Lloyd GoodleighAT THE TIME of America's independence, John Adams had implored his colleagues "Let us above all things, avoid as much as possible entangling ourselves with their ways and their politics." He was alluding to all things European, including Britain.
America's founding fathers had observed this policy so stringently, that in the war of 1793 involving Britain, Spain and France, United States President George Washington had issued a proclamation of neutrality, despite the fact that in its war of independence from Britain, France had been its critical ally.
What event, therefore, signalled the emergence of an alliance? On June 28, 1914 Bosnia a driver transporting Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife made a wrong turn. A Serbian assassin shot and killed the Archduke and his wife.
Europe and its various alliances mobilised six million soldiers and went to war. Britain would join the fray by serving an ultimatum on Germany on August 4, 1914. Those armies would eventually exhaust themselves in over 300 miles of trenches. Bogged down and stalemated the British Empire would eventually lose a whole generation of young men 980,371 dead; 2,090,212 wounded and 191,000 missing a conflict in which many Jamaicans fought, including National Hero Norman Manley.
April 1917 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. The Congress ignored John Adams's admonition and voted to become entangled in Europe.
It had crossed the Rubicon and where previously it had expressed its imperial impulses in other parts of the globe, it was now entangled in Europe. The European stalemate was eventually broken in favour of Britain by the infusion of two million American troops.
Senator Stone of Missouri had sensed the crossing on that faithful April day, when the Senate voted for war against Germany. He was opposed to the war, he had told a colleague, not because of the cause of death, but "because if we go in it we will never again have the same old republic."
He was right. Samuel Huntington contends that "at the time of Independence, Americans could not distinguished themselves culturally from Britain; hence they did so politically. Britain meant tyranny, aristocracy and oppression. America would represent democracy, equality and republicanism.
Until the end of the 20th century, the U.S. defined itself in opposition to Europe. In the 20th century, it emerged on the world scene and increasingly saw itself as the leader of a European/American civilisation.
Britain's gratitude was best expressed by Churchill who set the emotional tone for the alliance "Britain would claim no fruits of victory, neither in territorial or commercial advantage; only the supreme reconciliation of Englishmen and Americans."
This reconciliation would turn into alliance. American imperial impulses were now fully blown and ultimately would replace British hegemony with American hegemony.
One cannot speak to questions of the present Iraq-US/British conflict, without looking at oil, because it is oil that weaves together questions of Empire, Transference and the Alliance.
Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher, First Sea Lord of Britain (1904-1910), had revolutionised the British Navy; but even more crucially, had convinced Winston Churchill to convert the British Navy from coal to oil.
Churchill convinced the English Parliament to invest five million pounds in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and finally British Petroleum (BP).
The link between imperial power and oil had been established. "We must become the owners or at any rate the controllers, at the source, of at least a proportion of the supply of national oil which we require." Churchill was speaking of access.
By 1919, the policy had been pursued so relentlessly that Sir Edward Edgar was able to boast "All the known oilfields outside the United States are in British hands or under British management or control or financed by British capital - We hold in our hands the secure control of the future of the world's oil supply."
Edgar's reference to outside the United States, is because, although the U.S. was the largest consumer, it was also the world's largest producer.
But by the mid 1920s, the depletion of its oil reserves had become a critical issue. Access to oil was now a major concern of the alliance.
In between the intense competition between nations and companies over the question of access to Middle Eastern oil; from the end of World War I, the British stood sentry over Middle East oil supply. They freely used military or covert intervention to ensure access.
By 1925, the new Iraq Government "reluctantly signed an agreement with British-owned Iraq petroleum."
The terms were that:
The company must remain British
The chairman must be British
Iraq would receive royalty for gold, shillings a ton
The concession was to run until year 2000.
Ironically, Britain failed to honour a previous agreement that Iraq should have 20 per cent participation in the concession, laying the foundation for smouldering Iraqi resentment.
The second example: Iran 1953 Dr. Mossadeq had nationalised British oil
interests in Iran.
The British had originally thought of military intervention "British secret agents had reported to London that there were many anti-Mossadeq elements in Iran who with encouragement, including cash from Britain, could bring Mossadeq down. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden would not sanction a coup and the project was passed on to the CIA in Washington, who were in turn hesitant to act without British support."
The plan ultimately received British approval not by Eden, but by Churchill. Dr. Mossadeq was overthrown. Does this all sound familiar to you? The British were standing sentry their ability to do so would continue until 1956 and the Suez Canal crises.
President Nasser of Egypt had nationalised the Suez Canal and Britain launched a war in the name of protecting British interest the interest was principally oil two thirds of Suez Canal traffic was oil.
The Americans disagreed with the invasion and started to assume the dominant sentry role in the Middle East as the war had made Britain very unpopular in the Arab world.
Today, the U.S. is the principal sentry, the British are their partners. They are following Churchill's directive: "We must become the owners or at any rate, the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the supply of national oil, which we require. Bush and Blair find themselves hostage to an alliance policy nearly 100 years old.
Blair's willingness to proceed without his party and the majority of British citizens or the support of his European colleagues, might reside in the observation of author Hugh Thomas writing about British Prime Minister Anthony Eden at the time of the Suez Canal crises: "Ever since Churchill converted the navy to the use of oil in 1911 - British politicians seemed to have a feeling about oil supplies comparable to the fear of castration."
After all, it was after Suez that the Americans assumed sentry duty over Middle Eastern oil. With that responsibility, evidently goes the fear; a fear that must be aggravated by the fact that America faces a real energy crisis. Internally, Time Magazine of July 2003 contended: "National gas is in scarce supply - crude oil production is winding down - the last Nuclear Power Plant was ordered in July 1973 - no alternative fuel exists. In short, Americans are headed towards their first energy crunch since 1970."
The Iraq-U.S.-British conflict was principally about oil at conservative prices.
Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator and behaved like one. But anyone who believes that the United States deployed 148,000 troops and spent $80 billion and is spending $1 billion a week, that the British deployed over half their combat troops and that the British Prime Minister risked his political career and the future of his party, in order to kill Hussein and his sons just possible those individuals might have been hamstrung by the many faces of war and nations...one more time.
The alliance is in the World Game. The alliance might not be by treaty, but it is real.
* Lloyd Goodleigh is general secretary of the Joint Confederation of Trade Unions and the National Workers Union.
