United States in African Oil Politics

By

Nduka Uzuakpundu

ozieni@yahoo.com

The United States is showing a rare, but understandable, interest in quaffing oil from Africa.

This is informed by the latest crisis in the Middle East. – its used source of reliable, long-haul supply.

Since the event of September 11, 2001 – the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York, the destruction of a section of the Pentagon in Washington, in the main – it has dawned on Washington that it has to source its strategic oil from else where. This assumes a realisation by Washington that the Middle East oil supply may prove less reliable in the years ahead amid its captaincy of the global war on terrorism and the crisis in Iraq. The Bush administration has, thus, since 2002, declared Africa’s oil as one of strategic importance to Washington. Most of Washington oil needs coming from Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, the South Atlantic, would by 2022, account for a quarter of its strategic reserve, amounting to 3.5 million barrels per day at an annual cost of $50 billion, assuming the market price of oil is pegged at $45 per barrel. This expectation is freighted on an assumption that, within the distance, both China and India would become so cloyed, on account of flagging economic growth, that they would rather quaff global oil guardedly – and the Middle East unusually sedated, as Washington wins the war on global terrorism. Almost half the projected $50 billion from the Gulf of Guinea’s oil would flow into Nigeria’s foreign reserve. What is left would be scrambled by lesser-known producers like by Sao Tome, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroun, Gabon and Angola. Good luck to Congo – Brazzaville, if it spews oil in flooding quantity, as to engage such notorious arks as African Pride for a full year. That would qualify it for a seat in the newly-emerging cartel called ‘Gulf of Guinea Strategic Oil-producing States’ (GGSOS). The Sudan and Chad may be admitted, as observers from the savannah, provided as Washington may insist, Khartoum desists from further genocide in Darfur and compensates the blacks in that part of the country for the iniquities of the Janjaweed and its army – and that N’djamena conducts itself decently, so as not to betray a filthy longing by a few government officials to grab its newly-found oil chest. Washington is gratified that the Guinea oil would be of short haul, as opposed to Middle East’s long. It’s not yet well defined the terms of Washington emerging engagement on the Guinea coast. But in a recent instance, it has tried to trigger off an unnecessary asymmetry in relations between Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe. Beyond oil, skippers of civil society expect that Washington might flex its brawn to the effect that all member-states of GGSOS shorn corruption, but embrace democracy, free enterprise, respect for human rights and the environment, press freedom, protection of the ethic minorities form political eclipse, and as may be necessary, equitable distribution towards the eradication of poverty. In short, all the fine political practices that would help the violent quest for social justice in the Niger Delta region; practices that Washington has not been able to enforce in the Middle East, in a calculated deference to the sensibilities and culture of the ossified, oil-producing crowns of the region. These are practices that could help the cause of durable peace elsewhere – Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire – in the South Atlantic.

Thus the ultimate aim of the United States presence in the South Atlantic should the building of a new regional security pact – involving all the countries within the Senegal-South Africa axis – to ward off drug peddlers, gun-runners, human traffickers, and, amongst other, the likes of African Pride, who pride themselves in such irresponsible acts as stealing other people’s crude oil. This is a scenario picture of the Washington that now has to contend with the clear and present danger posed by Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and its allies. In effect, it’s having to battle with the attendant insecurity of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs as long-term founts of its oil needs. As the Bush administration preaches the gospel of democratic reforms to the conservative, oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Middle East, it’s reminded of its paramount, moral duty to ensure for the Palestinians an independent state. As it presses what it says are Washington’s strategic and foreign policy interests by invading Iraq, without justification, its reminded, again, that its uncritical, kid-glove disposition to Israel is fast washing away whatever influence it has in the Levant. A refusal to nudge Israel into a comprehensive denuclearisation – amid barely veiled frown and disquiet by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – while exerting international pressure on Iran never to snack on nuclear programme, even if for non-military intent, has blotted Washington’s image in the Middle East: it’s seen – alongside its allies – from the Atlantic sea-board of the Maghreb to the Gulf – as a power that is aiding the suppression of free speech, intolerance of constructive opposition and the very cause of growing instability. It’s a situation that has presented Washington with a spectre of a possible Islamic revolution – a la Iran, in 1979 – with the aim of sweeping away the present ossified crowns that are friends of the United States. Such an event has the potential – the kind that shakes Arab affairs specialists and policy-makers in Washington – of denying the United States unrestricted access to region’s oil-fields. While Washington can only nudge its Arab allies to expand the political space at their end, in a conscious respect for their cultural sensibility, it has realised that these same crowns, especially members of the Gulf Co-operation Council, led by Riyadh, are not helping matters: there’s a cultivated, royal scorn for Washington’s offer that they embrace democratic reform.

The result is such that there’s a confluence of extremes: Washington’s growing unpopularity, for its uncritical, but strategic backing for Israel – almost at the price of scuttling the moral quest for an independent Palestine state; and the reluctance of the Gulf crowns to heed domestic request for multi-party democracy; that has made Washington and its royal allies no longer desirable in the region. To prevent a revolution – and shield Israel from yet, ‘another Arab gang-up’ would draw Washington into a greater defence arrangement, than it does – presently – with the Gulf crowns. Still, that would not guarantee a friendly response to its call for democratic reforms on the part of the royal families. If anything, an Arab revolution would see Washington staying helplessly aloof from scene: it my never contemplate any incisive rescue mission as it attempted to free the 52 American hostages held by the Mullahs – for fear of a repeat of the failure that caused the United States so much humiliation that led to the defeat of the Democrats at the polls in 1979. Scary as this prospect is, Washington is cautiously optimistic that, within the vortex of its campaign against terror, its oil-producing allies would be protected from any pan-Arab revolution. It sees political reforms, within the nostrum of its Middle East political reform initiative, which envisages a long-term empowerment of civil society – as in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – to act as an applauding, if guarded, check on elected deputies and those hand-picked as eyes and ears of the palace. The Bush administration, arguably, thinks that the prospect of a pan-Arab revolution is far less certain: none like it has ever taken place in the recent history of the Middle East. While there’s some smoldering discontent amongst the youths in some Arab states, the target is not so much the crown as Washington – for its perceived role in encouraging its foremost strategic and foreign policy ally – Israel – to flout international law with overweening arrogance, and thwart the establishment of an independent Palestinian state; the Shah’s fall was a strategic miscalculation – Washington, in retrospect, ought to have negotiated a tidy exit for the crown, well before the Ayatollah assumed the features of a hurricane. That way, a la Saigon, it would have “snatched defeat from the embarrassingly cold jaws of success.” The Bush administration reasons that, since the Shah’s exit, the Arab crowns have learnt to ‘open up’, even if benignly, their society, so as to have a feel of the pulse of tax-payers and workers. That may explain why it was possible to “kill in the shell” the attempt, back in 1992 of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), in Algeria, to capture political power – even if was from the ballot box. Some from of containment that, you might say. It was possible because the events that led to it were within the architecture of an organised election. The offending strength of state-run intelligence gathering system, which foiled the political ambition of the FIS – a desire to establish and Islamic republic in Algeria – proved an embarrassing failure in the USS Cole. Elsewhere, Washington believes that the forces of a sweeping revolution are somewhat amorphous – and that includes the much-dreaded, but banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – as to have any cross-border influence. And, as the Iraqi crisis has shown, there is a huge crack between the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam, as to make any common front against the Arab crowns realistic. The fear of domination of one by the other – especially Shiite domination, as their ascendancy in post-Ba’athist Iraq adumbrates – offers a new subject of reflection on how difficult unity amongst diverse Islamic sets promises. If all these calculations rule out the possibility of a sect-based revolution of the Arab world, Washington is assured of the safety and security of the crowns – and its fair share of Arab oil. Would the story have been horrifyingly different, had 9/11 taken place in somewhere in the Gulf? How realistic is 9/11, or the Madrid and London versions in any of the pro-West Arab capitals?

*Nduka Uzuakpundu is a Lagos-based journalist