{"id":20021,"date":"2014-03-09T12:02:24","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T18:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=20021"},"modified":"2014-03-09T12:03:11","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T18:03:11","slug":"ukraine-is-about-oil-so-was-world-war-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=20021","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine is About Oil. So Was World War I"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"usaggress\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ukraine is About Oil. So Was World War I<\/strong>
\nby Robert Freeman – 8 March, 2014 – common dreams\t<\/p>\n

Pro-Russian supporters wave Russian flags to welcome the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship, the missile cruiser Moskva, entering Sevastopol bay in September 10, 2008. (Photo: AFP)Ukraine is a lot more portentous than it appears. It is fundamentally about the play for Persian Gulf oil. So was World War I. The danger lies in the chance of runaway escalation, just like World War I.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put Ukraine into a global strategic context.<\/p>\n

The oil is running out. God isn\u2019t making any more dinosaurs and melting them into the earth\u2019s crust. Instead, as developing world countries aspire to first-world living standards, the draw-down on the world\u2019s finite supply of oil is accelerating. The rate at which known reserves are being depleted is four times that at which new oil is being discovered. That\u2019s why oil cost $26 a barrel in 2001, but $105 today. It\u2019s supply and demand.<\/p>\n

Oil recalls that old expression: \u201cIn the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.\u201d In industrial civilization, the nation that controls the oil is king. And 60% of the known oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf. That\u2019s why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003: to seize control of the oil. Alan Greenspan told at least one truth in his life: \u201cI hate to have to admit what everybody knows. Iraq is about oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the U.S. lost the war in Iraq. Remember? The U.S. was going to install a democracy and 14 permanent bases there. They\u2019re not there. The U.S. was run out after proving unable to pacify the Islamic jihad it had unleashed under the pretext of searching for non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Instead, Iraq allied itself with Iran, its Shi\u2019ite comrade-in-arms in the Muslim Wars of Religion.<\/p>\n

So today, the battle for the Persian Gulf is being carried out through its two regional powers, Saudi Arabia, the champion of Sunni Islam, and Iran, the torch carrier for Shi\u2019ite Islam. Think of the Wars between the Protestants and Catholics in the 1500s. The U.S. backs Saudi Arabia, as it has done since 1945, when Roosevelt cut a deal with Ibn Saud to protect his illegitimate throne in exchange for the House of Saud only selling oil in dollars.<\/p>\n

Iran, of course, is implacably hostile to the U.S. after the U.S. overthrew Iran\u2019s democratically elected president, Mosaddegh, in 1953 and installed its own fascist puppet, the Shah of Iran. The Iranians overthrew the Shah in 1979 and installed a fundamentalist theocracy that continues to this day.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s main ally in the region is Syria, which the U.S. has been trying to overthrow for three years by helping the al-Qaeda-linked rebels that are attacking Syria. Syria\u2019s chief military patron is Russia, which conveniently bailed Obama out of his childish \u201cred line\u201d declaration last year, a declaration he had neither the military nor political nor diplomatic capacity to carry out. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ukraine is About Oil. So Was World War I by Robert Freeman – 8 March, 2014 – common dreams Pro-Russian supporters wave Russian flags to welcome the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship, the missile cruiser Moskva, entering Sevastopol bay in September 10, 2008. (Photo: AFP)Ukraine is a lot more portentous than it appears. It is more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[4281],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20021"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20024,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20021\/revisions\/20024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}