much has been said, informed and otherwise, about the motivations behind the current situation with iraq.

the bennboys and appeasers say it's all about oil and a sham. or that it's just a texan inbred redneck trying to do what his pa couldn't.

others think there may be more to it and that hussein represents a serious potential threat to us via the proliferation of chemical, biological and potential fissile weapons.

what about the motivations of france, germany and russia?

so i thought i might share some interesting data with you:


FRANCE

- france is the hussein regime's largest foreign trade partner.

- french trade with iraq stood at US$1.5bn in 2001.

- french oil multinational TotalFinaElf has the largest foreign oil position in iraq with reserves of 10bn barrels. it also has development options on the majnoon oil field with a production capacity of 440,000 barrels per day. both granted by hussein.


GERMANY

- germany is the single largest foreign supplier of armaments to iraq.

- germany supplied US$83.2m of arms in 1998 alone from 80 companies.

- germany supplied iraq's entire WMD production infrastructure. (no surprise there, they invented them after all and were the first country to employ them in combat).

- total german exports to iraq totalled US$250m between June and December 2002.


RUSSIA

- hussein's regime owes moscow US$8bn in debt.

- moscow's annual exports to iraq are worth US$1.1bn, making it iraq's second biggest trade partner by $ volume.

- LukOil, one of russia's biggest oil companies, has a US$3.5bn oil supply deal with iraq.


USA

- american export trade to iraq was worth just US$10m in 2000 - 1% that of russia; 0.6% that of france; 2% that of germany.

- america imports 50% of its oil out of a total consumption of 220 billion barrels per year.

- just 5.4% of total US oil imports come from iraq.

- only 14% of total US oil imports come from the middle east.

- 86% of total US oil imports are sourced from south america, mexico and canada.


**


the conclusions one can draw from this data (collated from independent online news sources - including arab ones, oil trade publications and the american census bureau - are fairly clear.

it seems to me that those that have most to lose economically from enforcing UN resolution 1441 are not american.

they are french, russian and german. with hussein dislodged, their trade contracts - for they are made with his government - are null and void.

so is it all about oil? draw your own conclusions based on some hard facts.

some interesting food for thought anyhow. your (constructive) opinions, as ever, are welcome.

 

All very eloquent HG, as ever. However, i still don't think there is enough moral justification for this war. I'm prepared to accept that oil is not the major factor - your point about the US being able to actually *buy* all of Iraq's oil for less than the cost of the war was the most telling statement, but my other thoughts as to why this war is being staged still stand.

But it's gone too far now anyway. It would be too expensive not to have a war now, so it's a bit of a moot point.

If Mr Hussein does indeed use any form of WOMD, against anybody, during the upcomnig war, i will stand corrected and hold my hand up that i was mistaken. If he doesn't, this war will leave a legacy of doubt and recrimination.

 

hg you need to check first how much the US is in debt , heres a link http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ , i think ruling out that it not about oil is just laughable. How do you think the US is going to pay for this the taxpayer ?

 

fair enough telboy. you're open-minded.

taking the judgement is hard in this situation as it's about managing potential risk as opposed to dealing with direct threat.

i'm just trying to de-bunk some of the popular myths.

 

rayman

i don't follow you. a 5.4% oil import is insufficient to justify war.

multi-billion dollar debt and multi-billion dollar trade is certainly enough motivation to block one.

 

This is soooooooooooo last week

 

a 5.4% oil import may be insufficient to justify war, but multi billion debt is sufficient to justify enough to control the middle east oil reserves to bring this debt down.

 

LOL!

That's PEANUTS to these countries, dude!

80 million dollars! That's a lot to you or me, but to Germany? Get real! Their annual budget is several huindred BILLION dollars. 1.5 billion with France might be more of an issue though...

 

hang on, but controlling iraqi oil won't deliver this

you can only control middle eastern oil reserves if you have the saudi, fields first, followed by the iranian and UAE fields, both of which currently produce more barrels/day than iraq.

i suspect you're dissembling.

the fact is this: those attempting to prevent conflict are attempting to protect their substantial iraqi trade links, not stop war for altruistic reasons as many believe. they do not possess the moral high ground.

and it's diplomatically clever: by doing so, they also distance themselves from arab criticism. heinously hypocritical seeing as saddam's military is for the vast part armed by france, russia and germany.

the figures speak for themselves IMO.

 

of course it's peanuts compared to GDP. but, duh, they're also trying to protect potential trade growth and geo-political influence which is of huge long term value and something not easily clawed back.

as to underwriting their losses? who knows? i suspect that the horse-trading taking place behind closed doors is covering exactly this. hence the fuss being made. they want their pound of flesh guaranteed before they get with the programme. or at least, not veto it.

 

Another way of looking at it is this.

If the Frogs, Germany and Russia veto the next UN resolution, and the US invades Iraq anyway (as it will), who stands to loose out?

Its a rather expensive game of cards.....

I think the US/UK have the best hand, although on a personal level, Tony Blair has a lot to loose if the resolution doesn't go through. It just depends how much people think they stand to loose.

Can't quite put it accross as well as the geezer on TV last night, but it all kinda makes sense.

 

So the US are planning an attack purely for altruistic / humanitarian reasons, without *any* consideration for potential economic or political gain?

Regime change in Iraq has been on the Republican political agenda for many years -- long before anyone had even heard of al-Qaeda. On 26 January 1998, a letter was written to President Clinton which said:

"In the long term, removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

The signatories included Donald Rumsfeld, now Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, now Deputy Secretary of Defence, and John Bolton, Richard Perle and Richard Armitage, all luminaries of the current US Administration.

Don't you find it contradictory that successive US governments have done NOTHING but impose sanctions for over a decade, and now all of a sudden we're gearing up for war, with or without UN support?

In 1998, Tony Blair stated he had no intention of supporting a war in Iraq, because "committing hundreds of thousands of ground troops is unthinkable".

Oh, and if any terrorist organisation wanted WOMDs, they wouldn't get the stuff from Iraq -- they'd go somewhere easier. So that angle isn't relevant either.

 

did i say that? did i imply that? nope. what a ridiculous thing to say. i was using the figures to demonstrate the arch-hypocrisy behind the public rhetoric of some of our EU partners. and to show that "it's all about US designs on iraqi oil" is a convenient red herring. which it most certainly is.

thought you might have learned by now that no government does anything out of altruism only self-interest.

do i find it contradictory that in the intervening years, the US chose to stick to sanctions?

er, no. the intervening years were spanned entirely by a democrat administration under clinton, as opposed to the previous republican administration of the gulf war. containment, not regime change, was state policy. and in his second term, clinton's position was too unstable and scandal-wracked to enable him to take many risks.

but you overlook the key event here: 9/11. it is an undeniable fact that the world's single worst terrorist atrocity has profoundly affected the formation of american foreign policy. and in republican hands, the approach to foreign policy will always be more ... bullish.

arguably there has never been a time when they've taken self-interest - and self-protection - more fully to heart.

 

You didn't say that specifically -- but my point is that all parties involved have covert agendas. Not a ridiculous thing to say at all. Of course 9-11 has changed US foreign policy -- it's made them lash out at any scapegoat that they feel they can intimidate without too many repercussions.

I agree with armed diplomacy as a policy but what we're seeing is sabre-rattling to no adequately justified end. The WMD argument is simply not convincing -- especially when the single largest terrorist atrocity committed involved nothing of the sort.

 

no i didn't did i...(sigh)

in response, my point is that next time, it might be. can we afford to take that chance? we've already had two, thankfully bungled, incidents of germ/nerve agents being used by extremist groups - on the tokyo subway and recently in korea.

can we afford to see the job done properly? against us. by professionals. who loathe us.

do you think hussein is being up front, honest and complying with resolution 1441 as it stands?

of course he isn't. only the bennboys and luvvies say he is.

what we're seeing now *is* armed diplomacy.

 

America needs this war to sort out it's crap economy, first they go in and bomb the bejeeezus out of them with missiles made in the US, then they remove Saddam from power and then go in and rebuild all the buildings they have just flattened using parts and labour from the US hence charging Iraq and generating revenue, there is alot more to it than that but basically America will benefit finacially from flattening Iraq.

 

The muppetised version

Once upon a time your dad had a punch up with the guy down the road who sells very cheap petrol cause he beat on his family and even his neighbours. Your dad vowed that his family and his mates will never buy petrol, crisps or sweets from him until he changes his horrible ways and ( just for good measure ) he blocks off half his driveway so only a few cars can get in or out.

A few months later (after some seriously dodgy dealings) you have just got your licence and your first motor. You are up to the eyeballs in debt and you don’t want to pay twice as much from the other petrol stations because you drive a Subaru and it uses juice like a goddamn freight train uses diesel.

One night you and your mates are in the pub and come up with the perfect plan. If you go down there and smack him on the head with a big stick and kick him out of the petrol station, replace him with a mate to run the show, then you can all have as much petrol as you want for free, no probs.

So you head down there and watch him day and night but you realise he doesn’t really beat the missus anymore, just yells at her once in a while and maybe smacks the kids a bit hard but nothing that’s going to get the local cops to go deal with him.

Well, this really isn’t helping with getting your cheap fuel and saving some money (so you can get that PPP and kick some BMW butt). So you start telling all your mates that he’s still a noob, a danger to his family and there are no options left except going in to sort it out with whoever wants to come along for the ride.

You go down to the local cop shop and of all things you are told that you don’t have a good enough reason to beat the crap out of him, but you are definitely allowed to watch him in case something changes. So you whip out the old photoshop and run up some pics of how he’s got a torture chamber in the basement. You go back to the cops with your new photoshop piccies but they tell you they want more proof.... idiots.

Now everyone is asking how you got the piccies ( especially the mate you sent in to look around and didn’t find anything ) but you ignore the hagglers and say that its secret information and its all the proof they need and are likely to get, and besides the hagglers just have to be his friends.

By this stage a few of your mates are backing away thinking you’re a bit of a nutter. That doesn’t matter because you’re on a roll and its time to sort him out once and for all, and besides, now he just has to be siding with the dude who you suspect ripped off your wing the other night.

You go back to the cops to see what they think now but they are still unsure and a few even have the audacity to say you’re a dope. So you tell em what you think of em and that if they aren’t going to offer support, then its going to be up to you and a few of your mates, besides your bigger and more important than they are so they can go away cause you don’t need them to help anyway.

So in you go with some shiny new baseball bats and a jack handle and kick his butt big time.

Now you have lots of cheap fuel and can tell the other petrol stations to **** off. You are feeling pretty good about yourself and no longer think you’re a looser who has to prove something to your dad.

 

you said it. is that by muppets, for muppets or both i wonder??

 

I've just been reading about this. You're quite right it is very interesting. Far from being altruistic as they'd like us to believe they all have their own hidden agendas

This conflict has to be the most cynical ever [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

 

Hypothetical question - but what if France, and Germany, and Russia (and now possibly China) sent a few warships down to the Gulf "to protect their economic interests". You know, to stop the US destroying their markets????

ISTR that, er, France and Russia (and China) are all nuclear powers, so they could cause some very big explosions if they wanted. Hey, maybe not even in the Gulf area!!!

The US need bringing down a peg (or twelve). They try to buy countries (e.g. Turkey) when it suits them, but then they bomb the hell out of them when they don't follow orders

mb

 

Trying my best to ignore the rest of your post, but what the hell kind of statement is that?

 

Maybe i worded things badly...

The US would dearly like to invade Iraq from the North, thus have offered Turkey TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in aid. Whether this goes ahead is currently in discussion - i think that Turkey's parliament has rejected it, but the military want it.

Separately (i was not suggesting that the US would bomb Turkey!), if they can't buy favours, they are quite happy to go into a country (as in NON-sovereign-US-territory or not even a threat to such) and bomb them. An hour ago there was "Battle Stations" on Channel 4 about the Black Hawk helicopter. I don't know all the political background, but what on earth is the US doing going into Somalia (not very close to home) in 1993 and forcing it's own ideals on the country. Sadly, 18 US air crew died. Even more sadly, hundreds on Somalians died at the same time

Probably a bad arguement , but although the US is no doubt the biggest and only super-power, they need to be very careful not to become too arrogant.

mb

 

AFAIK, the French warships arent functional, or at least not the biggest one, the Charles de Gaulle. However, the atomic weapons work fine, as proved a few years ago when the whole world protested at the French testing them in the Pacific. I dont think France would attack American warships.
But...
accidents happen, you know LOL

Anyway, I'm kind of glad I dont live in the USA or the UK. Surely that's where the so called terrorists would hit next?

 

Who says Americans have no sense of irony? From my BBC news email this morning:

" * Bush condemns Iraqi 'charade' *
President Bush says that refusing to use force to disarm Iraq is taking an unacceptable risk."

...followed by:

" * Bush 'optimistic' on N Korea diplomacy *
US President Bush says that regional diplomacy is the best way to tackle the North Korean nuclear issue."

And they wonder why we're all so cynical...

 

Actually, there were more votes FOR allowing the US in than againts, it's just that there was not a big enough majority to satisfy there laws on the matter.

 

uncle. i never said we were behaving altruistically BTW.

as i said before, just poking holes in the hypocrisy of some others closer to home for a change

north korea? i suggest we leave them to the chinese. not only are they nearer, they are ten times more ruthless.

 

I think Unclebuck is as close as anyone to the truth of it. I hear now that Bush is going to offer "financial incentives" to the countries which are undecided in the UN to encourage them to vote for the resolution he wants.

The old fashioned name for that is Bribery isn't it? is there no shame anymore!

Les

 

But surely the good ol' US of A would have promised to cover France, Germany and Russia for potential revenue losses to get their support to their war plans (which, incidentally, I don't agree with)? David


Spiling edit





[Edited by David Lock - 3/6/2003 12:02:56 PM]