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Dr. Walid Phares
OPEC War Against
America’s Economic Independence
October 12, 2008
In the fog of economic mayhem ravaging American and
international economies, experts are having a hard
time determining the root causes of the current
financial crisis. One parameter is established: The
Ground Zero of this economic fear is located in Wall
Street, a few blocks away from the other Ground
Zero, where al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade
Center and massacred thousands of Americans and
other nationals.
While we know who caused the destruction of
the twin towers and why they did it, the question of who is causing the
crumbling of the world economy, starting with America, and why, remains
unanswered. It will take probably years and the best economists to
investigate the web that led to the most dangerous crisis in
international finance since the late 1920s. But to political economists
and international relations analysts, there are some leads to explore
while pure economists are proceeding with only their reconstruction of
the crisis.
The latter may not ever reach definitive
conclusions, and for political reasons. Too many strategic interests are
at stake in the convulsions we are witnessing. From a stratospheric
view, we see a US economy bleeding intensely; and as its government, in
the midst of an electoral transition, is trying to administer some
financial medicine, we can see that serious illnesses are breaking out
in several economies around the world. The international community is
waking up to watch another dimension of globalization: the lethal domino
effect. When the greatest economy goes down, the international economic
system follows.
But strategic analysts cannot avoid asking
the following questions: Was the crisis system-induced or was it
provoked or at least helped to spread? The main answer is found in the
American genesis of the collapse. In sum, experts say, a huge
mismanagement by both Wall Street and Washington ended up flooding Main
Street with loans impossible to pay back. The mechanisms of the problem
seem to be simple: American bankers and lenders messed up. They
overestimated the ability of the markets to absorb these monies destined
to help small consumers to leap into a higher social level, and to
return their loans on time. And since millions of real estate buyers
weren’t actually able to afford what they bought, the financial tidal
wave hit back at the banking institutions, crumbling them. And as the
financial giants were falling on Wall Street, a Tsunami was unleashed on
all continents, hitting monetary institutions from Tokyo to London. This
equation – in a micro nutshell - is the official story of the beginnings
of the crisis, but certainly not the end of it.
As we continue to watch the economic spasms,
we proceed along another line of basic questions. Other than raw
capitalist greed, why did the lenders initially increase their offers
into the markets? Who or what led the flood of cash? Many argue that the
trend of pushing out-of-control loans to unqualified segments of society
emanated from political operatives on the Left. Meaning that pressure
groups, including national politicians, induced Wall Street to cross the
fine line of appropriate banking policy to grant almost any loan seeker,
regardless of his capacity to pay back the mortgage loan. But even if
that were true, market analysts would have figured out the weaknesses of
such a plan. So the next question is: on what grounds was the huge
release of funds rationalized?
One answer could be that an assumption was
made that jobs would always provide income for the payments of such
mortgages. So, up to this stage, blame can be leveled in two directions.
First, towards those politicians who threatened political retaliation if
the financial system didn’t lend beyond rational limits; and second,
Wall Street financiers who risked breaking the financial system by
relying on poor judgment regarding the public’s ability to overcome
economic challenges. Economists and those investigative committees
expected to be formed will tell us more about the American roots of this
economic debacle.
A thorough psycho-economic observation of the
public’s financial behavior, however, tells us that there may be more to
the crisis. It reveals that an outside "push” – I now coin it economic
terrorism - may have been the tipping point of the collapse. For
monitoring how and why buyers massively abandoned their plans shows that
it followed, or coincided, with an abrupt rise in the cost of gas
dividends. With the numbers at the pumps going ballistic, the cost of
living suddenly rose, goods became less attainable and the price of
enjoying, let alone using, the newly purchased properties soared. Hence,
undoubtedly the lifestyle that was sought by the tens of millions of
homes buyers wasn’t possible to achieve anymore; thus they surrendered
financially in droves, taking the system down with them.
Economists will tell us if this diagnosis
stands up. But if it does, then we cannot avoid investigating the factor
that caused the strategic stress in real estate, which turned into
economic chaos. In bypassing a narrow economic analysis, we can detect
clearly the connection between the dizzying ups in petrol pricing and
the slowing of American buying capacity. Stunningly, one can conclude
that while it is sadly true that both Wall Street’s corruption and
politicians’ abuse of the system handed the tools of doom to the middle
class, Main Street’s rapid disenfranchisement was manufactured overseas,
thousands of miles away, at the hands of OPEC, or perhaps in some
quarters of the oil-producing Cartel.
Indeed, as economic commentators tell us
(including a strong accusation leveled by real estate tycoon Donald
Trump on Fox News against OPEC), oil powers are behind the instability
that crumbled the will of millions of middle class Americans over the
past three years. If we go back in time, we can see that oil pricing by
OPEC’s hard core shows clearly that US leadership wasn’t able to
convince the top producers from the Gulf to give American oil consumers
a chance. Most producing regimes replied that demand – mostly from China
and India - was putting pressure on production. Pressed by Washington to
produce more, the "regimes” alleged it would affect the selling price
and thus minimize their profits, but promised they would try to "be
understanding” of US needs in energy.
This attitude gave the producers discretion
over price, while Jihadi propagandists roamed the media accusing
Washington of putting unbearable pressure "on the region” to follow
American injunctions in setting petrol’s prices. Was there a connection
between the oil regimes and the Jihadi propagandist machine? We have no
answer to that now, but clearly an oil strategy was in the works with a
calculated impact on the US economy. This charge is still in its early
stages, it will be challenged ferociously, but it will stand as long as
limpid answers are not provided.
What adds to the inquiry into the OPEC
destabilization factor are the many indicators that strategic political
motives have appeared to be behind the pricing maneuvers. Over a period
of half a decade, many voices heard on the region’s airwaves have
intimated that the US economy will be made to pay for what America’s
leadership is doing. Commentators on several outlets funded by oil
companies, including on al Jazeera, underlined that as long as average
citizens in the United States (and eventually in the West) don’t feel
financial pain, the war on terror and spreading of Democracy won’t be
stopped.
Sheikh Yussuf al Qardawi, Muslim Brotherhood
ideologue and mentor of the Qatari-funded channel, spoke openly of
Silah al Naft, i.e, "the weapon of oil.” Indeed, it was called a
weapon - as in a warfare situation - and most likely it was used as
such. Of course, the producing "regimes” will deny the existence of a
real strategy to bring the US to its knees by striking at its pumps.
They will dismiss statements made by emirs and commentators in this
regard. The "field Jihadists”, however, won’t deny the existence of such
a battlefield.
For years now, Salafist web sites and al
Qaeda spokespersons have loudly called for an "oil Jihad against infidel
America and its lackeys.” Online material is still circulating. But more
revealing are the official speeches by Osama Bin Laden and his deputy on
the "absolute necessity to use that weapon.” Ayman Zawahiri called
expressly and repetitively on the public to sell their US dollars and
buy gold instead (Be’u al dullar washtaru al zahab). These were
stunning statements ignored by most analysts at the time but that are
making sense today. He predicted a collapse in the infidels’ economy,
starting from American markets. Was he a part of the lobbying effort in
the OPEC game? Most likely not, but he seems to have been privy to the
game, having insiders in the Wahhabi radical circles in the Peninsula:
in the end there are too many political signs to dismiss and the
analysis of price warfare is too evident to ignore.
OPEC’s manipulation of the markets did hit
Americans hard in their pockets. Hundreds of millions of Joe and Jane
Does were intimidated, rather terrorized, into abandoning their lifelong
dreams of owning properties because of the aggressive stance of
petro-regimes towards the US and its campaign to spread democracy in the
Greater Middle East. In historical terms, America was punished for
daring to change the status quo in the Arab and Muslim world to the
advantage of the weakest and the suppressed: Shia and Kurds in Iraq,
Syrian reformers, Lebanese civil society, Africans in Darfur, Iranian
women and students, artists and liberals across the Arabian Peninsula.
In return, the U.S was submitted to economic destabilization, steady,
gradual and by small doses. Yes, let’s not underestimate the power of
the Jihadi-oil lobby in America: it has decades of influence and it has
long arms into the system, and it has powerful political allies. It
knows when Americans are messing up their own system, and it knows very
well how to push them over the cliff, into the abyss of economic
calamity.
A counterpoint to this thesis would
vigorously argue that the alleged OPEC destabilization over the US
economy is illogical, as many countries in the Gulf are experiencing a
recession as a result of Wall Street’s crunch. In other words, they
wouldn’t do it to themselves. Yet the ideological forces manning the oil
weapon aren’t particularly concerned about economic stability. Their
driving factor is Jihadism. We’ve heard their ideologues stating that
even if they were to incur losses among their own societies in order to
defeat the infidel powers, then let it be. Ten percent losses in local
companies and markets are a price that radicals would absorb if the
final prize is an earth-shattering change in US policy in the region and
a triumphant return to pre-9/11 status. I find the rationale of this
policy very Jihadist: if a world economic crisis is needed to remove the
US democratization efforts from the region and to end its post 9/11
campaigns, the end justifies the means. In addition, how intriguing to
see that Saudi Arabia and other producers are among the very few who
didn’t have to pump much cash into their markets yet (Per news Agencies,
today).
What some oil regimes – or the ideological
forces within - want to accomplish from this alleged interference in US
economics is to provoke a "regime change” in Washington, D.C., so that
regimes in their region are not challenged anymore. But another issue is
also coming to the surface: pressures against America’s financial
structures seem to have escalated in parallel to increasing US talk
and commitment to achieving energy independence. Since last April, the
American debate finally reached a dramatic conclusion: "We’re sending
700 Billion Dollars a year to regimes that dislike us;” agree most
national leaders; "and furthermore some of that money is ending up in
the hands or accounts of Terrorists” affirm some among them.
This revolutionary conclusion is a direct
affront to the multi-decades-long dominance of petro-dollars in US
politics. What America is readying itself to do is to achieve its most
dramatic war of independence since 1776: ending the dependence on Middle
East Oil. Therefore, let’s not be surprised that these gigantic
interests would strike at the heart of this economic revolution, as I
coined it in my latest book, The Confrontation.
Back to the ongoing crisis on these shores,
we nevertheless must admit that the original sins are domestic first:
financial drunkenness and economic recklessness. Without these plagues,
outside forces wouldn’t have been able to shake up America’s stability.
But assuming that most capitalist societies travel through rough
patches, it is vital to realize that America’s economy is under attack
by forces aiming to maintain US dependency on foreign energy, as a means
to obstruct the rise of democracy.
Seven years after 9/11, Americans are paying
the price of liberty from their own economic flesh. |
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