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=> The shadow war: euro vs. dollar

The shadow war: euro vs. dollar
Posted by Jeff (Guest) jeff@attoz.com - Sunday, May 2 2004, 19:22:14 (CEST)
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The shadow war: euro vs. dollar

Behind the war in Iraq is a struggle for economic dominance between America and Europe. A clash of civilisations is nowhere in sight.

SOME INDIAN thinkers are interpreting the U.S.-led attack on Iraq as part of the "clash of civilisations" between the "Christian" West and the Islamic world. Such facile academic theories can mislead both the public and policy makers into thinking that the world is simpler than it really is, leading to policy decisions that can have unforeseen consequences. To see this, one has only to visit another popular theory 40 years ago called the "domino effect." It held that one country becoming communist would inevitably lead to its neighbours also becoming communist. Belief in this theory led to U.S. entanglement in Vietnam the wounds of which have still not healed. One may see the clash of civilisations as the academic theory that is playing today the same role as the domino effect theory did in the Cold War era. They both offer attractive but unsound simplifications.

The ground situation today, especially after the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, gives scant support to the clash of civilisations thesis. The assumption, generally unstated, is that it is part of a conflict between the `Christian' West and the Islamic world. This belief appears to be particularly strong in India and the Islamic world. It is based on the fundamental misconception that religion (Christianity) plays the same role in the West as Hinduism and Islam play in the East. The reality is that the West, Europe in particular, sees itself not as Christian but secular humanistic. Unlike Indians — both Hindus and Muslims — many of who are prepared to lay down their lives to defend their religion, it would be hard to find a handful of Europeans prepared to do so in the defence of Christianity or the Church. In accepting Huntington's clash of civilisations thesis, Indians and other Asiatics have essentially projected their own religiosity on to the people and countries of the West. Interestingly, Westerners, Americans in particular, are making the opposite mistake by applying secular humanistic measures in interpreting the deeply religious East. The fact that their contact is limited to the Westernised urban elite, which they take to be representative of the country as a whole, has only reinforced their misperceptions.

The clash of civilisations thesis also fails to explain the split within the Anglo-European block, with France and Germany opposing the U.S. policy almost as fiercely as Iraqi soldiers opposing American soldiers. Some analysts have recognised that there is an economic dimension to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which sits on oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia's. This may be valid but it is only part of the picture: there is a deeper economic struggle that the United States is waging to preserve its economic supremacy in the world. This now has taken the form of an unseen war between the Euro and the Dollar for which Iraq has become the military beachhead. It has enormous consequences for the future of the world order.

Oil and dollar

In a recent article titled "It's not about oil or Iraq; it's about the U.S. and Europe going head-to-head on world economic dominance," the Australian economist and columnist Geoffrey Heard wrote: "Why is George Bush so hell bent on war with Iraq? Why does his administration reject every positive Iraqi move? It all makes sense when you consider the economic implications for the USA of not going to war with Iraq. The war in Iraq is actually the U.S. and Europe going head to head on economic leadership of the world."

Heard then goes on to explain how Iraq has become the unwitting battleground — "beachhead" in Heard's terminology — in this economic war following Iraq's decision to switch from dollar to euro in its oil sales. In his words: "It is about the currency used to trade oil and consequently, who will dominate the world economically, in the foreseeable future — the USA or the European Union. ...Iraq is a European Union beachhead in that confrontation. America had a monopoly on the oil trade, with the U.S. dollar being the fiat currency, but Iraq broke ranks in 1999, started to trade oil in the EU's euros, and profited. If America invades Iraq and takes over, it will hurl the EU and its euro back into the sea and make America's position as the dominant economic power in the world all but impregnable. America's allies in the invasion, Britain and Australia, are betting America will win and that they will get some trickle-down benefits for jumping on to the U.S. bandwagon." This has now come home to roost, but it calls for some appreciation of the history leading up to it.

Throughout history, some commodity or other has served as the de facto medium in world trade. Although `specie' (gold and silver) has been widely exchanged as currency, the command of world trade and economy has depended on a more widely traded product. In the past, grain has been one such commodity, which made Lenin say: "Grain is the currency of currencies." This had allowed countries with food surpluses like the United States, France and Canada to exert great influence on countries with food shortages until the Green Revolution changed the equation. Well into the 18th century, cotton textiles occupied a comparable position; it was cotton that was largely responsible for the prosperity of pre-colonial India. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Britain ensured that the Indian cotton industry was destroyed to make room for its own machine-produced textiles. Today, despite the talk of globalisation and post-information society, the commodity of exchange is oil. The world can run without computers but not without oil.

While oil serves as the commodity of exchange, a couple of historical developments ensured the dollar's dominance of the international oil trade. First, the agreement between President Franklin Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia allowed the U.S. dollar to be used in oil trade; and the second, the Bretton Woods Conference established the dollar as the world standard virtually replacing gold. This allowed the U.S. to run huge deficits in both domestic expenditure and international trade. While the U.S. printed dollars to meet its fiscal obligations, countries of the world accepted dollar payments for their goods because of the dollar's value as the currency of choice for oil purchases. As a result, even while the U.S. kept losing its industrial pre-eminence, it managed to retain its economic dominance as the producer of the currency of oil trade. Further, the demand for dollars as the de facto oil currency allowed the U.S. to commit enormous resources (by absorbing deficits) to defence production making it the mightiest military power in history.

Euro's challenge

As long as the dollar remains the dominant currency, especially in oil trade, it is difficult to see how the U.S. can be dislodged from its position as the world's dominant economic power. A small crack appeared in 1999 when Iraq, at France's persuasion, agreed to accept payment for its oil in euro. At first this seemed unwise as the euro was selling well below the dollar. But now with the euro at a premium Iraq reaped a huge profit. This made other oil producers take note of Iraq's success. As Geoffery Heard noted: "Iran started thinking about switching too; Venezuela, the 4th largest oil producer, began looking at it and has been cutting out the dollar by bartering oil with several nations including America's bete noire, Cuba. Russia is seeking to ramp up oil production with Europe (trading in euros) an obvious market." It is probably not accidental that the U.S. put pressure on Iran by naming it a member of the "axis of evil," and tried also to destabilise the democratically elected Venezuelan government with the help of business interests friendly to America.

The U.S. seems belatedly to have sensed the potential threat posed by the euro. Heard observed: "The greenback's (dollar's) grip on oil trading and consequently on world trade in general, was under serious threat. If America did not stamp on this immediately, this economic brushfire could rapidly be fanned into a wildfire capable of consuming the U.S.'s economy and its dominance of world trade." This probably overstates the case, but the recent decline in the value of the dollar indicates that the threat is real. It is worth noting that the U.S. is the most indebted country in the world with domestic and international debt approaching 3.4 trillion dollars or $12,000 for each man, woman and child in America. A long term weakening of the dollar due to its slipping hold on the world oil trade can have serious consequences for American prosperity and also its capacity to finance its military expenditure through deficit financing. That is to say, the euro threatens America's economic power as well as its military power.

This may help explain why the U.S. abruptly shifted its attention from the war in Afghanistan to a major war in Iraq. Its goals, in Heard's words, are to "safeguard the American economy by returning Iraq to trading oil in U.S. dollars, so the greenback is once again the exclusive oil currency. (Also) send a very clear message to any other oil producers just what will happen to them if they do not stay in the dollar circle. ...Place the second largest reserves of oil in the world under direct American control. Provide a secular, subject state where the U.S. can maintain a huge force... to dominate the Middle East and its vital oil." The war in Iraq may be a war for oil, but at a deeper level it is a war for the defence of the continued control of the world oil economy through the dollar.

No clash of civilisations

The war in Iraq is primarily a war for economic power like any number of such wars — and in the same region — fought in the colonial times. The principal participants are also familiar, being all members of the Western civilisation if such a thing exists any more. Its horrors may arouse sectarian passions in the Islamic world, but this does not make this economic war into a civilisational war. Seeing this as a conflict between civilisations serves only to obfuscate the real issue and may lead to harmful policies. Fifty years ago, against the advice of military leaders like Field Marshal Cariappa, Nehru and Krishna Menon neglected the defence of the Northeast under the belief that China would never attack a fellow Socialist country like India for which the country paid a heavy price in 1962. To avoid repeating such mistakes Indian thinkers should formulate models and policies based on ground realities and local conditions and not accept untested theories and ideas borrowed from abroad. Even so great a leader as Mahatma Gandhi failed when he tried to make the Khilafat (restoration the Turkish Sultan) a central issue in the 1921 Non-violent Non-cooperation Movement. It led to the disastrous Moplah Rebellion and went on to sow the seeds of the Partition. The lesson we must draw is that there are no intellectual shortcuts and no substitute for independent thinking in policy formulation.

N.S. RAJARAM

(nsrajaram@vsnl.com)
Telephone: (080) 657 9985



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