Part II: It's just always about the oil
Special Edition
TAT friends,
Today won’t be a rant, but will be a well-informed and harsh critique of the absurd war and its powerful enablers launched unconstitutionally and recklessly, by our current and overtly corrupt administration. There are some very difficult truths to understand well as we ponder the disaster this war has predictably become. Some of these truths pertain to this administration, and some pertains to both major US political parties. Who those truths matter to the most, are you and me, as well as every single American fed up with the corruption in Washington.
Today’s topic levels serious and warranted criticism of “big oil.” We don’t often hear about this and for the same reasons we don’t see far more ethical reporting in the news media, because like oil, media power comes down to less than two hands worth of fingers. The corruption within our republic, largely on display via sycophantic Congressmen, Senators cabinet members and especially in the Trump-era, the White House, will continue to do considerable damage to our national security. The current war is in my professional opinion, another war for oil.
That corruption is arrogantly displayed by US and foreign fossil fuel interests globally and in a variety of forms. The worst and cruelest activities often come at the behest of US and global oil supermajors, originally called the “Seven Sisters. This grouping includes the likes of ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum etc. By honest financial and strategic assessments, these entities hold enormous sway over politics and policy of American and other nation’s governments. We must put our foot down and demand accountability, and right damn now if we are to ever be free from these wars for oil and the havoc wrought on the least of us around the world. The willful negligence of oil supermajors is funding the deaths of massive numbers of our fellow, global citizens… for excessive profits.
There is no way to cover the full history of the fossil fuel industry in modern times here, and so I will focus only on the parts that can be fully expressed here in this essay, and that matters most to citizens and the troops that die for oil profits. For those who don’t believe in climate change, stop reading now because I will briefly address this first in this essay, and only to show just how devious and dangerous big oil has been to all human beings. “Climate change denialism” was a created industry, paid for by big oil and sustained for over sixty-seven years, by their ill-gained profits. Their treachery doesn’t stop there by any means, but I won’t spend long on this part as that I want to focus on the role that big oil’s interests are playing in this war.
First, a disclaimer I believe that unfettered access to fossil fuels is a strategic requirement based on a long list of critical strategic planning considerations. I harbor no grievance with the hard-working professionals in the fossil fuel industries. Our energy resources are produced by top professionals working in transport, drilling, distribution, refining etc. My harsh criticism is specifically focused on the immoral greed, of the boardrooms, C-suite executives, and those they employ as hired guns to distract from truth about their activities. Also, don’t forget the entities that hold powerful percentages of stock. That said, let’s get down to business.
So here’s the short narrative of big oil’s con-job on all global citizens, and largely focused on the US and West in general. As early as 1959, oil industry researchers had built the majority of the scientific foundation for the concept we know today, as climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
"A key contribution of our work has been demonstrating the systematic and statistically significant bias of ExxonMobil’s public communications toward denial and delay. But the most uncomfortable realization is how subtle and systematic and increasingly sophisticated their propaganda has become." - Harvard researchers chart evolution from denial to misdirection as House inquiry widens - Harvard Gazette - Alvin Powell, Harvard Staff Writer - September 28th, 2021
By the late 1980s consensus among the world’s best scientists fully concurred with what oil industry researchers had predicted decades prior. Only now would the oil industry slowly and begrudgingly concede minor points about the science. Their ambivalence was delivered with subtle hostility and arrogance, as the quote below clearly demonstrates.
"Take for example, Shell’s 1998 Report, “Climate Change: What does Shell Think and Do About It?” In this report, Shell acknowledged the connection between climate change and the burning of fossil fuels. However, instead of pledging to reduce its carbon emissions, Shell claims it will combat climate change by continuing to produce oil and gas in order to fuel economic growth and foster technological innovation. In 2000, Exxon reiterated such market strategies, claiming “technology will reduce the potential risks posed by climate change.” This response from Shell proved ineffective at best, and harmful at worst; it ignored any sense of responsibility in the company’s direct contributions to climate change. Instead of addressing the climate change problem head on by reducing carbon emissions, the oil industry favored nonbinding, technological and market-based steps to confronting the issue. Now, we are left to deal with the environmental consequences of years of corporate-backed denial which has helped instill public distrust in climate science despite the strong agreement among scientists. Today, this climate denialism appears in a new form: corporate greenwashing. Greenwashing is when a company misrepresents its products or services to be more environmentally friendly than they are in order to gain sales. It functions as a marketing tool that tricks the public into thinking their purchase at a certain company is better for the environment. In reality, these companies – not unlike oil and gas corporations – are doing little to nothing to actually combat climate change." - Defense, Denial, and Disinformation: Uncovering the Oil Industry’s Early Knowledge of Climate Change - Georgetown University - By Charlotte Taylor, SFS ‘24 - October 25, 2023
Finally, the costs from our nearly 70 years of increasing temperatures have driven the dramatically rising severity of storms, hunger, drought and more. The WHO/ World Health Organization’s analysis is as heart-breaking as it is infuriating.
Key facts "Climate change is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes and they are increasing in scale, frequency and intensity. Research shows that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone. The direct damage costs to health (excluding costs in health-determining sectors such as agriculture and water and sanitation) is estimated to be between US$ 2–4 billion per year by 2030. Areas with weak health infrastructure – mostly in developing countries – will be the least able to cope without assistance to prepare and respond. Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases through better transport, food and energy use choices can result in very large gains for health, particularly through reduced air pollution. - Climate Change - World Health Organization - 12 October 2023
Last but not least, we know who is to blame as well as who some of the primary villains are. It is they who are paying to keep the wool pulled over the eyes of uninformed and brainwashed Republican voters. This short assessment of big oil’s cold, heartless profit fantasies, is key to understanding what comes next… war to secure more profits and power, for some of America’s most dangerous and lawless oligarchies.
Troops should never die for an oligarchical industry, just to increase their bottom-line.
Okay my friends, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of this essay, oil wars. Like today’s GOP, the oil industry has been killing global citizens, since they first began paying for “climate change denial.” This isn’t their first brush with what in my lay opinion sounds like, criminally negligent homicide or as it’s normally prosecuted under Federal law, manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter. Remember, I’m not a lawyer but like most of you, I can easily read and interpret most of what is written in laymen’s terms, within our USC or US Code.
As prestigious scholars and founders, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison insisted on laws being written for us, the citizenry and in terms that we could understand. We’ve allowed this critical founding principle to be bastardized to a point, that it can mean anything a persuasive attorney wants it to mean. Our current, far-right SCOTUS operates in flagrant violation of the simplicity requirements, demanded by our founders. They daily twist the law into pretzels to support oligarchy and power-mongering by elite wealth using White Christian Nationalist ideology as the vehicle for their corrupt opinions.
Now that we have the premise of the severity of big oil’s willful behavior in my lifetime of nearly 70 years, let’s drill down into justifications for these claims regarding oil wars and the aforementioned, climate denialism. In this section, I will only be discussing wars for oil.
While that that we often believe that wars are fought for oil, few people understand that oil also sets the pre-conditions for war. While in typical fashion, politicians and of course the fossil fuel industry, tell us we’re just tossing around political attack arrows, but research tells us a different story.
The “conclusion” quote from the policy brief in the graphic above.
"CONCLUSION "Appreciating the eight ways in which oil contributes to war can help policymakers design grand strategy, allocate military resources, and shape domestic energy policy. Policy analysts tend to focus too narrowly on “energy security” as defined only by reliable access to fuel supplies, while missing the broader relationships between energy and security. Only by thinking systematically about the oil-conflict relationship can they craft intelligent foreign policy." - Oil, Conflict, and U.S. National Interests - Harvard's Belfer Center, Kennedy School at Harvard University - Quarterly Journal: International Security - By Jeff D. Colgan - October, 2013
Like all nations, fair access to energy resources is a critical element to our national security and the global economy, therefore rendering it of strategic value. Still, fair access to competitively priced energy resources, does not require war. It requires wisdom, diplomacy and building sustainable relationships with allies and adversaries. Trump, with the support of the entire Republican Party, have banished from government, all those who would have nixed our ongoing insanity, long before we went to war. Real presidents listen to real experts. Reality is as absent from 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue as it is within his voting base.
The strategic requirement to control Iran’s oil fields, is not a legitimate consideration of whether to got to war. America has been energy independent for a decade or more and the trend has risen sharply, beginning around 2011.
"Americans old enough to remember the oil embargoes of the 1970s are still scarred by gasoline shortages and rationing. The available solutions at that time, such as lowering the thermostat on oil-fueled furnaces and throwing on a sweater, didn’t meet the magnitude of the crisis, and measures such as improving automobile fuel economy would take a decade or more to have an effect. That’s why even today, calls for American energy independence are strongly embraced by unhappy voters. As it turns out, the United States is energy independent right now. And it’s not due to some statistical fluke: The nation has been a net-exporter of energy, on the basis of energy content, since 2019 and the level is growing. For the first three months of 2024, net energy exports are on an annual pace of 9.3 quadrillion Btus, or more than net energy imports in 2017." - Infographic: U.S. Declaration of Energy Independence - ASME, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. - Jeffrey Winters - Jul 30, 2024
Below, are the graphics from the ASME article.
So we don’t actually need Iran or anyone else’s oil, other than the century old greed of those oil supermajors who will profit wildly via new access and power over Iranian oil. Sure, Republicans will scream bloody murder at this but facts don’t lie, Republicans do. This is not our first rodeo of regime change with Iran. Most Iranians still harbor a deep grudge over the 1953 US and Britain’s coup of Iran’s first democratically elected president after the Shah’s forced abdication.
That same Shah was reinstalled by the CIA and British Intelligence via that coup. Iranians were and remain furious. Our involvement revolved around helping Britain retain their vast investments in Iranian oil, which they stood to lose after the new president, Mohammad Mosaddeq had nationalized Britain’s oil infrastructure. Also, then president Truman was focused on denying the Soviet Union Iran’s strategic location and oil reserves. War for oil goes way back and those wars have created tentacles, unnaturally twisting the geo-political balance of the region.
The Middle East isn’t alone in being pilfered by the US and other colonizing European powers, especially in Central and South America. Trump has renewed this lust for oil and other resources in the Americas, from Canada to the tip of Argentina at the other end of the world. Republicans call it the “Donroe Doctrine” after President Monroe’s Doctrine (1823) which was intertwined with Manifest Destiny (1840). It’s hard to decide sometimes who’s greedier and more immoral, Trump or the boardrooms of the supermajors.
The recent Venezuelan fiasco is exemplary of this farcical and illegal, Donroe Doctrine. The administration and US oil companies have already created the template for how to profit off of Trump’s wars for oil. This is part of the administration’s “Donroe Doctrine.”
"This latest US aggression in Latin America is another manifestation of the Trump administration’s deep ties to Big Oil and its naked prioritization of private profit and corporate interests over the public interest. It’s a toxic, dangerous combination: an administration that flouts legal obligations and a president who believes he’s above the law attacking another country on behalf of an industry that has largely operated with impunity and is actively lobbying for immunity from liability for the damage it causes." "Venezuela could be first in a series of attempted South American takeovers under President Trump’s reimagined “Donroe Doctrine,” (a corollary to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny establishing US imperialist claims over the Americas)—aiming to give the US control over more than 40% of the world’s oil and the ability to control commodity prices. ExxonMobil and other US-based corporations are deriving massive revenues and profits from oil production in Guyana, Venezuela’s neighbor, and are anxious to preserve access to onshore and offshore resources (even as ExxonMobil faces multiple environmental lawsuits over its offshore drilling operations). Venezuela and Guyana have been locked in a territorial dispute over their oil-rich border region for years, and Venezuelan military boats have reportedly threatened ExxonMobil tankers." - President Trump’s Imperial and Illegal Grab for Venezuelan Oil Is a Losing Bet - The Equation - Union of Concerned Scientists - Laura Peterson co-authored this post. - January 13th, 2026
Venezuela won’t be the last oil war in South America either. Threats have already been made against Columbia and other South and Central American nations. Oil and other abundant Argentine resources are also on Trump’s target list. Oil is a big piece of our relationship with Argentina, especially for Chevron. Argentina run by another far-right populist, chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei, has concerns about how Trump’s energy lust would impact their nation. Milei, despite his perpetual sucking up to Trump, is an economist by trade and should understand the issue well. It all depends on what Trump demands down the line, after the on again off again 40 billion dollar bailout ruse Trump used to keep Milei in power.
I think we all get it by now, Trump and big oil are in bed together and hiding their true intentions. This should have been expected by every American who was paying attention when Trump, called oil executives to Mar-a-Lago in May of 2024 and asked for a billion dollars for his campaign. Lo and behold, as soon as he takes office on January 20th of 2025, he and the Republican-US Congress, began rolling back environmental and administrative laws that they dislike, because it cuts into the profits of their big oil donors. Next we’ll look at some of the administration’s bogus reasoning for going to war with Iran, even though we now know that oil and the leverage it provides over other nations plays a prominent role.
Next up, we have one of Trump’s ever-changing justifications for war, that we had to stop Iran’s nuclear program. This is another non-sequitur. Let’s talk a minute about Iran, their nuclear program and whether it was an imminent nuclear threat, when Trump gave the attack order. First, a quote from the extraordinary experts at The Arms Control Association.
"U.S. President Donald Trump and senior administration officials have offered conflicting justifications for the renewed U.S. strikes on Iran, including the claim that Iran’s nuclear and missile programs posed an imminent threat to the United States. There is no evidence, however, to support those claims. Furthermore, it is increasingly clear that the Trump administration did not engage in good-faith negotiations with Iran over the past several weeks and exhaust diplomatic options to reach an agreement to limit future risks posed by the nuclear and missile programs." - Did Iran's Nuclear and Missile Programs Pose an Imminent Threat? No. - Arms Control Association - KELSEY DAVENPORT, director for nonproliferation policy - March 3rd, 2026
As noted, this non-imminent nuclear threat was but one of the ever-changing justifications for the war, spewing from the administration. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, claimed today that we only joined in with Israel, because they were already planning to strike. Israel on the other hand, was living under constant threat from Iran’s missile programs, as we all witnessed only a few months ago. I keep tabs on Israel via Israeli news, which is far more factual than our current crop of news media, beholden to the Trump administration, such as CBS and ABC. Their spineless handling of any news about the administration, puts America and our allies at risk. Besides, I talk with one of my daughters, living in the north of Israel who like most Israelis, is hunkering down in bomb shelters multiple times a day. So, Israel had a valid reason to attack, while we did not.
The absence of a clear reason for the attack and failure of the administration to justify to the American people and the world, reasoning for engaging in this war, has also kept our long allies out of it. Britain and Spain, rightly denied us the use of airbases. Anyone who doesn’t watch FOX News or any of the other extreme-right-wing media, wouldn’t know this but NATO is charting their own course ahead, with or without us. We have ceased to be a worthy member of NATO and intelligence sharing has diminished to a level unseen with our formerly close allies. We are outcasts in the world and will remain so until we-the-people restore our republic, and hold this administration’s leadership and enablers, fully accountable. Europe has zero reason to trust us. NATO will not join this war.
Another indicator that the nuclear justification is bogus, is that none of the nuclear facilities were included on the target list, in the opening days of the war. The truth is, Iran has no ICBM, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capability, which would be required in order to threaten the US. US intelligence estimates that they would not have such, until 2035, if at all.
"Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that Iran was on the verge of developing a ballistic missile capable of targeting the United States. In the wake of the negotiation of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran announced a voluntary range limit of 2,000 kilometers for its ballistic missiles. Tehran appears to still be generally adhering to that limit. For years, the U.S. intelligence community raised the prospect of an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but it never materialized. For example, the 1999 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate predicted that the United States would probably face an ICBM threat from Iran by 2015. A 2025 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency last year concluded that Iran did not have ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States, and that it might take until 2035 or longer for it to have up to 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles if there was a decision to try to do so. The DIA also assessed that Iran would need to make a determined push to achieve those capabilities on that timeline. - Did Iran's Nuclear and Missile Programs Pose an Imminent Threat? No.- Arms Control Association - KELSEY DAVENPORT, director for nonproliferation policy - March 3rd, 2026
Speaking of Arms control, it was Trump who tore up the JCPOA or Iran Nuclear Deal during his first administration in 2017. Had that agreement remained in effect, we would had far more intelligence and leverage over Iran’s nuclear programs.
"Six years after former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the disastrous consequences of this decision are still adding up. In addition to Iran being closer than ever to a nuclear weapons capability, now we must consider how the declining security situation in the Middle East has raised the stakes significantly. Trump promised a “better deal” but instead we got an increasingly costly blunder that may be impossible to fix." - Killing the Iran nuclear deal was one of Trump's biggest failures - Responsible Statecraft - Tom Collina - May 8, 2024
The administration as of my last reading of the war headlines, still cannot find a workable narrative to justify their greed. To make matters worse, the overwhelming majority of the nation, is deeply troubled by these oil wars and is saying so… loudly.
The New World Order
I’ll take a minute here to offer a perspective of the new world order, so often referenced by both Trump and Putin. I have written plenty on this issue over the past year or so, but will add the links to a couple of those essays for those seeking deep background.
Here’s the premise; after Putin called Trump to congratulate him on his election win, Putin declared that the election signaled the beginning of a “new world order.” Putin operates on his own Russian perspective about sovereignty, that only allows for superpowers to have full sovereignty rights and all other nations fall under the purview of one of those superpowers and with lesser sovereignty rights. Those primary powers have the right to wield violence to protect their turf, so to speak, which includes the states under their own umbrella.
When I first began writing about this topic, I foresaw Trump, Putin and Xi becoming the primary powers, each with a region under their control. After the attack on Iran, there is now a chance that only Russia and the US, just may become the only two. Here’s why. China starves for fuel to drive her economy. China buys somewhere between 80 and 90% of Iran’s oil exports while buying 20-22% of Russian oil. Should both Russia and the US with control over Iranian oil, wish to subdue China as a competitor in the new world order, they could wreck China’s economy, rendering her unsatisfactory as a member of the full sovereignty tribe.
This is admittedly just an educated guess, however the major muscle movements on the world stage over the past couple of years, seem to be pointing in that direction. Don’t forget that Trump, the wanna-be mafioso, relies almost exclusively on loyalty when choosing partners in crime. Putin loyally bought him the 2016 election and has played a role in every election since, whether for Trump or the GOP. Russia has been attacking the US and the West with complex and covert influence operations for several decades. Russia is quite frankly, not only Trump and the GOP’s “muscle” but taught the GOP how to influence, Russia-style.
This portion of the essay may be the least important for now, but please keep an eye out for any indicators of Trump and Putin beginning to distance themselves from China. This is as they say… a very bad sign that heightens the chances for another world war. Like I said, this has been a gut instinct I can’t shake and based on years of studying Russia, China and their allies. India figures in this somewhere and it seems as if they are cozying up to Putin more than usual, recently inking a new arms deal just last December, despite push-back from the West. Strengthening India who has loyally helped Russia evade oil sanctions. India and Russia have a very long and close relationship.
Well readers, this special edition has already become my longest essay and feels book-like after hours at my laptop. There is so much that is chaotic in the world at the moment, however we must always keep an eye on the bigger picture. There are plenty of villains to go around and Trump, Putin, big oil and a congress full of spineless Republican congressional enablers are the primary bad guys to keep an eye on. Despite the length, there’s far more unsaid. I will get back to the high-terrorism threat stemming from Iran’s Quds forces operating overseas, including here in the US.
Whatever we do when this painful period in US history comes to an end, we must seek not revenge, but justice and accountability for those criminals and oligarchs within this administration and every single enabling GOP congressperson. When congress is back on its feet, we will require new campaign finance laws, that rein in the flood of dark money into politics, courtesy of Chief Justice John Roberts’ Citizens United decision. I do understand that there’s a very long list of other “must dos,” in order to clean up the catastrophic mess, left by the greed and lawlessness imposed upon us. We not only can do this, but must before Trump orders a nuke to solve his perpetually unsolved problems. This disastrous war only gets worse before it gets better. The longer we leave the selfish and incompetent in charge, the more dangerous it gets for you and me, as well as our families.
Cheers all and if you’ve read this far, I am deeply grateful. The more we know, the better protected we are. That’s the primary reason for starting this publication. Back Friday or Saturday.
Paul
I feel like I've just read, War and Peace!