Andy Rowell, 16 July 2007 

Australian politics does not often grace the world stage or make world news, but there was one story earlier this month that did make the rounds and rightly so. Normally if you ask people in the Middle East, Britain or America who Australia’s Defence Minister is, many people would not have had a clue.

However, suddenly the name of Brendan Nelson went around the global news networks, including the BBC, Al Jazeera and ABC. The reason? Nelson made the mistake of muttering the words “oil and Iraq” in one sentence. In a speech Nelson admitted that securing Iraq’s oil supplies was a significant factor behind Australian troops being in the country. According to Nelson, "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority for Australia.

What Nelson was saying is well known to every critic of the US invasion. That gaining access and control of the world’s second largest oil reserves was a significant reason for the 2003 invasion. The oil-Iraq argument has gained legitimate credence with the lack of Saddam’s weapons of mass deception and more recently with the American insistence of the controversial Iraqi oil law as a benchmark for the Iraqi government.

The oil law, which is due to be debated again in Iraq’s parliament any day now, is vehemently opposed by Iraq’s oil unions as well as many Iraqi politicians. For example, Faleh Abood Umara, the general secretary of the Federation of Oil Unions recently called the law an “obvious robbery of Iraqi oil”.

What we were witnessing was a rare moment of honesty from a politician. It is the first time any Australian government minister has admitted the possibility of a link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.

Not surprisingly, Nelson’s boss, Australian Prime Minister, John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his Defence Minister's comments. "We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil," he told a local radio station. The following day, Nelson himself had to distance himself from his comments of the previous day. "Iraq has never been about oil," he told reporters in Indonesia.

So here we have a politician for once saying that the Iraq war was about oil. Twenty four hours later he was force to retract his remarks and once again deny any link. What we are witnessing is that politicians from all the major countries involved in the invasion – America, Britain as well as Australia – remain in a state of denial about the reasons for going to war.

There is also another issue where our politicians are in denial and that is over the fact that the Iraq war has made Britain, for example, more prone to a terrorist attack. The Labour government has long argued that the Iraq war has not made Britain more likely to be attacked. This is utter rubbish.

The recent failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow are a stark reminder of this. The timing of the attacks is no coincidence, coming as they did on the day after Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister from Tony Blair.

A report in April by the British Government’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre warned that units of Al Qaeda in Iraq were active in the UK. Moreover a senior Iraqi Al-Qaeda commander had outlined details of a big attack on the country. The report said the commander “stressed the need to take care to ensure the attack was successful and on a large scale”. It was aimed “ideally” to take place before Tony Blair stepped down.

It was also in April, that a senior al-Qaeda leader in Iraq gave a chilling warning to Canon Andrew White, the only Anglican Bishop working in Baghdad that his group was planning to attack Britain and America. They would be targeted because of their involvement in Iraq, he was warned. “Those who cure you will kill you,” he was told. Eight of the suspects arrested in the wake of the failed bombings are all members of the medical profession.

Links between the failed bombers and Al-Qaeda are emerging. Last weekend, the Sunday Times argued that the British police Counter Terrorism Command is “understood to have uncovered evidence that in the months leading up to the attacks one or more of the suspects communicated by telephone or e-mail with terrorist leaders in Iraq”. The Observer newspaper added that one of the accused was also a known associate of a senior al-Qaeda figure caught plotting to blow up passenger jets four years ago.

But despite all this evidence, British politicians continue to argue that there is no link between Iraq and the attacks. They too are in denial. Speaking last week, Britain’s new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown denied that British foreign policy had anything to do with the latest attacks.

Brown claimed that the bombers were not motivated by Iraq or Afghanistan but had "a grievance against society, particularly against the values that we represent and the values decent people of all religions represent”.

Brown added “Irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan, irrespective of what is happening in different parts of the world, we have an international organisation trying to inflict the maximum damage on civilian life in pursuit of a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to most people”.

As our new Prime Minister remains in denial, just like his predecessor, Tony Blair, Brown has appointed a new security Minister, Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the British Navy. West argues that the overall danger facing Britain is at its greatest ever level and that a new approach is badly needed to tackle it.

The threat is even more severe than it was just over a year ago, when he retired from the Navy. West argues that it will take ten to fifteen years to end the threat posed by Islamist terrorists.

While that may be an underestimate, there are certainly things that politicians can do. The first is to simply stop being in denial and admit two fundamental points. Firstly that oil was a factor in the invasion in Iraq.

Secondly that the conflict in Iraq has made the world a more violent and dangerous place as well as countries such as Britain more dangerous. If you merge these two themes together you can extrapolate that our dependence on oil has made us more vulnerable. The logical conclusion is that if the world reduces its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, it will make us safer.

We know the Middle East has the majority of the world’s oil reserves. Just last week, the industrialized nations’ energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, argued that the world is facing an oil supply “crunch” within five years. This will force up prices to record levels and increase the everyone’s dependence on oil coming from the oil cartel, Opec, whose members are predominantly in the Middle East.

For as long as the world remains dependent on oil we will be dependent on the Middle East and will be forced to interfere in the politics of the region. This can only continue to be source of resentment and conflict. It will also be a huge drain on resources and money.

Take Australia. Even though Prime Minister Howard, denied the comments of his Defence Secretary about the link between oil and Iraq he still admitted that Australia’s defense budget would have to grow over the next few years. He also admitted that Australia faces no conventional military threat. So why does Australia need to spend so much money? It is, of course, they need to secure oil supplies for the future. So Australians could spend billons of dollars securing oil resources in far off lands, at the same time as their presence their will make them more likely to be a target.

Does this make sense? Of course not. Nor does it have to be this way. The sooner we all start a process of radical and quick disinvestment from fossil fuels the better. This can be done. A report published this week in Britain argued that the country could be “carbon neutral” in twenty years, ie we produce no carbon dioxide as a nation. The primary way of achieving that is switching from oil to other energy sources, including a vast investment in renewable energy.

We could lead a revolution in the way our homes are built, and how they are heated. The most important revolution could be how we travel.  Power for transport would switch almost entirely to electricity, so people would drive less and the cheap flight culture that has swept Europe would have to disappear.

Paul Allen, the Development Director of the Centre for Alternative Technology that produced the report argues that it “is scientifically necessary, socially possible and technically achievable - we must now make it politically thinkable.” But for it to be politically thinkable, politicians must change the way they think. The first step would be to stop being in denial.