[A-List] Russia: Iraqi oil gamble

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Russia rooting for a quick hit on Saddam
By John Helmer
Asia Times, September 5 2002

MOSCOW - Nuri Said was the puppet prime minister of Iraq during the 1950s, when the British pulled all the strings in Baghdad.

When he was toppled by revolutionary Iraqi officers in 1958, Said's mangled corpse was dragged through the streets, much as President George W Bush and his colleagues are thinking of doing to Saddam Hussein, if they can catch him. Said used to say, "You can always rent an Arab, but you can never buy him." His end more or less confirmed that. The Bush administration is filled with violent men with short memories who won't have heard of Nuri Pasha, and aren't in the frame of mind to listen to his advice.

Nuri Said's downfall was attributed at the time to the cleverness of the Soviet Union, in part because some of the revolutionary soldiers were communists, but mostly because it was the Cold War and Washington and London had no other way of explaining unexpected outbreaks of nationalism, localism and the like. It didn't take long for Moscow to realize the fragility of the new situation in Baghdad, as the Baath Party, in which Saddam got his start, began its long and bloody rise to power. Russians who have followed Iraqi history from those days to the present know that the only certain thing about Iraqi politicians is their thirst for blood; and the only reason for Saddam's long rule is is that he has outdrunk all others. Such Iraqis, Russians understand very well, are rentable, but cannot be bought.

What quietly drives President Vladimir Putin's strategy in Iraq is that Russia needs stability, especially in the oil markets. The pressure on Iraq has kept large volumes of crude oil off world markets and allowed the Russian government to navigate out of its debt trough on the back of high oil prices. But an American invasion is bound to upset everything. To be sure, in the first days of the attack, oil will jump to US$30 or $35 a barrel. But if the Americans establish the protectorate they say they are aiming for, then it is near certain that the spigot on Iraqi taps is going to open. The flood of new oil on to the market, by which the fresh Iraqi democracy will pay for its American tutors, will be so great, prices are likely to collapse to between $10 and $15. The American people will celebrate the victory all the way to their petrol pumps. The Russian people - approaching by then a parliamentary election, followed by a presidential poll - won't be so cheery. They can kiss goodbye to much of the planned investment in the Arctic, St Petersburg and the Baltic shore, on Sakhalin and along the Pacific coast, all of which depends on the stability of oil prices at around $20.

Putin may be quietly whispering Nuri Pasha's venerable advice into Bush's ear. But he already understands that Bush, having already gone so far, must change the Iraqi regime, if not wage war. Putin's hope, therefore, is that Bush won't have the nerve for risking the US occupation that most threatens the Russian interest. The best outcome, from Putin's point of view, would be an American attack on Saddam himself, taking a leaf from Ronald Reagan's script when he dispatched 120 warplanes to kill Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in his tent in the middle of Tripoli. Qaddafi's infant child was killed; Qaddafi survived.

In a wicked world run by ill-educated men who can't be reasoned with, the best outcome now for Russia is for the Americans to try the biggest assassination attempt in the history of the world - and leave Iraqi oil in the ground, where it does the Russians the most good, at least for a few years yet. Even the timing of the attack ought to be clear - within three weeks of Tuesday, November 5. That's election day in the US.