WEEKEND COLUMNISTS When I was first taught history at school, our teacher, Mr Healey, would turn round and chalk various numbered points on the blackboard: events leading up to the war (whichever war it happened to be); events of the war itself; and the consequences.
I know now that historical truth is more complex and elusive than Mr Healey made it sound. But most of the basics still seem right. He told us that taxation without representation helped cause the American War of Independence. And it did.
But what will future Mr Healeys make of the 2003 war in Iraq? How will any history master even begin the process of tabulating and enumerating the causes? Could anyone provide a coherent and even remotely accurate list of reasons for the invasion?
My working theory all along has been that the answer is no: that the major actors in the drama – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair etc – had their own different though interlocking justifications for wanting a war no matter what. But what was in each individual mind remains baffling, and probably always will. (They lied before the war, so the habit will presumably persist in the memoirs.)
This is not a particularly original viewpoint. The well-informed author Thomas Powers expressed his puzzlement recently in The New York Review of Books. He reckoned the commonly expressed motives (“the lure of Iraqi oil, making the Middle East safe for Israel, and settling old scores”) all played a part, but added: “What’s particularly odd is that there seems to be no sophisticated, professional, insiders’ version of the thinking that drove events.”
Powers has better intelligence contacts than I do, so it doesn’t seem to be disgraceful to be on the same page. Single-strand conspiracy theories have never had much appeal to me, on this question or just about any other. But last month an article appeared in the London Review of Books that gave me pause. It came from Jim Holt, a consistently challenging New York-based writer, and it was headed simply “It’s the Oil”.
The theory starts as follows: Iraq has huge, substantially untapped, high-quality, easily reachable oil reserves. The administration is in the midst of “persuading” the Iraqi government to ensure future revenues are divvied in a manner surprisingly favourable to the big oil companies.
Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, the Americans are engaged in constructing five massively fortified “superbases” in remote corners of Iraq. There, the US would aim to keep its soldiers and mercenaries indefinitely over a future in which Iraq would probably get less violent but ever more segmented, a situation that wouldn’t bother the Americans, who could stick to their bases unless the oil was threatened. One of these bases, Balad, is said to have only slightly fewer landings than Heathrow.
To the victors, the spoils: according to Holt, these would include the oil companies, oil-service companies (such as the ubiquitous Halliburton), and motorists throughout the west. Losers would include energy suppliers such as the Iranians, Saudis and Russians, whose control over prices would suddenly be diminished, and energy-hungry China, which would have to start kowtowing to Washington all over again. This is not of course a policy that emanates from a regime bothered about climate change.
OK, so far so what? A million bloggers and chatroom conspiracy cranks have come up with variations on this theme. But the striking part of Holt’s theory is that what appears to be American failure was in fact essential to its ultimate success: “The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth.’’
If the US had actually given Iraq a proper democratic government, then the Iraqis would have said thank you and goodnight to the GIs at the first opportunity, and taken control of their own affairs. But, so Holt suggests, the US had no intention of allowing any such thing. Hence, the apparent postwar mistakes were all part of the masterplan.
“In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success,” Holt concludes.
Except that he can’t quite bring even himself to believe it. Holt invites us to believe that the Bush administration are not bungling wannabe Machiavellis but operators so sophisticated that the voters are never going to find out how smart they are.
This notion elevates conspiracy theory to the point where cock-up plays no part whatever. Next task: try to explain their economic policy in the same terms.
