(Iraq - still; 03-02; p.4)
That available low-cost raw materials are essential
for any industrial nation does not need further explanation. That
any US government prefers the Gulf to be an "American lake"
(Huntington, S.: The clash of civilizations and the remaking of
world order, paperback ed., London 1998, p. 252) rather than a
Saddam-Sea need not be discussed either. For the time being, the
Bush administration pursues a double-track approach: it will be
pleased by the now contracted Baku-Ceyhan pipeline as well as
it tries diminishing Husseins influence on other Arabian states.
That such policies are welcomed by the oil-manufacturing and energy
companies is obvious and surely grants some administration employees
open doors after their political careers.
At least for Iraq's neighbours the security
issue is the relevant one: if the regime could in breach of international
obligations dispose of weapons of mass destruction and missiles
with a range of more than a thousand kilometres, the regional
military balance would have been disturbed enormously. - To find
out about this is the mission of weapons inspectors legitimised
by the UN; their hindrance would render any fairness in dealing
with Iraq obsolete. As the sole state on earth which can project
power simultaneously in the eastern Mediterranean region and the
Persian Gulf, the United States would be - and only under such
circumstances - called into action.
Whether one can draw a line from the world order
tendencies shown to the current Iraq-policy of the Bush administration
has to be judged by professional information retrievers - that
it suits US interests is tautological. But the American political
scientist Huntington shall be quoted once again:
"The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department
of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people
are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe
that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation
to extend that culture throughout the world." (ibid.,
p. 217f.)
(end of article)
