US and UK invaded Afgainistan and Iraq to guarantee future energy demands - and economic prosperity ?

Question

If we could not guarantee our future energy requirements from reliable sources it would jeapordize our future prosperity. Is the US / UK citizen willing to give up our lifestyles - have our cars taken away, our heating and lighting turned off, our standard of living collapse would we have been prepared to go back to THE STONE AGE ?

Answer 1

Afghanistan does not have oil reserves; so local oil deposits was not the reason why Afghanistan was invaded.

However, Afghanistan is strategically located, and a pipeline through Afghanistan is planned:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm
The oil will come from Turkmenistan and go to Pakistan and India. The project was awarded to Unocal, a US company who was in this project with Saudi companies among others.

Interestingly, this is not a new project, but was something Unocal was goign to build, but pulled out from, citing the Taleban as a erason:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2017044.stm

The idea that oil was behind the war on Afghanistan is not new:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1644813.stm

Of course this oil has nothing to do with the US or the supply of oil to the West; it's going to Pakistan and India. But if you think about it a little bit deeper, India is a potential powerhouse,and one way of controlling a powerhouse, is to control its access to fuel. No fuel, no powerhouse. India does not produce enough oil on its own, despite its recent contracts for exploration around the Eastern coast.

Further underlining the importance of unfettered access to oil for development, China and India have signed a MOU for oil exploration.
http://www.offshore-mag.com/display_article/280227/120/ARTCL/none/COMPN/China,-India-sign-MOU/
It goes without saying that CHina and India are the two countries who could break into the Western hegemony, and it is interesting to see them cooperate despite the wars they have fought not so long ago.

There are also plans for a Pacific-East Siberia pipeline, to provide China and India alternative sources of oil:
http://www.siiaonline.org/thirst_for_oil_shakes_up_global_alliances2

Access to oil is best option if you do not have enough oil yourself; anyone who controls your access to oil controls your economy.

Don't you find it strange that as Iraqi oil is no longer under quota, and that 'peace' prevails in the Middle East, oil prices rise? It's true that South American countries might not want low oil prices, but they do not have that much control over oil reserves. Just ask yourself, which companies are benefitting, because there is a difference between the country onwhose territory oil reserves are found, and the economy who benefits most from the oil profits via the MNCs.

So I would say, no, Afghanistan has nothing to do directly with oil since it has nooil reserves. Neither has it anything to do with guaranteeing oil supplies to the West. So nobody would have gone back to the Stone Ages in the West due to lack of oil or gas.

In the case of Iraq the situation is even more interesting politically. Western Europe were huge consumers of Iraqi oil, the UK less so because of the North Sea oil. Note that Saddam Hussein showed this when he tried trading his oil in Euros rather than US$. However by doing this, he signed his own death warrant. Note however that North Sea oil is expensive due to high costs, and only viable when oil prices are high.

SO the US and to a slightly lesser degree the UK had little to benefit directly from controlling Iraqi oil. Now though, US and UK companies hold sway in the oil fields due to the allocation of contracts to US and to a lesser degree UK companies immediately after the 'invasion'. Guess who controls a huge chunk of the oil supply to 'Old Europe'.

Furthermore, oil is a traded community, the buyers need oil to sustain their lifestyle, so do the sellers. There isno reason for oil producers to reduce the West to the stone age, they would soon join them too.

Oil can and has been used to 'blackmail' buyers for concessions, but is not a weapon that can be used to bring the buyers economies down - since sellers would go down too. However, controlling the supply of oil to an economy is like having a hand around the main arteries of someone, you can control that person by squeezing the arteries allowing just a slow supply of blood.

Any relationship to oil would be due to controlling the access of India and 'Old Europe' to oil, not standards ofl iving in the US and the UK.

Answer 2

This just shows how little you truly know, and how you have not researched or thought this out carefully. First of all there is no known oil in Afghanistan. If we were simply looking for oil why would we invade a country that has no known oil reserves? Second The UK has massive amounts of oil in off shore deposits and produces more then it consumes. So even if oil was the motivating factor behind the invasions why would the UK be involved. Next oil is traded and priced on a world market. Why would the US expend billions and billions of dollars and thousands of lives to secure oil when the entire world would benefit from lower prices not just the US? Finally although Iraq does have large oil reserves, Iraq was exporting oil before we invaded, would it not have been cheaper to help rebuild the oil infrastructure in Iraq instead of invading, destroying, and then rebuilding it after the war? I do not support the Iraq war, however I have at least thought carefully about it and it does seem quite far fetched to say oil was the motivating factor behind it. I think before you go spouting off such accusations you should perhaps think more carefully about what your saying. Otherwise you just end up sounding ignorant.

Answer 3

It is damn near impossible to over-exaggerate the magnitude of this problem. the following 3 factors make this such an explosive cocktail which may blow up in our faces: 1. Iran is developing nuclear "energy" which it clearly does not need, in fact it is developing a nuclear bomb. 2. If Iran does develop a nuclear bomb under the radar of the west then it will be able to use it in any way it wants as it has not signed the proliferation treaty. 3. The president of Iran is a complete and utter madman. he has already denied that there are any homosexuals in his country and expressed a desire to "wipe Israel off the map". It is for these reasons that i believe that the west should launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran. it has to be now before it is too late and we are up against a country with nuclear weapons.

Answer 4

You can think what you want, but is that such a bad thing to guarantee a stable supply of oil?
If the muslims and arabs can't behave in a civilized and proper manner, they should be forced to. Treat them like the children they are. Psycho might be a better word for it.

Answer 5

No.
First of all there isn't any oil in Afghanistan. There isn't ANYTHING in Afghanistan, except mountians and mullahs. The reason the coalition invaded Afghanistan is that the guys who attacked the USA on 9-11 were based out of there.

Iraq was invaded for a number of reasons. The biggest one was that Saddam had not been overthrown after the Gulf War of 1991 the way G. Bush the First had thought he would be. Saddam was defying the UN and refusing to comply with the UN rulings that he stop making weapons of mass destruction. We know that Saddam had WMD before 1991, BECAUSE HE USED IT, he used it on the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and he used it on Kurdish villages in his own country.

The UN told Saddam to stop making the stuff, and he just dorked the UN around (not a hard thing to do). He was violating the UN embargo and the Oil for Food program, giving kick backs to senior people in the UN and France and Russia.

The US and UK had good reason to believe that Saddam still had a lot of WMD. They were afraid that he would sell it to terrorists. They attacked him to destroy the WMD, and to enforce the UN sanctions.

No WMD was found in Iraq. Some people think that it was there, but Saddam had it trucked out to Syria just before the attack. Other people think he never had it at all, and the intelligence was wrong... but that doesn't explain why he would dork around the UN Weapons Inspectors and go to so much trouble to kick them out. Some people think that Saddam THOUGHT he had WMD, but that he really didn't... they think that the people in charge of the WMD program were lying to Saddam, telling him that everything was going a long really well when it really wasn't, because they were afraid Saddam would have the killed if they told him they wern't making the stuff. I think the consensus opinion is that the Bush, Rumsfeld, and others were lied to by Iraqis who wanted us to invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam, and then put them in charge.

The other reason for invading Iraq was that we wanted to make it into a stable, rich and free country. The idea is that if we make Iraq into a rich, stable, and free country all the people in Syria and Iran will see who Iraq is rich, happy, stable and free and they will overthrow their governments, sort of like what happened in Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall came down.

The governments of Iran and Syria are very afraid of just that happening. They don't want a rich, free, and democratic Iraq on their border. They saw what happened in Poland and Romania and Hungary and East Germany and they don't want it to happen to them. This is why they are supporting the terrorists to fight in Iraq, and are trying to start a civil war in Iraq. If the people in Iraq are free then the people next door in Iran and Syria will want to be free, and that will be the end of the governments of Iran and Syria.

There are plenty of other places we can drill for oil besides Iraq. Alaska has a lot of oil that the enviornmentalists won't let us drill for. There is a lot of oil in the deep water Gulf of Mexico that we can drill for, Chevron just found a HUGE field there early this year. There are oil sands in Canada that have more oil in them than all of Saudi Arabia, it is just expensive to get out; but at current prices it can and is being done. Nigeria has oil. There is oil off of California, but again the enviormentalists won't let us drill for it. There is probably a lot of oil in Antarctica, but the enviornmental treaty that governs Antarctica won't even let us explore for it there.

IF we were going to start shooting people so we could drill for oil and guarantee our future energy needs we wouldn't be shooting Iraqis, we would be shooting Greens and Envornmentalists. They are standing in the way of far more oil and gas than is in all of Iraq.

Answer 6

Oil in Afghanistan?

Answer 7

And don't forget to maintain a high level of literacy in our two countries

Answer 8

yes at the end of the day . its all to do with the big O ie oil

Answer 9

No...they were just trying to protect the free world....that's all!