a war for oil." Although was "partially" true that we invaded Iraq for oil and that our military and our Navy are there today for this purpose, as it cost? This is one of the main problems, hidden costs, which partly explains our dependence on oil: do not know the actual price.
Yet, if we want, we know it. An innovative approach comes from Roger Stern, economic geographer at the University of Princeton. In April 2010, published a study, subject to peer review, the cost of maintaining U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian-Arabian Gulf 1976-2007. Since the aircraft carrier patrolling the Gulf to protect oil industry traffic, Stern gives the oil the cost of their presence. This is a great method of prediction. Through a detailed analysis of data from the Department of Defense - which is not easy because the Pentagon does not breakdown the cost of the mission or region - comes to a total of over three decades, to 7.3 billion (7300 billions) of dollars. Billion!
And this is still a partial estimate of the costs incurred primarily in peacetime. It is much more difficult to assess to what extent the wars in America are linked to oil and estimate the cost so indirectly. And if Donald Rumsfeld, now retired, ended by admitting, in a moment of "abandonment", that the invasion of Iraq had anything to do with oil? A study published in 2008 by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes (Harvard University) expert in public finance, estimates the cost of this war - by adding what has already been spent and what is likely to be spent in the coming years - a minimum of $ 3 billion (and probably much more). Again billion.
Yet, if we want, we know it. An innovative approach comes from Roger Stern, economic geographer at the University of Princeton. In April 2010, published a study, subject to peer review, the cost of maintaining U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian-Arabian Gulf 1976-2007. Since the aircraft carrier patrolling the Gulf to protect oil industry traffic, Stern gives the oil the cost of their presence. This is a great method of prediction. Through a detailed analysis of data from the Department of Defense - which is not easy because the Pentagon does not breakdown the cost of the mission or region - comes to a total of over three decades, to 7.3 billion (7300 billions) of dollars. Billion!
And this is still a partial estimate of the costs incurred primarily in peacetime. It is much more difficult to assess to what extent the wars in America are linked to oil and estimate the cost so indirectly. And if Donald Rumsfeld, now retired, ended by admitting, in a moment of "abandonment", that the invasion of Iraq had anything to do with oil? A study published in 2008 by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes (Harvard University) expert in public finance, estimates the cost of this war - by adding what has already been spent and what is likely to be spent in the coming years - a minimum of $ 3 billion (and probably much more). Again billion.
bases and military camps of the U.S. occupation forces
Of course we have to wait long to find a PowerPoint presentation to the Pentagon or the White House (regardless of party in power), defense-related costs of crude oil. So how are taboo cuts to social security, military spending for oil are not mentioned in the corridors of power. It 's a slippery slope for politicians like General; referring to the issue too openly, is likely to reduce the key concept in a bad U.S. foreign policy: "Our only ambition is to build a better world." It is much easier to talk about the rhetoric of concrete figures.
You must go back almost 20 years to find something on the GAO (Government Accountability Office), the investigation section of the Congress that in 1991, estimated that between 1980 and 1990 the U.S. spent a total of 366 billion dollars to protect oil supplies from the Middle East. The GAO report was a snapshot of a region in a period when America was not involved in a major war. It would be a good start, if this study will be followed by other more detailed, but it did not happen.
E 'must therefore be based on studies of craftsmen, non-governmental experts as Stiglitz and Stern to find the parameters that measure the connections between oil and war, corruption and poverty. Among these experts, Paul Collier of Oxford University, author of The Bottom Billion, Michael Ross of UCLA, UC Berkeley Michael Watts, Ian Gary Oxfam and Sarah Wykes, formerly part of 'NGO Global Witness, ( that attempts to shed light on the links between the exploitation of natural resources and corruption that accompanies it). Their areas of expertise - economics, geography, science political corruption - and the data on which they work are similar to the scenarios and unconventional ideas of experts invited by General David Petraeus [ commander of military operations in Iraq and then Afghanistan NdT ] to reconsider the data and the practice of war antinsurrezionale .
The oil still has to find his Petraeus, because the problem today remains difficult to quantify. The abstraction of global warming, the pitiful sight of pelicans and even the oil trapped in the combat deaths in Iraq have not changed in a concrete way our dependence on oil from the god. The United States consumes more gasoline today than the day of the invasion of Iraq and incident on the platform of BP in the Gulf of Mexico. If, for every time a politician said, as did President Obama's speech on energy held in the Oval Office in June that "The time has come to start a clean energy future," I had a dollar I could build a wind farm. A more honest approach would force us, much more than platitudes repeated until they wear, to confront the problem of hidden costs, those who do not see the distributor. And after all, the best way to attract the attention of consumers through their portfolios.
You must go back almost 20 years to find something on the GAO (Government Accountability Office), the investigation section of the Congress that in 1991, estimated that between 1980 and 1990 the U.S. spent a total of 366 billion dollars to protect oil supplies from the Middle East. The GAO report was a snapshot of a region in a period when America was not involved in a major war. It would be a good start, if this study will be followed by other more detailed, but it did not happen.
E 'must therefore be based on studies of craftsmen, non-governmental experts as Stiglitz and Stern to find the parameters that measure the connections between oil and war, corruption and poverty. Among these experts, Paul Collier of Oxford University, author of The Bottom Billion, Michael Ross of UCLA, UC Berkeley Michael Watts, Ian Gary Oxfam and Sarah Wykes, formerly part of 'NGO Global Witness, ( that attempts to shed light on the links between the exploitation of natural resources and corruption that accompanies it). Their areas of expertise - economics, geography, science political corruption - and the data on which they work are similar to the scenarios and unconventional ideas of experts invited by General David Petraeus [ commander of military operations in Iraq and then Afghanistan NdT ] to reconsider the data and the practice of war antinsurrezionale .
The oil still has to find his Petraeus, because the problem today remains difficult to quantify. The abstraction of global warming, the pitiful sight of pelicans and even the oil trapped in the combat deaths in Iraq have not changed in a concrete way our dependence on oil from the god. The United States consumes more gasoline today than the day of the invasion of Iraq and incident on the platform of BP in the Gulf of Mexico. If, for every time a politician said, as did President Obama's speech on energy held in the Oval Office in June that "The time has come to start a clean energy future," I had a dollar I could build a wind farm. A more honest approach would force us, much more than platitudes repeated until they wear, to confront the problem of hidden costs, those who do not see the distributor. And after all, the best way to attract the attention of consumers through their portfolios.
Where are the oil reserves in the world?
0 comments:
Post a Comment