May 16th 2008 – United States president George W. Bush asked Saudi oil minister, Ali Al-Nuaimi, and Saudi King Abdullah to increase their country’s oil production as a stop-gap measure, countering the skyrocketing prices of the barrel of oil (127$) and of gas at the pump in North America. Al-Nuaimi tacitly stated that he saw no reason to increase production since their current supply is adequate for the market demand. Furthermore, he explained that, in his opinion, oil and gas prices are soaring due to speculation and regional conflicts much more than Middle-Eastern production. Therefore, one or two hours after most North American news services announced the meeting of Bush and Abdullah to speak of oil, we were treated to a shrugging American president who seemed to say ‘they don’t want to come out and play’, and that was that.To begin, I have to give three well-earned points to Mr. Al-Nuaimi. Firstly, he easily and nonchalantly stood up to George W. Bush and the most powerful nation on earth. Secondly, he knew that his personal interests, as well as the interests of Saudi Arabia’s economy (over 40% of which relies on oil production) lie in the efficient administration of the oil business; no amount of American whining will change that. And thirdly, he brought up a valid point about speculation since there is as much world demand and conflict now as there was in may of 2007 yet the price of the barrel has doubled (68$ - 127$). The only down point to his intervention, one that Al-Nuaimi obviously knows, is that a dramatic increase in Saudi production would flood the market, rapidly overtaking any form of demand and all other considerations thus the barrel’s price would plummet. The Saudis have no interests in losing profits or in administering oil as if it were Wal-Mart (sell 1 million items for very little instead of a 100 items for a lot more).
Now comes my gold star for participation. President Bush summarily and promptly announced the meeting, asked for something, got turned down, came back out and said ‘better luck next time folks’. This seems very odd from an administration that has been looking for Osama Bin-Laden for a decade, has been looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq for 5 years and fought for months to even legitimize their electoral victory in 2000. This time, a positive outcome in this demand would benefit hundreds of millions of Americans and Canadians yet the president swiftly gave up within an hour, foregoing even a summary consultation with any of his chiefs of staff. I know, I know, it is naïve of me to think he seriously believed the King and Minister were going to accept. He simply told Western media what they wanted to hear (a sincere-looking ‘I tried’) since he was visiting the region anyway. In a classic catch-22, the president’s options were to attempt a half-hearted demand to the Saudis which would be automatically rejected, effectively making the USA appear weak OR, visiting the King of Saudi Arabia and not discussing oil whilst the barrel gains 10$ every month, effectively showing that these rich bureaucrats couldn’t care less about the working classes. I certainly sympathize with Mr. Bush; he chose the option with the least amount of consequences.
This minor example of a major nation making a half-hearted attempt at showing their teeth, subtly and secretly trying to preserve the status-quo, is a scheme that appears much too often in Western history.
I give to you the League of Nations. Founded in 1919 at the End of WW1 and the peace negotiations of Versailles, it was to be an international organization to preserve peace and multilateral communication where there used to be only secret alliances and military build-ups. It was a theory built in the 1920s where colonial empires were beginning to fade, European Empires were dismantled, ideological and political revolutions spanned the globe and the recognition of all individuals (in a class, religious order, gender, profession) was finally prioritized above the soap opera that was Royal Europe. Unfortunately, this was a very first try in permanent international diplomacy and many cracks were apparent from the beginning. Notably, it had no muscle. The United States and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics refused to join, the League had no armed force of its own and its mission statement strictly prohibited any kind of serious sanction in the case of belligerence.
Thus, when Mussolini’s Italy was warned not to invade Abyssinia (Modern-day Ethiopia) in late 1935, he did it anyway. He then poisoned water supplies, armed his half-a-million soldiers with chemical weapons and unleashed them on the sword wielding Ethiopians. Needless to say the League of Nations was not happy of the ensuing massacre and subjugation of Abyssinia as an Italian colony (until then, it was the only African region that had resisted European colonization for over 450 years). Instead of imposing noteworthy sanctions such as the restriction of the Suez Canal through which the Italians were reaching Abyssinia or by restricting oil sales to Italy, some members (not all) of the League simply issued an official condemnation and applied economic sanctions on certain textiles towards Italy. In no way did this stop Mussolini and I like to think it made him laugh until he peed a little.
Similarly, the League could do very little but wag their finger when Germany started rearming in 1933, retook the Rhineland in 1936, reformed the Anschluss (literally ‘connection’) in 1938 with Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. It even tried its maniacal textile approach towards Japan when it invaded China in the early 1937. Each one of these lightly shunned countries simply left the League of Nations and jointly marched into the Second World War.
Following the conflict, the League was abolished and a new union was formed, the United Nations. With much more teeth and an omnipresent feeling of dread towards an inevitable Capitalist/Communist Third World War involving nuclear weapons, all countries were convinced to participate in active international diplomacy instead of creating back-door alliances as in an endless game of Risk.
Then, as today, we are privy to the gouvernments’ sloppy attempts at diplomacy whilst secretly conducting a personal and less populist agenda. Fortunately, we have greatly toned down the importance of these back-door dealings. Nevertheless, the working man suffered the brunt of the consequences in 1939 and continues to do so in 2008.
End
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