According
to Vitalis, oil is less the story of oil, the crude matter, and more the story
of cooked data and produced-under-demand type of evidence. Powerful interest
groups and lobbies inside the U.S. corridors of power steer such data and
evidence toward selling the myth which nearly all people are born to embrace as
self-evident. Indeed, the fear of failing to ensure a constant supply of oil
(and strangely only) from the Persian Gulf is supposed to spell a trauma. The
myth sits on another no less powerful and enduring myth. Both science and
reason ensure that there has never been a dwindling supply of oil or any other
natural resources. As technology advances, enough reserves of all types of
minerals are constantly discovered. The only way to free the U.S. democracy,
nay, the very political system and ensure a solid role model for the rest of
the world is to shed off these myths. They cripple U.S. policy planners and
ruin the U.S. reputation in the world.
The
book comprises five chapters wherein the first serves as an introduction and
the last as a conclusion. Chapter One "Opening" sets the stage for
revisiting President Bush's conquest of Iraq in 2003. Since both then and now,
the argument goes that the U.S. acted on behalf of large Oil conglomerates. If
so, Vitalis rebuts. The proper and easiest way for the U.S. to access that oil
was to lift its own 1990s sanctions on Iraqi exports. Like this, oil companies
would have entered the market and the problem resolved. Besides, with the rise
of prices in the early 2000s, the abundance of hydraulically-fractioned oil has
made the U.S. a major producer of oil itself. The U.S. import of oil from the
Middle East is around 18 per cent.
Nevertheless,
"Junk social science" (p. 5) keeps the scary narrative aflame. In a
context where luminaries and public intellectuals are fixated on their myth of
'oil-as-power', the term 'oilcraft' recalls witchcraft more than statecraft.
Vitalis' analogy is a call towards dispelling confusion and talismanic
obsession by promoting a rationalized understanding of decisions about energy
policy. When the only evidence 'junk' social scientists provide is the rising
of prices, then one comes face to face with what Roger Stern ably calls
'oil-scarcity ideology' (p. 6). Vitalis stresses the method whereby every
statement we encounter in the archive should be taken with a grain of salt.
To
counter such an erroneous methodology, he proposes that readers must not
overlook three facts: 1- the world is rich in minerals; anyone has access to
raw materials. The possibility of oil-as-weapon is at best incorrect and a
'chimaera' (p. 14). Instead of embracing the confirmation bias, the abondance
should incentivize us to question what lies beyond the phenomenal; 2- the
imagined threats to oil supply—even when real—cannot be addressed militarily;
3- oil prices are dependent on other raw materials. A simple comparison of oil
prices against other minerals in the long durée—as Roger Stern does—will
conclude that oil cannot be the lifeblood of the American way of life.
Chapter
Two, "Raw Materialism", posits that the idea of a single source being
of critical importance for a given national economy is reductionist at best and
misleading at worse. Vitalis brings to evidence proponents of the early
twentieth century Columbia School (scholars like Edward Mead Earle and William
S. Culbertson) wherein the latter notes that U.S. policy since 1918 has been
rooted in "bogeys" ranging from rapid depletion of natural resources
to British monopoly of these resources (pp. 26-7). Back then, like now, there
existed an industry behind the studies fueling these bogeys, infuriating the
public and policymakers alike about such imagined threats. Vitalis finds that
the idea of " 'control' of foreign oil fields" (p. 29) becoming a
priority for the U.S. economy has been sown in Americans' unconscious fairly
recently, during the 1990s. Culbertson finds that wars do not emerge from the
need to control or ensure extended supplies of raw materials but from the need
for markets to commercialize industrialized commodities. (p. 32) That is how
embracing mid-nineteen century protectionism triggers bouts of scarcity
syndrome. But a generation or two later, these findings made during the 1920s
were all forgotten. The Cold War context made it more likely that the Soviets
could threaten U.S. access to Middle East oil. Vitalis adds that even Noam
Chomsky falls into confirmation bias wherein "the progressives of the
1970s were a pale imitation of their 1920s ancestors." (p. 55) as they
just kept parroting criticism of American foreign policy without registering
the immanent discourse on oil or where that criticism might be heading.
Chapter
Three, "1973: A Time to Confuse", rereads the much-mediated event of
October 17, 1973, or the alleged OPEC oil embargo. Upon checking the evidence,
Vitalis finds the event was anything but a spectacle. Under no stretch of the
imagination, the event can be seriously called or even approximated to a threat
of cutting supplies, let alone an embargo. Back then, "only 7 per cent of
U.S. oil imports originated from the Middle East" (p. 57). Besides, Arab
nationalists only expressed a half-hearted and face-saving gesture in the wake
of their humiliating defeat against Isarel in June 1967—gestures meant for
popular consumption at home only.
Nevertheless,
the scarcity-thesis driven by media and the cult of trusting experts and
intellectuals for gaining monopoly made it look as if scarcity is imminent and
can usher at the end of the world. Vitalis discusses the five hundred pages
report by David S. Freeman's A Time to Choose, released when Americans were experiencing
long lines in gas stations. The report makes it super easy to jump to the
conclusion that the long queues were a reverberation from the much-publicized
shock that spelt serious disruptions of supply and all presumably orchestrated
by the Arab Embargo. In reality, though, OPEC "sought a fairer share of
the windfall." (p. 64) In its effort to protect local crude producers from
the effects of the unstable market, the U.S. government used a preferential
tariff with local crude producers. However, the Nixon Administration decided in
1971 to reverse the preferential tariff policy and open the U.S. market to
non-American producers. This new policy, not OPEC's action, explain the
interruption in supply and long queues; the embargo was only a surrogate. Far from
disrupting supply, Arabs were terrified of losing their market shares.
Chapter
Four, "No Deal", elaborates on the motoring principle behind the myth
that stipulates the invisibility of oil for the American policymaker. It is the
key chapter as it uncovers the motive behind portraying oil as the bloodline of
the American economy. Vitalis notes that this myth could not become as intense
as now without the fantasy-embraced-as-history. Given their nefarious stature
in consequence of 9/11, the Saudis, or Al Saud, more exactly: the ruling
oligarchs of Saudi Arabia, have invested heavily to paint themselves as
peace-loving and reliable suppliers of oil for the U.S. economy. They invented
a genesis for a presumed memorandum of understanding or a deal between King Ibn
Saud and President Franklin Roosevelt on board the destroyer U.S.S. Qunicy near
the end of World War II. The presumed deal which the author finds no trace in
the archives or the records hypothetically listed that the Saudis will ensure
reliable shipments of crude and the U.S., on its part, will guarantee the
protection of the king and his dynasty after him. Vitalis adds: "The only
problem is that no account of U.S.-Saudi relation for the next fifty years said
any such thing." (p. 87), underscoring a situation that leads anyone to
conclude that "The Saudis, the P.R. firms, and their many friends in
Washington would milk the meeting with F.D.R. for all it was worth after
2001". (p. 91) Indeed, Vitalis is aware that this Saudi fabrication counts
among the latest in the arsenal of forgeries specifying the invisibility of
oil. Differently put, the deceit and the fable could not go unnoticed without
interest groups at home. These interest groups profit from recycling oil
dollars in the U.S. economy through purchases of U.S. treasury bonds, consumer
goods and, of course, armament bills with astronomical price tags attached to
them. That is how it is for the long-term interest of the U.S. to distance
itself from a retrogressive and degenerate monarchy. That proximity does
considerable damage to the status of the U.S. as a superpower. The crumbling of
the Saudis' rule will be an event that will boost, not hinder, U.S. supremacy
or at least its leadership credentials.
Chapter
Five, "Breaking the Spell", concludes Oilcraft by reclaiming each
chapter's key pieces of the argument. Vialis starts with underlying that
"[p]opular and scholarly beliefs about oil-as-power also have no basis in
fact" (p. 122). But the irony that the myth posits is that policymakers
who sincerely want to break from this fixation can do little to break the
immanent structure whereby oil is received as invisible. The assumptions are
that powerful that any attempt to go against them ends in discrediting, if not
ridiculing, the credible policymaker. Hence, the first step of leaving that
fixation starts with getting the scholarship correct, never allowing unchecked
opinions to go for knowledge. Knowledge starts by first making sure that crude
producers have no choice but to sell their outputs. Before harming the U.S.
economy, cutting supplies will strangle their economies and destabilize their
hold on power. Second, one needs to be certain that besides the fact that
deploying an army to protect crude supplies cannot be tenable and efficient,
the deployment itself raises tensions and causes supply interruptions. Third,
the Middle East is a volatile space, and it does not behove a superpower to be
constantly dragged into the mess out there. Fourth, by the same depleted logic
of scarcity, why does not the U.S. go and chase bauxite, tungsten, tin, rubber
lest other powers appropriate them? Fifth, there lies the fallacy with which
the degenerate left sells its credentials: as soon as the U.S. steps out of the
Middle East, "the fossil-capital-led order" will fall all on its own
hence an era of plenitude automatically emerge. In the end, Vitalis notes that
"Oilcraft today [has] hijack[ed] the mind of the scientifically
literate" (p.128), speaking less of the average person whereby oil passes
as an explanation for almost every that is wrong with the world today. Sixth,
Saudis' money should not be allowed to finance studies. Funding (Vitalis
rightly calls it "the paid-to-think-tanks" p. 131) will only bring
about pseudo-science whose consequences are more confusion and befogged
policies, but the propaganda which the funding generates will cover for the
asphyxiation of liberties in the Middle East and the world at large. In the
end, Vitalis rightly addresses the U.S. policymaker: "why fear an Arabia
without Sultans?" (p. 133)
Vitalis
finds that well-intentioned and respectful policymakers and advisers stay
disabled in the face of the enduring myths. Over the decades, these myths have
taken a larger dimension than life. He is correct that the journey to undo
their effect starts with unbiased research. But there are instances where
Vitalis' reliance on Posen's suspicion of the ideology that oil is all but
powerful recalls the theory that colonies cost metropolitan centres more than
what the latter could squeeze value out of them. But his subsequent elaboration
that correlation does not necessarily lead to causation lifts the confusion.
Perhaps
what remains missing in Vitalis' discussion of Columbia scholars' findings of
the 1920s regarding those in favour of open trade and their opponents is how
during the time where capital expansion needed nationalism, oil was treated
(and for good reasons) as the lifeblood. Vitalis indirectly calls for updating
sedimented thinking since capitalistic growth since the 1920s (exactly after
WWI) is not conditioned on the old mystique view of oil-as-bloodline, given the
abundance of supply. Producers cannot afford to withdraw crude from buyers lest
they risk losing their share in a highly competitive market. Similarly, no
major power can hinder access to oil because oil remains evenly available
everywhere.
At
play, there have been two temporalities of capital accumulation, not one:
formal and real dominations. The two temporalities explain why Moon notes the
necessity (which is, in fact, Karl Marx's) that animate these temporalties
wherein occupying a colony becomes financially inhibitive after WWI. Self-less
or anonymous capital is self-regulating at an advanced stage of primitive
accumulation. Differently put, during the era of real domination (post-1918),
there cannot be a need for a class of bourgeois pioneers to intervene. That
explains why the bourgeois class has disappeared. In its place, there emerged a
capitalistic class who controlled nothing yet. They pretend they are in charge
of managers/administrators (C.E.O.s) appointed by shareholders to speak on
behalf of the latter interest. Hence in this context, we read of Parker T.
Moon's quote where "raw materials are colour-blind." (p. 36) and that
colonies are a burden to maintain.
Likewise,
Vitalis' analysis in Chapter Four dwells on the corruption of the Saudis, and
their dizzying pace of change 'from camels to Cadilliacs' (p. 95) paid for by
oil rent may sound racist stays inconsequential in the overreaching impact of
oil wealth. For that, oil wealth decides less their conservative outlook but
more significantly intensifies their adamant predisposition against the
founding of the semblance of an egalitarian polity all over the MENA (the
Middle East and North Africa) region. The counter-revolution that quelled the
uprisings of the Arab Spring both in 2011 and 2019 have been fueled and
financed by their medieval outlook. On the aside, Vitalis notes that with
recycled petrodollars, the Saudi acquired F-15 jets that have been since March
2015 bombing civilians in Yemen. But he could have pushed his liberal outlook a
little further by noting that worse than the F-15s lies the regressive and
ultra-conservative brand of the faith whose sole agenda appears to be the
crashing all social movements that promised to propagate towards a lifestyle
free from the dictatorship of oil.
Overall,
there are instances where Vitalis' debunking of myths such as 'oil-as-power'
falls into the right, and there are other instances where the same debunking falls
more into the left. Still, sometimes he can be counted even as a devout
communist. But the undecidability of classification is the quality of great
scholarship, where he passionately elucidates his points regardless of class or
ideology. Indeed, Vitalis embraces his mission to eradicate facile portrayals
because masquerading beneath so-called 'self-evident conclusions' lies not only
the perpetuation of mistaken decisions but the squandering of the U.S.
taxpayers' savings as well subaltern of the MENA chances for a future in
dignity.
Fouad
Mami
Université
d’Adrar (Algeria)
ORCID
iD https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1590-8524
fouad.mami@univ-adrar.edu.dz
