Shibley Telhami sees a long U.S. occupation of Iraq, to protect oil reserves

By David Brand

Oil is "a curse" to Middle East oil states that is likely to keep American troops in Iraq "for the long haul," Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland-College Park, said in a public lecture on campus April. 2.

Shibley Telhami Barry De Libero/University Photography

Although Telhami said he doubted that oil was the cause of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "I bet you when we open up the archives 40 years from now, you will see National Security Council secret documentation that it [the war] was explained in terms of oil." He speculated that the American presence in Iraq will, in time, become "a doctrine of keeping American forces in oil areas to protect the supply of oil and to have an insurance policy in case of problems with Saudi Arabia." It will become, he predicted, "a doctrine that outlasts administrations."

Telhami, who previously taught at Cornell, was delivering the 2004 Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Lecture Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall.

A prominent voice on U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs, Telhami has served as an adviser to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Trilateral U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee, which was mandated by the Wye River accords.

The title of Telhami's talk, "The Stakes: America in Iraq and the Middle East," is similar to the title of his most-recent book, The Stakes: America in the Middle East (Westview Press, 2003).

Oil is one reason why "the nightmare is not over for Iraq," said Telhami. In his view, in this century world oil supplies will be more important than in the 20th century. This will mean, he said, that not only will governments have more incentive to be corrupt, "but also it will still be of strategic value to outsiders who are going to fight for it." The Middle East holds two-thirds of the world's oil reserves, but only a fourth of its oil supply. That means, said Telhami, that more and more of the world's future oil supply will be coming from the Middle East.

"Just as demand for oil is likely to increase, particularly from Asia and particularly from China, so that unfortunately means that a lot of different powers will continue to have an interest in meddling in the affairs of oil states because of the security value," he said.

Is there any hope for a more democratic and prosperous Iraq, a member of the audience asked. "It's possible, but not probable," said Telhami. "And I say that with a lot of deep sadness."

Indeed, Telhami said he feared that the U.S. presence in Iraq could develop into a wider conflict "between the U.S. and the Muslim world in general." The Afghanistan war, he noted, was viewed by many around the world as a just war because of the 9/11 terrorist attack. But after Afghanistan, he said, there has been "a deterioration of the discourse," partly resulting from the widely held sense that "the U.S. wanted to go it alone."

Today, said Telhami, "more and more Muslims believe that this is not a war on terrorism but a war on Islam, and more and more Americans, surveys show, see Islam as the problem, even more than Al Qaeda terrorism.

"And that is a problem that is profoundly troubling," Telhami said.