Proton Soup said:
yes, i know, but there are some here who do not believe in realpolitik,
OK, I'm less confused now. I misread the reason for your quoting.
As for US policy in the Middle East, that still is confusing as, for realpolitik, it seems to have lost touch with reality.
It definitely used to be just about the oil. With Carter Doctrine, Reagan corollary, and senior official statements up to 2000, there was no doubt that repressive regimes were fine so long as the oil flowed.
But with Bush junior and neo-con organisations like the Project for a New American Century, the US did switch to a public declaration that it was about re-engineering the politics of the region, believing democratisation would be a pancea for the problems of the area.
This was so shockingly naive as foreign policy, and appallingly handled in practice, that most outsiders believed it must be just a front for the latest version of the oil game.
Perhaps there was a "clever" motive in the recognition that nationalised oil companies in the area would be difficult to deal with, and inefficient in their oil extraction, as oil peaked. Forcing democratisation and free markets would allow outside oil companies to move in and do a better job from a consumers point of view.
Yet this seemed a lot of immediate pain (in terms of the various wars) for an uncertain gain in 20 years time.
But what could else could explain US policy as rational rather than naive dreaming?
Yes, there had to be some kind of "war on terrorism", but everyone knew it ought to have been a police action, not a US invasion of random countries.
Some other unlikely sounding reasons have been advance, like the claim it is all about protecting the petro-dollar (people seem to get invaded every time they switch their oil transactions to euros).
Perhaps the reasons were irrational but quite human - the US had built up such a weight of military and flash new military gear in the area that there grew an uncontrollable urge to use it on someone. There was a belief that the US could knock over anyone with minimal losses to self.
And this was a true belief of course. But the disconnect was that after the quick military success would come the inevitable nation-building morasse. Again, the pain would outweigh the gain in any sane longterm rational choice.
Libya is the same set of questions all over again. The realpolitik shows in that very different choices are being made over Libya and Syria, for instance. The West has scores to settle with Libya, it is also more strategic with its oil reserves and under Gaddafi always a dangerous wild card in the area.
So what is the bottom-line diagnosis? That the US has built up such a might of military muscle to police the world's key oil reserves that it has become politically impossible to resist using it for irrational fantasies like defeating terrorism and engineering democracy?
