Prof. Ali Mazrui
Petro-militarism is dialectic between the forces of destruction (mass weapons) and the petro-forces of production (the politics of oil) in the context of a potential clash of civilizations. The 1979 Iranian revolution introduced the history of petro-militarism.
When Samuel Huntington predicted in 1993 a post-Cold War world of civilisations in conflict, he emphasised a conflict of values and a clash of identities. He focused on a potential conflict between Islam and the West.
Huntington omitted the role of petroleum as an ignition of clash of civilisations. If the Muslim world had not been disproportionately rich in petroleum, would its relations with the Western world have been less militarised?
The barrel of oil symbolises economic power; the barrel of the gun symbolises military power. Muslim countries endowed with petroleum are tempted to pursue military pre-eminence. Saddam Hussein sought to make Iraq a military force in the Middle East.
Some Western analysts have given Israel prophetic credit for bombing Iraqi’s nuclear plant in 1981. In reality, it was precisely Israeli bombing of Iraq’s peaceful experiment in nuclear energy that aroused Iraq’s resolve to become a nuclear military power.
By sabotaging those Iraqi doves (the nuclear scientists and engineers who had stood for the peaceful uses of nuclear technology), Israeli bombs had strengthened the nuclear hawks in the Iraqi scientific establishment.
Far from Israel being a prophet that had tried to abort Iraq’s nuclear plans, Israeli bombs were the precipitating factor, which had made Iraqis resolve to become a military nuclear power. Iraq’s barrel of oil sought to become a barrel of uranium in pursuit of military pre-eminence in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the West becomes particularly uncomfortable when a Muslim barrel of oil seeks to transform itself into a barrel of the gun. Saddam Hussein’s military ambitions became a case in point. Iraq was targeted by the United States as the first potential casualty of petro-militarism.
Also on the radar-screen of Western military designs were Iran and Syria. A fundamental strategic doctrine of western military planners was how to prevent Muslim petro-power from ever becoming Muslim-owned weapons of mass destruction.
Petro-militarism fed into a wider international phenomenon. Were the forces of globalization leading towards a new global apartheid?
In the economic field, the world was getting divided between great beneficiaries of an expanding world economy and great casualties of that economy. The worst economic casualties of globalisation were African states and Black people worldwide.
In the military field, the world was getting divided between those who were allowed to pursue and possess weapons of mass destruction [WMD] and those who were not permitted. This new military apartheid was a division between WMD-Brahmins like Israel and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, on one side, and WMD-Untouchables like Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
But just as the worst economic victims of economic globalisation were Africans and Black people, the worst military casualties of the new MMD-caste system were disproportionately Muslims.
One new excuse for preventing Muslim countries from becoming nuclear powers is the fear of “Islamic terrorism”. This fear has been added to the equation of petro-militarism.
The United States has become the self-appointed global policeman eager to enforce the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Soft targets
But there is one thing, which the United States has in common with international Muslim terrorists. Both prefer soft targets. International terrorists hit civilian targets disproportionately; the United States hits small vulnerable Third World countries disproportionately.
The United States was eager to bomb Afghanistan and invade disarmed Iraq, but the United States has been far more hesitant about bombing North Korea, let alone invade it. Indeed, while the United States was getting ready to invade Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction, North Korea expelled the United Nations’ nuclear inspectors and proclaimed its blatant pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The United States took no action against North Korea, in spite of the fact that North Korea posed a far greater danger to the United States and its allies than Saddam Hussein had ever done.
It is in this regard that American military power prefers soft targets. This is truly comparable to the preference by international terrorists for their own kind of vulnerable targets.
There is one Muslim country, which managed to gatecrash into the nuclear club before those gates were solidly closed by Western nuclear monopoly. The Muslim exception is, of course, Pakistan, which has been allowed to become a nuclear power, partly because of its complicated relations with nuclearised India.
In the case of other Muslim countries, possession of weapons of mass destruction has been interpreted as a potential link with international terrorism. But Pakistan is a Muslim state in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and yet Pakistan is also accepted as an ally in the American war against international Muslim terrorism. Under General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan managed to defy the West by becoming a military nuclear power, and has yet befriended the West by being fully anti-terrorist.
Ironically, Pakistan is a nuclear power without being a petro-power. Perhaps that is part of its success in its relationship with the West. Muslim countries like Iraq and Iran, which are major sources of oil for the Western world, are less likely to be allowed to become military nuclear powers than Muslim countries like Pakistan, which are economically poor enough to be economic dependencies of the West. Pakistan has been allowed to develop its barrel of a nuclear gun partly because it does not really have the leverage of a barrel of oil.
Globalisation
The wider world of global apartheid remains truly menacing. Economic globalisation has impoverished Pakistan’s economy, but military globalisation has given the same Pakistan a new and visible role in the war against terrorism. Yet, in the final analysis, the worst casualties of economic globalisation are African countries and Black people worldwide.
The worst casualties of the military globalisation of the world are Muslims — from the victims of petro-militarism in the Arab world to Muslim warriors of self-determination in Chechnya, Kashmir and occupied Palestine. The struggle continues.
About The Author(s): Prof. Ali Mazrui is Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Kenya.
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