Just War and Iraq I: An Oil War

Classic Just War Theory stipulates five criteria for determining if a war is just or not: having just cause, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and the end being proportional to the means used. I propose to blog, eventually, on all five, as applied to Iraq.

For what cause was the Iraq war fought? WMD, liberation, terrorism, oil, UN resolutions, spreading democracy, and post 9/11 vengeance have all been put forward as candidates. The President himself invoked all but the last (though he had a different understanding of how oil played into it than the cynics’ spin has it).

Let us assume liberation, spreading democracy, defeating terrorists and their state sponsors, or enforcing UN resolutions are just causes. Many argue those were not what we went to war for, or only peripheral reasons. No matter: to whatever extent that those truly were causes of the Iraq war, to that extent it was just.

That leaves oil, WMD, and vengeance. Was it a war for oil? Yes. Not in the sense that the US went to war to steal Iraq’s oil (number of Iraqi oil wells annexed by the US after Gulf War I: zero). But in two other senses. First, the war did, perhaps, relate to the US’s broader strategy to ensure a reliable and stable global energy market, which includes access to oil. Second, oil flows directly into the more humanitarian causes behind the war because oil was a powerful enabler for the dictator's evil.

First, the economics. Kenneth Pollack can take it from here:

“America's primary interest in the Persian Gulf lies in ensuring the free and stable flow of oil from the region to the world at large. This fact has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories leveled against the Bush administration during the run-up to the recent war. U.S. interests do not center on whether gas is $2 or $3 at the pump, or whether Exxon gets contracts instead of Lukoil or Total. Nor do they depend on the amount of oil that the United States itself imports from the Persian Gulf or anywhere else. The reason the United States has a legitimate and critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow copiously and relatively cheaply is simply that the global economy built over the last 50 years rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil, and if that foundation were removed, the global economy would collapse.”

That isn't hyperbole. Oil is what gold was: power. The Middle East is host to a third of the world’s oil. Saddam manifestly wanted to conquer the Middle East to gain the economic leverage and military hardware that oil money would buy him. The world economy could literally collapse in a second Great Depression if global access to oil was cut off--by, for example, a tyrant that controlled the oil fields of Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

In case that isn’t good enough for a bleeding heart liberal, let’s spell it out: in the case of a a global depression millions would be thrown into poverty, since that seems to be their only standard of justice. If it was a war for oil, it was a war to protect the world economy from a lunatic Stalinist dictator who might hold it for ransom in exchange for his continued misrule. Such reasoning is not selfish and is not calculated for the US's private gain. Oil economics saturates the globe, and energy security effects every nation. Maintaining a just and stable economic order is the necessary condition of helping the poor, creating jobs, and growing wealth for all.

Second, and closely related, oil mixes freely with humanitarian calculus. Allowing Saddam access to oil allowed him access to power, power that magnified the evil he was capable of inflicting. Along the way to conquering oil fields, Saddam would have used his newly won oil-power to build a pan-Arab police state and terrorize Shia, Kurds, Kuwaitis and democrats.

It feels uncomfortable to sit in judgment over which nations are allowed to have power. Rightly so. Usually, letting other nations grow rich and powerful is not bad. Helping Africa grow more economically powerful, for example, is great. Most nations are responsible and decent with the power they have. Iraq was not. Oil is the blood that runs in the veins of Great Powers. Saddam wanted the beating heart all for himself. If Gulf War II was an oil war, it was a war to keep massive oil power out of the hands of a chemical butcher. That is a judgment worth making, and that's a just cause in my book.

Next: WMD and vengeance.