Slouching towards realism

Following on from Justin’s post here a while back, Henry at Crooked Timber sounds a note of alarm over the appare […]

Your core point is really important, and not much discussed. At the moment we pay a very small scarcity premium on top of the cost of getting it out of the ground. At some point in the future, which may be more or less now, oil is going to get more and more expensive. Some of this will due to deeper drilling etc. but much will be straight profit for the supplying countries. As you say they might choose to use some of this financial bounty for political favours by selling at a discount to people they like.

This is pretty much a ‘when’ not ‘if’ scenario. Oil substitutes are expensive and incomplete, and every barrel pumped is a barrel less in the ground. The only question is how rapidly depletion will occur, what alternatives will be available, and how ready countries are to use military means to secure it.

Just hypothetically… imagine that global oil demand begins to exceed global oil production capacity. If someone has to do without the stuff, then those selling it are presented with a choice. They can retain the global single market (and whoever pays the most gets the oil) or they can choose who they sell their oil to based on political as well as economic considerations.

Given that Venezuela is already selling oil to Cuba at knock-down prices, and bearing in mind the willingness of Gulf producers to politicise their resource (as happened twice in the 70s), it would be foolish to imagine that oil producers will always sell to the highest bidder.

With China and Russia currently engaged in their first ever joint military exercises; with both nations applying pressure on the Central Asian Republics to sever ties with Washington and evict US military bases from their territory; as well as the aforementioned Iranian co-operation agreements with both, as they watch the US army get bogged down next door and remove the seals from their nuclear facilities… it seems sensible to expect an increasing politicisation of the oil market over the next few years.

All hypothetically of course. If demand never outstrips supply, there’s probably nothing to worry about except catastophic climate change.

Should we let them have a theocracy if that’s what they want? I think we should try to stop that happening, although it may be difficult to do anything in practice that isn’t counter-productive in the long run.

“If the Iraqis want to be ruled by religious conservatives, that’s their soveriegn right”

If they want to stone people to death for offending their religious values then should we stand aside and let them do so? I don’t believe so. Some habits need to be stamped out, not ignored or condoned. I don’t subscribe to cultural relativism. That’s not to say that Western culture is necessarily superior in terms of the whole package – there’s plenty of things wrong with our culture too, but ditching medieval moral codes and punishments isn’t one of them.

The answer was, of course, into the houses the rioters came from. Given the electoral stats, I suspect all the people in Basra who could reasonably be expected to vote for “secular” if it was a party (which in this case meant Iyad “Al-Ba’athi” Allawi, more’s the pity) did – about 10-15%, plus a point or so of communists and such. A significant minority, but not significant enough to determine Iraq’s basic direction in a time of mass politics.

One shouldn’t accept everything the Americans say about the “soft British” without a pinch, nay, a truckload of salt – in the Sadr uprising last year the brigade out there managed to fire 100,000 rounds of rifle ammo in a month, engage in the longest continuous battle the British Army has fought since Korea, deploy Challenger 2 tanks, AC130s and fast jets, and receive a couple of Victoria Crosses. The price of retaining any territorial control was to divide the surviving Sadrists – up north, the Americans retook the urban centres by batter and storm (remember them driving tanks around the cemetery in Najaf?) and then found they didn’t have the manpower to extend that control beyond them.

The only guarantee of any degree of secularity being written into the Iraqi constitution, or more importantly being put in effect, is the fact the Kurds consider it a prerequisite for staying in Iraq and not declaring civil war.

You’re probably right when you say a large majority believe the ayatollah was right but with it being an Islamic crime to defy a fatwa, democratic rights were taken away from those who didn’t.

Most do, if the result of the January election is anything to go by.

As I said, with elections being conducted under fatwas from clerics, it seems to me that many Iraqis had that choice taken away from them.

If religion hadn’t been influential in Iraq, the fatwas wouldn’t have had significant effect. To put it another way: if people want to do something because religious leaders tell them to, then they want religious-led government.

The British forces’ choice of the easy rather than the right course of action has led to the police being infiltrated by Sadr-ists who now seem to be running Basra as some kind of fiefdom. Nobody got to vote on that.

The Sadrists and other religious factions, such as SCIRI, between them seem to have the support of most people in Basra.

But that begs the question who might [Iraq] use [nuclear weapons] against. Maybe a non-Muslim nuclear power not too far away?

I doubt it.

As for the oil, with Iran and China making diplomatic spoons and the Chinese consumer economy about to go nova, I don’t think Iran/Iraq would have problems shifting the oil if they decided not to sell to us.

It makes no difference who they sell it to since there is one market for oil worldwide. Of course, it the Yanks had been sensible and taken measures to reduce energy consumption, like Europeans have, we’d be in a better position today.

Maybe not. But that begs the question who might they use them against. Maybe a non-Muslim nuclear power not too far away? That would have geopolitical ramifications. An Iraq/Iran theocracy don’t even have to get the bomb to cause waves as this week’s fuss over Iran restarting its nuclear programme shows.

As for the oil, with Iran and China making diplomatic spoons and the Chinese consumer economy about to go nova, I don’t think Iran/Iraq would have problems shifting the oil if they decided not to sell to us.