Oil and Democracy Don't Mix

By Frida Berrigan, In These Times. Posted February 6, 2004.

At a 1996 energy conference in New Orleans, Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton said, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments."

Laying the blame on the divine is a stretch, but it seems that the vice president is right: Democracy and oil do not mix. Just look at the United States' top 10 oil suppliers. Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are repressive regimes with deplorable human rights records. Mexico and Venezuela, while democracies, are marked by instability, inequality and civil strife. Iraq remains at war and under occupation. Only Norway, Canada and the United Kingdom are fully functioning democracies.

Why don't oil and democracy mix? At least part of the answer can be found in Washington's policy of providing military aid and training to leaders who guarantee an uninterrupted flow of oil, defending it against all threats -- even those coming from their own citizens.

Since the beginning of the war on terrorism in 2001, the United States' top 10 sources of oil imports have experienced a 350 percent increase in U.S. military aid and training. In 2003, the United States plans to provide these countries with $58 million in military assistance. In fiscal year 2001, their military assistance totaled $12.2 million.

A large part of the increase is explained by Washington's rewarding of regimes like Algeria and Nigeria for their ability to cloak domestic repression in the rhetoric of the "war on terrorism." As the United States looks ahead to a never ending war on terrorism and growing dependence on foreign oil, this dynamic will become increasingly common.

Africa accounts for 16 percent of U.S. oil imports, and the National Intelligence Council predicts an increase to 25 percent by 2015. Hunger for this oil, combined with the need to collect allies in the war on terrorism, led the Bush administration to adopt a "see no evil" position toward human rights problems and inequality in the continent's oil-rich nations.

This policy is so entrenched that William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and North African affairs, remarked with admiration while on a 2002 trip there, "Washington has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism." Burns must not have read his own State Department 2002 Human Rights Report, which notes that Algerian "security forces committed extra-judicial killings, tortured, beat or otherwise abused detainees." Algeria has proven oil reserves of more than 9.2 billion barrels and is considered underdeveloped in terms of production, representing a golden opportunity for U.S. companies.

And so, in spite of persistent human rights abuses, relations between Washington and Algiers are warming. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has visited the White House twice and officials are discussing establishment of an American military base in Algeria. Emboldened by this, Algerian generals are pushing for access to previously denied lethal technology like combat aircraft.

Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States, and with the discovery of new deep-water oil reserves right off the coast U.S. strategic interest is growing.

In July 2003, as President Bush departed for Africa, Gen. James Jones, the U.S. commander responsible for African operations, announced that Washington was negotiating long-term use of a "family" of military bases across Africa and predicted a much bigger role for U.S. military in the Gulf of Guinea, right off the Nigerian coast.

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