Neocons and Theocons At Armageddon  

Some history on neocon strategy in the middle east.

In his indispensable study Blood and Oil, Professor Michael Klare shows how the desire to control petroleum reserves in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf has shaped American policy ever since the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Klare also shows how the thirst for oil and natural gas now motivates our global misadventures from Central Asia and the Caspian Sea to Sudan and Venezuela.

Decades before Mr. Bush showed the slightest interest in the wider world, neo-conservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz were honing this imperial energy policy, which goes far beyond securing enough oil for Americans to burn. Control of global reserves - and the ability to reward or punish rivals who need the oil and natural gas - is for the neo-cons a primary lever to enhance American power over other nations.

To be fair, they did not invent the idea, parts of which reach back at least as far as earlier empire-builders like Teddy Roosevelt, Admiral Alfred Mahan, and their British counterpart, Lord Curzon. The idea of using oil as a lever later shaped America's conflict with Japan in the run-up to World War II. Even more, it shaped the way Washington kept the Japanese in check after the war.

Perle learned the geo-political uses of oil as a top staff aide to Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, one of the country's leading energy strategists. The eager young aide worked with Jackson all during the 1970s, when American policy-makers were considering a wide range of responses to OPEC's new power and the oil crisis it created.

Wolfowitz got his education as as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the creation of the Carter Doctrine, which President Jimmy Carter announced in his 1980 State of the Union message. Opening the door to much that has followed, this unilateral edict declared Persian Gulf oil reserves off-limits to domination by any of America's current or potential rivals.

In their many years of pushing Washington to invade Iraq, the neo-cons consistently emphasized the strategic importance of controlling as much of the world's energy supplies as possible. Nowhere did they make this clearer than in the 18 February 1992 draft of the Defense Planning Guidance. Its principal authors were Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.