As their competition for global supremacy intensifies, Chinese and U.S. bosses are scrambling for allies in a conflict that looks more likely by the day. Speaking in Moscow on March 23, China’s new president, Xi Jinping, “made a case…for closer economic and foreign policy cooperation with Russia” (New York Times, 3/24/13). Xi argued that China and Russia have “converging goals, including an expansion of the oil and gas trade, as they pursue dreams of ‘national revival’ and seek to offset the influence of the developed West.”
A China-Russia axis could be a mortal challenge to U.S. economic power and political influence. China has a huge and rising economy and more people of military age than the total U.S. population. Russia has vast energy supplies and the world’s second biggest nuclear arsenal, most of it aimed at the U.S. Well aware of this threat, U.S. rulers have unveiled their own long-term coalition schemes. In February, Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama’s new defense secretary and the outgoing head of the Atlantic Council think tank, called for military links with potential anti-China allies: India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey.
Oil Dollars and Workers’ Death
Strategic considerations are guiding the resurgence of U.S. oil interests. The biggest bosses are now pushing for intensive drilling and exploration, both within the U.S. and in other areas under the rulers’ control (see below). While this expansion serves the bosses’ class interests as they prepare for imperialist war, it promises only devastation for the working class, from Baghdad and Kabul and Islamabad to New York and Los Angeles and Chicago. The carnage will be heaviest in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where workers have long suffered racist super-exploitation by the imperialist powers.
Setting the rosters for a possible World War III underlies a number of seemingly unrelated developments. The financial crisis in Cyprus, which holds newfound gas reserves, has as much to do with war planning and energy imperialism as it does with rotten banks.
In talks last week in Moscow over a possible loan to Cyprus, Russia made clear that it expected a piece of the gas pie for its own companies....In Russia’s view, Cyprus, which already has two British military bases,...would also be an ideal place to set up a small naval installation should the Kremlin lose access to Tartus, a Syrian port that risks being swamped by that nation’s civil war (NYT, 3/24/13).
It’s important to note that Russia has shipped arms through Tartus to the pro-Chinese, pro-Iranian Syrian dictatorship.
Behind the scenes in Iraq, meanwhile, ExxonMobil is playing a pair of anti-China hands. U.S. imperialism’s flagship company hired Condoleezza Rice and other war criminals to force Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to reconsider his threat to transfer Exxon’s stake in Iraq’s biggest oilfield to a Chinese firm. And in northern Iraq, in the rebellious Kurdistan province, Exxon is supplying fuel to Turkey, another prospective Grand War Alliance member:
“Exxon [is] now the largest landholder...after the regional government....The acreage build-up comes as Kurdistan is looking at building oil and gas pipelines straight to Turkey” (Toronto Financial Post, 3/22/13). Secretary of State John Kerry no doubt touched on both issues during his “surprise” March 23 Baghdad visit, which was ostensibly meant to check Iraq’s growing coziness with Iran.
U.S. capitalists need to control Middle East resources — and the naval supply routes that govern access to them — to stay a step ahead in their deadly rivalry with other imperialist powers. Washington has sufficient energy supplies outside the region to meet its own needs. But to dominate the world, U.S. rulers must freeze out enemies like China. They cannot protect their empire without controlling the Middle East and its rich reserves of gas and oil.
U.S. Energy Boom Sharpens Imperialist Dogfight
The shale oil and gas boom within the U.S. takes on ominous overtones when viewed through this lens. In gas, U.S. bosses are developing unprecedented export capacity to combat Russia, China and Iran — economically today, militarily tomorrow. On March 19, the Brookings Institute’s Charles Ebinger testified before Congress that U.S. gas production helps “loosen the stranglehold of Gazprom, Russia’s state gas company, on our east and west European allies.”
In addition, Ebinger sees gas exports as a big boost for the U.S. in a possible Middle East conflagration, where “a blockade or military intervention in the Strait of Hormuz or a direct attack on Qatar’s liquefaction facilities by Iran would inflict chaos on world energy markets.... Additional volumes of LNG [Liquified Natural Gas] on the world market will benefit all consumers.”
U.S. oil’s resurgence is flowing from smaller domestic oil bosses who once demanded an end to “dependence on foreign oil.” Domestic sources were long ignored by larger companies like Exxon, which were accustomed to peacetime access to cheap and adequate sources around the world.  But as U.S. exploration and production fell off, the prospect of global war and shipping route shutoffs made the biggest U.S. capitalists vulnerable. So, they are beefing up their drilling and refining within the U.S.
Warren Buffett’s BNSF railroad and Union Tank Car company now transport half a million barrels of North Dakota Bakken crude a day. The arch-imperialist Carlyle Group bought an old Sunoco refinery in Philadelphia, once supplied by Middle East sources, and re-fired it with Pennsylvanian shale oil. Carlyle shares directors with Exxon. Its founder, David Rubenstein, is co-chairman of the finance-capital-driven Council on Foreign Relations. George H.W. Bush cashed Carlyle checks after committing genocide in the service of Exxon in Iraq.
Turn Oil Wars into Class War
As it heads inevitably toward war, inter-imperialist rivalry spells death for millions of workers around the world. Our goal must be to turn the bosses’ wars into class war for communism. That means sharpening the class struggle wherever we are building ties: in the shops and unions, the schools and campuses, the churches and neighborhoods, and especially in the military.
These struggles are erupting in the score of countries where the Progressive Labor Party is active. The world capitalist economic crisis falls mainly on the backs of the working class. But it also provides the basis to recruit masses of workers and youth to become organizers for a communist revolution. Only communism can bury all bosses and their exploitative, racist, sexist profit system. Join us this May Day!