Hubbert, Yom Kippur, neocons and Iraq.

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, 05 November 2007 00:25.

Joe Turner: Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?

Ed Higgins: Are you crazy?

Joe Turner: Am l?

Ed Higgins: Look, Turner ...

Joe Turner: Do we have plans?

Ed Higgins: No, absolutely not. We have games, that’s all. We play games ... what if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That’s what we’re paid to do.

Joe Turner: Walk on ... go on. So Atwood just took the games too seriously. He was really going to do it, wasn’t he?

Ed Higgins: A renegade operation. Atwood knew 54/12 would never authorize it, not with the heat on the company.

Joe Turner: What if there hadn’t been any heat? Suppose I hadn’t stumbled on their plan? Say nobody had.

Ed Higgins: Different ballgame. Fact is, there was nothing wrong with the plan. No, the plan was all right. The plan would’ve worked.

Joe Turner: Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?

Ed Higgins: No. It’s simple economics. Today it’s oil, right? In 10 or 25 years food ... plutonium. And maybe even sooner. What do you think the people are going to want us to do then?

Joe Turner: Ask them

Ed Higgins: Now now. Then. Ask them when they’re running out. Ask them when there’s no heat and they’re cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. Want to know something? They won’t want us to ask them. They’ll want us to get it for them.

Joe Turner: Boy, have you found a home.

This exchange between a renegade CIA employee, Joe Turner, and a senior agent named Ed Higgins is the denouement of the 1975 film, Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford played Turner - essentially an academic whose function was to analyse the content of novels in search of ideas and material of interest to his masters. Cliff Robertson played Higgins, someone Turner is forced to trust until he learns that he can trust no one.

The film-script was based on James Grady’s 1974 novel, Six Days of the Condor.

Plainly, the background to Grady’s book was the oil crisis of the preceding year. The crisis was triggered by the 20 days of fighting of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which began on 6th October. On the 16th, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which had been in open dispute over prices with its main Western consumers, took action to cut production and end the era of cheap oil. The following day, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, with Egypt and Syria, announced a cessation of oil shipments to nations supporting Israel.

In point of fact, Western governments reacted to the crisis in a number of measured ways, the common purpose of which was to reduce dependence on OPEC. There was never any outward sign of preparations for an American or Western invasion in support of Israel and secure oil. The Israeli’s won in the air, on the battlefields and at sea, and achieved a stunning and complete but costly victory. It was a victory for the industrial West, too.

The Arab appetite for war was over for the forseeable future. The Camp David accords followed, at some considerable diplomatic distance. To his personal cost, Anwar Sadat committed Egypt to peace with the Israelis. On 6 October 1981, at Egypt’s annual parade marking the start of the war, Sadat was assassinated by Khalid Islambouli, a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (which, incidentally, merged with Al-Qaeda in 2001).

The Oil Crisis proved beyond doubt that geopolitical instability was a more dangerous and certainly more immediate threat to the West’s oil lifeline than the prospect of the depletion of resources. Stability went hand in hand with a militarily-strong Israel. The West’s survival and Israel’s were, therefore, inextricably linked.

Now, the author James Grady got that wrong in 1974. In the absence of Israel being pushed into the sea, his premise for an American invasion of the ME didn’t stand up. Further, by that year resource depletion was an idea in trouble. The Club of Rome’s 1972 book Limits to Growth had been so heavily critiqued on methodological grounds that the argument for sustainability was compromised for a generation. But it’s worth remembering that the idea was first formulated by Marion King Hubbert in a paper presented to the American Petroleum Insitute in 1956. Again, the criticism of resource depletion, in the Hubbert case by Edward Luttwak, centred on the issue of regional unrest.

The same dynamics are in place today. Hubbert’s argument for resource depletion is still countered by the stability argument. The one difference is that during the 1990s, somewhere deep in the environs of the neoconservative think-tanks and, later, the Pentagon, the necessity for an invasion of Iraq to achieve that stability was concluded, and a secret plan drawn up. Israel, it would seem, had ceased to be the West’s ace of trumps.

So Grady turns out to have been right all along. The official explanations for the invasion have, of course, turned out to be all wrong, these being:-

1. Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

2. Saddam’s regime was a threat to the USA and to world peace.

3. Saddam’s regime had links with international terror groups.

4. The war on Iraq was part of the war on international terrorism.

5. Freeing the Iraqi people from an oppressive regime.

6. Spreading Democracy in the Middle East.

The invasion was entirely about Peak Oil, about the rise of China and India, and about US geostrategy in the ME, meaning dominion over oil producers. Arguably, it is a short-term policy to cushion the US economy against further oil crises, while the search for sustainability proceeds, sort of. Arguably, it will fail militarily, and the fourteen bases under construction now in Iraq will have to be deserted.

Here, anyway, is that concluding scene from Three days of the Condor. Judge for yourself, with the benefit of thirty-two years hindsight, whether it was prescient.

Tags: Peak Oil

Comments:

Posted by skeptical on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:54 | #

“3 Days of the Condor” is a fantastic American movie. One of my personal favorites to come out of the Cold War Era.

As an American, it literally breaks my heart out to see a White man’s New York City (circa 1970s) in this clip though.

The invasion was entirely about Peak Oil, about the rise of China and India, and about US geostrategy in the ME, meaning dominion over oil producers. Arguably, it is a short-term policy to cushion the US economy against further oil crises, while the search for sustainability proceeds, sort of. Arguably, it will fail militarily, and the fourteen bases under construction now in Iraq will have to be deserted.

The Iraq War was the product of a complicated calculation that considered international stability in the Oil futures markets, future U.S. influence in the Middle East, and ramifications for U.S. domestic politics.

I don’t think it was about forcefully securing Oil supplies for the U.S. though. The U.S. government could’ve done that without crossing any ocean.

Here, anyway, is that concluding scene from Three days of the Condor. Judge for yourself, with the benefit of thirty-two years hindsight, whether it was prescient.

I think it’ll seem a lot more prescient in the coming years as our international energy & financial markets further destabilize.

Posted by Red Baron on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:51 | #

Joe Turner, Ed Higgins, James Grady… that sounds like 1965 America.

Grady overlooked the fiendish plots of a very ethnocentric group with names like Perle, Wolfowitz, and Kristol, the neocons. Of course, I haven’t read his book though I did enjoy the movie.

Posted by Desmond jones on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:44 | #

A mediocre movie with great shots of the Twin Towers. Watching Redford and Faye Dunawaye is like watching paint dry. New York in the 70s was Murder City USA. Savage Negro gangs brutalised the city, raping, assaulting and murdering in a crime wave then unknown to New Yorkers. Not exactly a white man’s paradise.

The Israelis almost botched this one. The Soviet SAMs in Syrian hands wreaked havoc with the vaunted Israeli Air Force. The Syrian tanks punched a hole in Israeli defences, on the Golan Heights, which Guderian’s Panzers would have passed through faster than lightning on a June night. Of course Arabs are not Germans. Kissinger and the American cavalry, airlifted a bounty of goodies to Israel, saving the day. CIA reports revealed that Hank went to Devcon III, nuclear alert, when the Soviets threatened to intervene unilaterally if the Israelis failed to observe the ceasefire agreement.

Not so prescient if the history of intervention in the region is examined. From the building of the Queen Elizabeth-class of Dreadnought battleships, to the current “Ring of Steel” that encircles the Al-Basra oil terminal, Anglo-American policy, for the last century, has been bent on securing the timely and reasonably priced supply of oil to Western economies. The British were in the Levant, on and off, essentially from 1917 to 1956. Eisenhower’s intervention in Lebanon in 1957 was the beginning of the Eisenhower Doctrine, a plan to discourage pan-Arab nationalism, which has been American policy ever since. How long will the US stay? They’ve been in the UK, Germany and Japan for over sixty years, Korea for over fifty, and probably have similar plans to dominate Mesopotamia.

Unless of course V shows up to defeat the evil Norsefire party with its immigration restrictiveness policies.

A Penny for the Guy!

Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:42 | #

Desmond,

A penny? You’ve been away awhile, then.

Were the pre-Suez British interventions and that of Eisenhower theorised by a secret cabal and facilitated by policies of deception?

Three Days of the Condor came out of a pretty standard Actonite analysis whilst, plainly, that would do no justice to the neoconservative Iraqi adventure. It has none of the all-too-human saving grace that accompanies mere corruption by power. We are in the domain of the Straussian “noble lie” here.

But other than that, yes, I think Sydney Pollack and, particularly, James Grady can be praised for their prescience. Just imagine what a remake of the film would look like today. Kind of believable, right?

Posted by Desmond Jones on Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:22 | #

The proclamation of Baghdad

The following proclamation was issued to the inhabitants of Baghdad on March 19, 1917, by Lieut. General Sir Stanley Maude, shortly after the occupation of the city by British forces.
* * *

To the People of Baghdad Vilayet:

In the name of my King, and in the name of the peoples over whom he rules, I address you as follow:-

Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Since the days of Halaka your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried off to wars not of your seeking, your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in distant places.

Since the days of Midhat, the Turks have talked of reforms, yet do not the ruins and wastes of today testify the vanity of those promises?

It is the wish not only of my King and his peoples, but it is also the wish of the great nations with whom he is in alliance, that you should prosper even as in the past, when your lands were fertile, when your ancestors gave to the world literature, science, and art, and when Baghdad city was one of the wonders of the world.

etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

Ike was “invited” into Lebanon (winks as good as a nod), ironically to defend the Lebs against possible military action by Iraq after their post-British uprising.

The Kelly case was very interesting and I did fellow the Hutton reports quite closely, however, the evidence was never really there to suggest a conspiracy to murder. In the end, he was probably just another mad Welshman.

Posted by Snowflakes of Az on Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:37 | #

Israel was losing the 1973 war until Richard Nixon virtually denuded forward NATO bases and sent the equipment to the murderers of the USS LIBERTY sailors.

This war by Bush was for Israel, not oil

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_oilwar.htm

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern10312007.html

Posted by Bill on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:03 | #

Test

Why oil costs over $120 per barrel (The Oil Drum/Europe)

Posted by Bill on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:13 | #

Test 2

Why oil costs over $120 per barrel (The Oil Drum/Europe)

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4007#more

Posted by Bill on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:34 | #

Kunstler’s take - 16.06 .2008.

Status Quo-oh

...“We’re heading into the Vale of Malthus—Thomas Robert Malthus, the British economist-philosopher who introduced the notion that eventually world population would overtake world food production capacity. Malthus has been scorned and ridiculed in recent decades, as fossil fuel-cranked farming allowed the global population to go vertical. Techno-triumphalist observers who should have known better attributed this to the “green revolution” of bio-engineering. Malthus is back now, along with his outriders: famine, pestilence, and war.
We’re headed, it seems, toward a fall “crunch time,” and that crunching sound will not be of cheez doodles and taco chips consumed on the sofas of America. I think we’re heading into a season of hoarding. As the presidential campaign moves into its final round, Americans may be hard-up for both food and gasoline. On the oil scene, the next event on the horizon is not just higher prices but shortages….”

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/