Modern warfare: a remnant of our ancestral memory

George Galloway and Alan Greenspan agree: the war in Iraq was all about oil. But perhaps they were wrong.

In last weekend’s Iraqi oil field auction, US companies were almost utterly iced-out, despite their government’s 100,000 boots on the ground. Russian, Chinese, Dutch, Angolan, and Malaysian oil companies all won rights to exploit the massive Iraqi oil fields, and none of those countries had to go to the trouble to invade. If America, in conquering Iraq had been able to actually steal its oil reserves and move them to say Michigan’s Rust Belt, the war might have made some sense, but unfortunately for America in the modern world, military force no longer automatically translates into economic advantage.

For most of human history—from Neolithic hunting bands, up until the Franco-Prussian war—the military was a massively profitable enterprise. Genghis Khan’s soldiers were just poverty stricken pastoralists until they got on their ponies and sacked more civilized folk. The Roman invasion of Egypt won the tribute of grain that fed the city for over 300 years. The return on capital for William of Normandy’s crossing the channel, for Hernan Cortez’ conquest of Mexico, must be close to infinite.

But no more. The Iraqi oil auctions suggest that today economic power trumps military force. Most Iraqis I’ve spoken to, tell me that had America demanded Saddam Hussein hand over the Rumallah oil field to Exxon Mobil in return for ending sanctions, the dictator would have agreed in a heartbeat. If America’s goal was control of Iraq’s oil, it had better options than invasion. Our proclivity for war, it seems, is an atavistic remnant of ancestral memory.