ECONOMIC MOTIVES

BEHIND AMERICA’S
GLOBAL WAR ON
TERRORISM
Gurnani Tanya
Gupta Ishu
Agarwal Amit
“The National Security Strategy of the
United States.”
According to President Bush the
War on Terror has 2 main aims:-  

1. Strengthen alliances to defeat

global terrorism and work to prevent
attacks against us and our friends
 
2. Prevent our enemies from
threatening us, our allies, and our
friends, with weapons of mass
destruction  
The President's State of the Union Address
January 29, 2002
• The main concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda
and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a single,
undifferentiated terrorist threat.
• This was a strategic error of the first order because it
ignored critical differences between the two in
character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S.
deterrence and military action.
• The result was an unnecessary preventive war of
choice against a deterred Iraq that created a new front
in the Middle East for Islamic Terrorism and diverted
attention and resources away from securing the
American homeland against further assault by an
undeterrable Al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not
integral to the GWOT, but rather a detour from it.
Importance of OIL
1. Energy Dependency
2. Limited availability
3. Power
Iraq has the worlds third-
largest reserves of the
most sought-after
resource - OIL.
OIL = ENERGY
Oil is critically important to the global
economy.
• Oil accounts for 39% of global energy
consumption, including 95 percent of energy
used in ground, sea and air transportation.
• Oil is used to make a range of products,
like plastics and paints, that we take for
granted today.

War depends on Oil:

"But just as important," as Saman Sepheri
wrote in the International Socialist Review,
"every tank, every airplane--from the B-52 to
the stealth bomber--every Cruise missile and The U.S. continues to claim
most warships in the world rely on oil to the lion's share, accounting
wage their terror." for 25 percent of oil
consumption with just 5
percent of the world's
population.
OIL = MONEY

“The Bush administration has set up one of the biggest

swindles in history - the great Iraq oil robbery.”

The new Iraqi government - under pressure from the U.S. who
put them in power - has approved a law that they would give
Western oil companies ownership of two thirds of Iraq’s oil for
the next 35 years. The oil companies are guaranteed super-
profits.
OIL = POWER
The U.S. government's thirst for oil isn't only about profits—or
about securing supplies of a commodity that ordinary
Americans depend on--but is also about power.

In a world in which the wealth and strength of countries

depends on access to oil, more control of oil for the U.S.
means less control for its rivals.

The PNAC (Project for a New American Century) has admitted that the
USA’s invasion of Iraq was not about Saddam Hussein or the ‘War on
Terror’, rather it was about “maintaining the USA position as the world’s
economic and military superpower”
American OIL Policy
 Dick Cheney, Former Vice
President of the United States said
in a speech in 1999, "The Middle
East, with two-thirds of the oil and
the lowest cost, is still where the
prize lies"

The interest in Iraq's oil wasn't new. A

Pentagon document made the case that an
"oil war" was a "legitimate" military option
back in 1999--while Bill Clinton was still
president.
In 1979 Saddam was an ally of the
West, by 1999 the USA and UK were
calling him a Terrorist and a Dictator.
As part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ They
claimed he had to be removed from
power if the world, including Iraqi
citizens, was to be free of Terror.
 The USA didn't attack Iraq because Saddam is a brutal dictator
and Human Rights abuser.
He was a brutal dictator back in the days when the USA supported
him in a war against Iran.

Historically, the United States has always been friendly with brutal
dictators if we can make money out of it. Currently, there are other
dictators in the world and we haven’t attacked them;
Harley Sorensen, 2004
• US claimed Iraq reconstituted WMD program
• These were false allegations:
– US’ allies were not in favour of military overrun of
Saddam Hussein’s regime.
– UN’s 400 odd inspections in Iraq never found any
evidence of WMDs.
• Instead US went ahead with its “Operation Iraqi
Freedom” in the fall of 2002.
• The real economic reason behind this was the
unpublicized but genuine challenge to U.S.
dollar predominance from the euro as an
alternative oil transaction currency by Saddam
Hussein.
“WE ARE UNDER Dick Cheney said:
REAL AND Victory in Iraq will
PRESENT strike at "the
DANGER FROM home of the
IRAQ’S WMDs… terrorists who
WE MUST GO have had us
TO WAR!” under assault for
many years, but
most especially
on 9/11."
 A CIA report concluded that
“Saddam Hussein did not
possess stockpiles of illicit
weapons at the time of the
U.S. invasion in March 2003
and had not begun any
program to produce them.
The Iraq Survey Group report
authored by Charles Duelfer,
who advises the director of .
central intelligence on Iraqi
weapons says Iraq's WMD
program was destroyed in
1991 and Saddam had ended
Iraq's nuclear program after
the 1991 Gulf War.
Thank You..