War Looms over U.S.-China-Iraq Battle for Oil

The sharpening rivalry between U.S. imperialism and China threatens armed conflict across the globe. From Iraq to Africa, as profit-seeking bosses go to war over oil, gas, uranium and other natural resources, more masses of workers worldwide will be killed. Millions of others will be driven deeper into poverty by the bosses’ super-exploitation in extracting these resources. For the international working class, the only answer to these horrors is a communist revolution to destroy their source — capitalism.
Late last month, Barack Obama sent 100 U.S. troops to Niger in Western Africa to establish a drone base. Aimed allegedly at al Qaeda, the unmanned assassination tools will menace China’s growing uranium operations there. (Niger is the world’s fourth largest uranium producer.) Meanwhile, Iraqi rulers are pressuring Exxon Mobil to sell its stake in a vast oil field to a Chinese firm. Exxon has countered with deals with the Kurds in northern Iraq, a move that could unleash a civil war.
U.S. Air Force personnel in Niger belong to the Pentagon’s Africa Command. Created in 2007, AFRICOM’s main mission is to combat the Islamic terrorists who pose a real problem for U.S. and allied rulers, as shown by a February attack on a British Petroleum gas plant in Algeria. According to J. Peter Pham, a lecturer at the U.S. Army War College, AFRICOM’s second mission is “protecting access to...strategic resources which Africa has in abundance” and “ensuring that no other interested third parties, including China, India, Japan, and Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment” (World Defense Review, 10/2/08).
While Obama’s Niger move helps France’s efforts to stave off al Qaeda and recolonize neighboring Mali (see box), it also serves the U.S. strategy to dominate China’s energy sources. As the Washington Post noted, “The drones will be based at first in the capital, Niamey. But military officials eventually want to move them north to the city of Agadez” (2/22/13). It’s no coincidence that the Sonima uranium mine, where China is the biggest shareholder, lies in the Agadez region.
Exxon Confronts Iraq’s Premier over Oil
An even hotter U.S.-China confrontation is brewing in Iraq. For two years, Exxon Mobil has battled Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki — who is pro-China and a favorite of Iran — over oil profits. Out of the U.S.-led slaughter of more than a million Iraqis, Exxon won the right to exploit the West Qurna-1 oilfield, Iraq’s biggest. But because U.S. rulers are divided and strapped for cash, they were unable to impose control with an effective military occupation.
Seizing on U.S. rulers’ weaknesses, Maliki put the screws on Exxon, which now gets less than two dollars per barrel as a service fee. The Iraqi bosses, the legal owners of the crude, then sell the oil for forty times Exxon’s fee.
Exxon’s temporary possession of the oil, and its ability to dictate West Qurna-1’s pumping rate, played to the advantage of U.S. capitalism. But Exxon requires profits as well as access. It wanted the same deal with Maliki that it made with the Kurds. In 2011, the U.S. empire struck back.
Exxon began cutting a more lucrative oil-drilling deal with Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government. Maliki went ballistic, demanding that Exxon sell its West Qurna stake and signaling that he would “favor bids by China National Petroleum Company and [Russian] Lukoil” (Reuters, 12/20/12).
Condoleezza Rice Threatens Maliki with Saddam’s Fate
To warn Maliki that he could end up like Saddam Hussein, Exxon hired three of the bloodiest mass murderers from the second Iraq war as advisors. They are ex-Secretary of State (and Chevron director) Condoleezza Rice, ex-national security advisor Stephen Hadley, and James Jeffrey, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq (National Journal, 2/15/13). All hail from the George H.W. Bush regime, further proof that the first Gulf War was also waged for oil. They are acting without reproach from either Obama or the liberal media, a clear sign of approval from the dominant finance capital wing of U.S. capitalists that controls Exxon.
To make the message even clearer, Exxon-allied bosses formed the United States-Kurdistan Business Council. In 2012, the group made ex-Marine commandant and Obama advisor General James Jones its CEO. Jones told the Iraq Oil Report, “It’s not a good sign for the global community when companies like Exxon and Chevron both kind of say, ‘It’s easier to do business in Kurdistan than it is with Baghdad.’ That has a chilling effect, you know, globally. And I think Baghdad’s gonna have to learn from that” (12/26/12).
The harsh lesson Jones and his Exxon handlers want to teach Maliki would amount to a fourth round of genocide against Iraqi workers. First came George H.W. Bush’s massive 1991 invasion to retake Kuwaiti oil, protect U.S. access to Saudi resources and put both Iraq and Iran on notice. Next came Clinton’s no-fly operation over Iraq’s skies, which enforced sanctions on food and medicine and wiped out at least a million Iraqis, including 500,000 children. In 2003, George W. Bush unleashed his “shock and awe” fiasco, which used a limited number of troops to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. But none of these imperialist assaults permanently subjugated Iraq, an essential goal for U.S. rulers. The solution? U.S. bosses now envision an Iraqi civil war to confront China by local proxy:
If Exxon Mobil starts drilling operations [in Kurdistan], Baghdad will have no option but to try and stop them,” the Middle East Economic Digest quoted a source in [Kurd capital] Erbil as saying. “But they’ll have the KRG [Kurdish Regional Government] and the Peshmerga behind them.”  The Peshmerga, which means “those who face death,” are the Kurds’ battle-seasoned fighters who for decades fought a separatist war against Baghdad until Saddam Hussein was toppled.... Both sides have heavily armed forces confronting each other along Kurdistan’s southern border. Oil could well be the spark to ignite a war. (UPI, 2/15/13)
The Final Conflict: International Working Class vs. World’s Imperialists
The international working class has no stake in any of these ruling-class rivalries. The bosses use workers from northern Africa, Iraq and the U.S., as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, as cannon fodder in their battle over energy resources. Masses of workers need to understand that capitalism is the source of their misery — and that it must be and can be destroyed. That is the goal of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. We fight for the overthrow of the profit system, the cause of mass unemployment, racism, sexism, poverty and imperialist wars. We need a mass party to get there. We need you to join us and help lead this revolution for a society run by our class, for our class interests.