In all the media coverage of the current months long war with Iran, none of the reporting points out an interesting fact: the last three Republican Presidents have all started wars in the Middle East in which oil reserves played a factor. Yes, the American addiction to oil has been influencing American foreign policy for a long time.
It's not just wars that have been fought over oil; in 1949 General Motors, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, and Standard Oil of California were all found guilty of buying and dismantling the Los Angeles electric transit system to promote oil using vehicles. In 1953 Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown by the CIA and British Intelligence at the behest of western oil companies. He was replaced by the Shah of Iran, who ran the country with an iron hand until he was overthrown in 1979. This caused the emergence of an even more repressive theocratic government in Iran, which was the beginning of the American adversarial relationship with that leadership. And, of course, for decades the oil industry has spent billions of dollars attacking the science of climate change, pushing the Republican party to be the only major political party in the entire world that denies that science. And, to be fair, our oil addiction hasn't only been driven by Republicans; during the Bill Clinton era of the 90's, oil consumption increased in this country, and Clinton did little to fund renewable energy.
Yes, much of America's political history in the 20th and 21st. centuries has been driven by oil. But it's the three outright wars we have fought in the past forty years that are the most dramatic examples of that, with trillions of American tax dollars and thousands of American lives lost for those wars. And the sad fact of the matter is that each war has been fought for worse and worse reasons. The first Gulf War in the 1990's, however you may feel about it, was perceived by the public as a smashing success. Perceptions aside, it did have clear goals going in that were met with a minimum of American casualties. While the ostensible reason for the war was a retaliation against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Paul Wolfowitz, the Under Secretary of Defense, put it in blunt terms when he said "the fundamental US interest in the security of the Persian Gulf is oil."
Then came George W Bush's far more disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq. Although oil interests were never given as the reason for the invasion, with false allegations of weapons of mass destruction and links to Al-Qaeda given, oil certainly played a factor. Once again, Wolfowitz, serving under another Bush president, claimed that Iraqi reconstruction after the war would not be heavily funded by the US because of high Iraqi oil revenues. Those claims would, of course, be proven wrong as the Iraq war quickly became a multi trillion dollar boondoggle, sending the second Bush's approval rating down to record lows.
And then we have the Trump war on Iran, the worst planned and ill conceived of them all. While Trump's reasons for starting the war back in February have been vague, other than a desire to be remembered as the president who "solved" the Iranian problem that has bedeviled the country since 1979, it's easy to believe that increased access to Iranian oil fields for American oil companies was a factor in his thinking. That has, of course, blown up in his face as Iran's shut down of the Straits of Hormuz has hurt the entire world's economy and driven oil prices up in the US. Trump's approval ratings now have never been worse, and while he may publicly deny this, privately even he must realize that the war has gone poorly, which explains why he tried to negotiate a recent cease fire that has, not surprisingly, already fallen through.
As the primary fuel of the 20th century, the importance of oil is undeniable, especially in the US, which still leads the world in overall oil consumption. But now, with the global oil market again having prices soar (they also did in 2022 after Russia invaded the Ukraine), and climate change being seen as a reality by most of the world (and even most Americans), it appears that the age of oil may finally be coming to an end. More and more countries are making the common sense switch to cheaper forms of energy like solar and wind power. But, sadly, the US is a pariah on this issue, still clinging to fossil fuels, brought on by decades of mostly Republican policies; as we've gone from Ronald Reagan saying that trees cause pollution to Trump calling climate change "a hoax", America has been feeding its oil addiction with our tax dollars and the deaths of thousands of American service people for far too long. It's time to end it.
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