TheAgitator.com
An Historical What-If
Sunday, September 21st, 2003So anti-war libertarians generally believe that it was our involvement in Gulf War I that pissed Osama bin Laden off enough to make us the object of his ire (we had been quasi-allies with him, after all, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). It was American troops in the Muslim holy land that made us the focus of his anger.
Most libertarains opposed Gulf War I, under the theory that it wasn’t in our national security interest. The typical consevative, pro-war response to this is that beyond Kuwait, Saddam had his eye on Saudi Arabia. And if we hadn’t intervened, he may have invaded his way to a significant share of the world oil market.
The libertarian response to this is “so what?” Merely controlling a significant share of the world’s oil supply means nothing. Sitting on oil bestows no power whatsoever. It isn’t until you sell the oil that you begin to accumulate the spoils of owning it. And so Saddam would still have no choice but to sell oil to the United States for the simple fact that we are the world’s biggest consumer of oil — there’s no benefit in refusing to sell to us.
But I think you can take this a step further.
Not only would Saddam’s invasion (and, for the sake of argument, let’s say conquer) of Saudi Arabia have not presented a crisis for the United States, it may have presented an opportunity. Several, actually.
Up until 1990 or so, Saddam Hussein was, for all intents and purposes, an ally. See the deliciously chummy 1980s footage of Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein as evidence (one was presenting an award to the other, I can’t remember which was which). We backed Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war, and if memory serves, gave him all sorts of foreign aid throughout the 1980s.
Had we sat back and let him have his way with Saudi Arabia, think of what might have happened:
1) A quasi-ally gains control of a major share of the world oil market. We no longer have to deal with the Saudis, whose allegiances are suspect, and who fund terrorists with the left hand just as they’re bribing U.S. politicians with the right.
2) Suddenly, it is Iraqi, not U.S. troops that are soiling the Muslim holy land. Osama and Saddam were never friendly. Osama sought Muslim theocracies. Saddam’s regime was a secular dictatorship. Their only reason for alliance (and I’m still of the opinion that there wasn’t one) was their mutual dislike for the United States. Had we never entered Saudi Arabia in Gulf War I, we may have been able to sit back and watch two shady characters duke it out — and kept our hands clean of the entire mess.
3) If Saddam had toppled the Hous of Saud, we wouldn’t be dealing with the ticking bomb of influnece, influx of wealth into vital U.S. interests (the stock market, for example), oil, terrorism, corruption, and the inevitabe collapse that defines our current relationship with the Saudis. Remember, the Saudi/al-Qaeda conection is much more quantifiable than the Iraqi/al-Qaeda connection.
Our first inclination is to think that all that Saudi wealth in the hands of Saddam Hussein would be catastrophic. But that’s because we’ve been conditioned to think that the Saudis are our allies. I’d submit that we’d be better off if that money had been spent on Saddam’s palaces and Uday’s zoos than on Saudi transfers to al-Qaeda and Hamas.
If we had stayed out of Gulf War I, and the predictions of Saddam’s invasion of Saudi Arabia proved accurate, we would today be dealing with a brutal dictator with whom we enjoy nominally friendly relations — really not all that different than our current relationship with the Saudis. And given that Saddam was a secularist ruler, we’d probably have that relationship minus the Wahabbist fundamentalism we have to put up with with the current Saudi regime.
My point? Let’s assume for a moment that George H.W. Bush was being honest with us, and that we entered Gulf War I to save the Kuwaiti people (whom we later turned back over to the Kuwaiti dictatorship), and not because of oil markets, or (more likely) the considerable Saudi influence on U.S. politicians. Even assuming all of that, we’re brought back to the ol’ “road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Even if our intentions were pure, they wrought all sorts of nasty repercussions.
Even assuming worst-case scenarios, it’s hard for me to see how our staying out of Gulf War I could have effected worse consequences than those that resulted from our butting in.
But… but, we killed them Ay-rabs for their own good, to free them from slavery!
Just like we taxed you to make you wealthier.
Whew, very exhausting considering so many hypotheticals. The only problem is we can’t go back and not fight a war that was already fought to prevent a war that is currently being fought. Hindsight is not 20/20 in this case because it depends on so many what ifs. Makes for good reading though.
I like the “so what” thinking in regard to Iraq grabbing Saudi Arabia. I had never thought of that scenario in terms of purely economic principles. Sadam would still be bound by the same laws of supply and demand that the Saudis are and could only injure us by cutting his own economic throat. Sadam wouldn’t do that, but someone like Osama would. Osama wants to go back to the 13th century anyway.
All what-if thinking leaves something out. In this analysis, there is no Israel, no Egypt, no Syria, no Europe. Still, even as I think about how each of them would have responded if Iraq had invaded Sauldi Arabia, or if the U.S. had done nothing about the invasion of Kuwait, I remain unconvinced that U.S. had a dog in the fight.
What would Saddam have done with the oil? Eat it? No, he would have sold it. And the money would have gone to more tacky palaces rather than Osama and all that.
I always wished we had let Saddam take care of our great friends the saudis.
What would Saddam have done with the oil? Eat it? No, he would have sold it. And the money would have gone to more tacky palaces rather than Osama and all that.
I always wished we had let Saddam take care of our great friends the saudis.
I have had similar thoughts before, however there are a couple of problems with such a scenario that would still have compelled us to stop Saddam:
1. An Iraq/Saudi war would likely have resulted in a major oil crisis - the likes of which we have never seen. Minimally the flow of oil from Saudi would have stopped for the duration of the war. However, what would have happened if either Saddam or the House of Saud decided to destroy the oil fields? Remember, all of this was during the decline of Russia’s output post Soviet collapse. We would have had a global economic crisis.
2. We would have had to renounce our previous agreements to back SA. We would have to demonstrate to the world that we are not a very stallwart ally.
3. Israel was no friend of Iraq in those days in spite of our arrangement with him. A regional superpower Iraq with all that oil wealth and no regional counterweight — suddenly able to afford to defeat Iran for example if it so chose? (assuming there was any infrastructure left after the war) I can only imagine what risks we would have been running allowing such an outcome.
4. Finally: as the lone super-duper power we cannot allow rogue states to redraw the map as they would like. There are dozens of disputed borders out there and only our diplomatic pressure and threat that we would not welcome any territorial grabbing keeps many of these from boiling over. We are the keepers of the international order… do I like it? No. But there it is….
If we had stayed out of WW I, there probably wouldn’t have been a WWII, or any of the rest that followed. And, we probably would be much better off today.
Well said Garth. Libertarian principles should govern the relationships within our borders and not with the outside world. To do otherwise would be to invite threats and international instability.
What if we didn’t fight WWI nor WWII and then later alien’s came down and ate us all. WHAT IF????
Your what ifs leave out the French. They had a much closer relationship to Saddam and they hated us even then. The French would be much more powerful if Saddam owned all the middle east oil. That would be very ugly. I think I prefer the current situation.
I also don’t think you are old enough, wise enough, learned enough or experienced enough to be espousing views of this nature with any real authority. What I’m trying to say is, nice try kid, but you might want to get the Cato Mafia to back you on something like this.
Chris –
“I also don’t think you are old enough, wise enough, learned enough or experienced enough to be espousing views of this nature with any real authority.”
A fantastic point. Well-argued. The entire premise of my post lies devastated — because of your insightful comment.
In fact, I believe I will now shut down my blog, and nay write another word until I’m 40, have my PhD, and have visited every country I ever plan to reference in print.
Thanks for the tip!
__Radley
HA! I knew you had a soft spot! Relax, I was just screwing with you. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t resist.
this last exchanges proves the theorum:
the only thing more asinine than reading a Chris Farley post, is responding to one.
Interesting! How different would things be today? Who know’s? Larry’s comparison to GWI to WWI is valid only in that in both cases the jobs were left unfinished which resulted in chapter II for both events.
3) If Saddam had toppled the House of Saud…
I have never been convinced that Sadaam was going to invade Saudi Arabia. However if he had invaded I think the most logical outcome is that the House of Saud is quickly toppled, but Sadaam is unable to gain real control of the country. He would then have to deal with a full scale Jihad from Usama and company. The country sinking into chaos would have been a real possibility.
Good historians don’t use counterfactuals. Politicians (especially ones with ideologies) do. Just a wee point to remember.
“Good historians don’t use counterfactuals”, eh?
Have you ever, then, read Niall Ferguson or Jeffrey Rogers Hummel? Or do you not think they’re good historians?
A similar approach can be taken with Afghanistan.
If we hadn’t mucked about with the Mujaheddin, the Soviet Union probably would have collapsed anyway. With or without the expense of the war, the economic system was in trouble. Also, the political changes (Gorbachev, etc) which really made the collapse possible came long before the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Upon the Soviet collapse, Afghanistan would probably have become stably independent, just like all of its ex-Soviet neighbors like our buddy Uzbekistan.
Had we not supported the Islamist mujaheddin, that post-Soviet system in Afghanistan might have been stable. (We might have had to lean on Pakistan not to interfere on its own.)
So, ironically, our best policy with regards to Afghanistan would have been to support the Soviet invasion and to work to keep Pakistani Islamists from entering Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
awwwful lot of supposition here. I see a lot of “Probably” but not much to back up the probabilities. In truth, Radical Islam will probably self destruct in the next 50 years, as it manages to isolate itself and destroy it’s own resources through medieval governance and suicide assaults.
But if we allow it to run that course, is there any doubt that there will be repeated attacks on the US because we have what they do not? Because we don’t believe in what they do?
I don’t think we can afford to construct elaborate scenarios where if we just let the world go to hell in a handbasket they won’t bother us any more. It doesn’t work that way, and it never did.
I disagree that a superpower should not attempt to limit the power of another superpower in a bi-polar world. The fact that they “probably” would have collapsed anyway was not so well known then and purely speculative now. Fighting these proxy wars might not have been the reason for their collapse but it definately limited, to a degree, their expansion of power.
The Soviet/Afghanistan and Iraq/Al-Qaeda examples are apples and oranges. Completely different enemies with completely different ways of going about attacking us. Not to sound like Bush but this is a new kind of war.
These what-ifs are sterile. The thing is done. What-nows would be more to the point. Still, I can’t resist making a couple of observations.
Radley, you have failed to consider the effect of your scenario on world oil markets and economies, other than to assert oil is fungible. That’s true, but oil-fields aren’t. They can be blown up, or ruined by neglect and mismanagement. Iraq’s infrastructure has been decaying since the 1970’s, and it will require massive investment to salvage the Iraqi oil industry.
Iraq and Iran had already savaged each other before Gulf War I, but that mattered relatively little in world oil markets because the Saudis outproduced their neighbors. If Saddam had tried to conquer Saudi Arabia, do you think Iran would have sat back and applauded? Not likely. A regional war involving all the Gulf powers was the nightmare scenario that forced the hand of Bush Sr.
LOL Radley…that was pretty bad. Quit being wierd about Iraq.
Whence Iraq?
Last night I challenged this post at The Agitator, in…
Today I spoke with a Kuwaiti immigrant, now a US citizen, who tells me it is common knowledge throughout the Middle East that the 9/11 attack was conducted by CIA operatives; that bin Laden had nothing to do with it.
If true, this whole “what if” needs to be reconfigured.
‘Common knowledge in the Middle East’ ? Isn’t that an oxymoron? I mean seriously, the middle eastern press is only giving you about 5% truth and 95% fiction. I think the Soviet news gave you more facts than the likes of Al-Jazeera, etc …..
I’m still trying to figure out, under the scenario, who the hijackers really were (CIA trainees?) and why they would fly a plane into the Pentagon. Of course, they left CIA headquarters untouched.
Hmmmmmm……
I hope you’re joking because that’s the stupidest conspiracy theory I’ve heard yet …. only the Middle Eastern press could have come up with something like that.
If there’s any conspiracy it’s the poor reporting going on regarding the lead up to this war, the war itself, and the post-war cleanup.
I agree … things are much better in Iraq now than ANY of the press is reporting … note that a bunch of Senators (Reps and Dems) just went over there and said the press is heavily spinning all the negative stories.
Should we really be surprised? Our local news broadcasts make our towns look like war zones the way they talk about murders …. why should the larger media outlets be any different. Negativity sells.
IMO the media do not slant this story because they’re feckless capitalists selling negativity. I think a lot of them are feckless socialists who hate Bush so much that they want America to fail.
Maybe a little of both Alan (lol).
Larry - Laughed heartily at your common knowledge story, earlier in the thread. Another well known fact among Muslim men is that all Western women who turn them down are lesbians.