The Oil Boom Effect on the International Relations of the Middle East - Coursework Example

Research paper: Political science The beginning of the 20th century has been a very important and turningpoint for the advancement of the Middle East region. Before the 1950s the nations of the Middle East demonstrated the modest levels of socio-economic in addition to political development in the world. Nonetheless the discovery of huge oil reserves together with their further utilisation and vigorous exportation, the Middle East has suddenly experienced significant changes in political, social and economic spheres. Middle East countries have been lucky enough to have sufficient “black gold” and they can comfortably base their development agenda on this scarce commodity. Oil comes with several benefits such as improved economic growth, creation of jobs, enlarged government incomes to facilitate alleviation of poverty, transfer of technology, infrastructural development and enhancement of related industries. Middle East region is endowed huge oil reserves which are approximated to be about 60% of the world’s supply. This has led to the fast making of wealth by some nations, mostly those that are oil-rich in addition to the altering of the economic and political processes ,not only to the countries exporting oil but also the whole of the Middle East region as a whole. Thus, there is an agreed awareness that the huge oil reserves on one hand resulted in economic prosperity and modernization, however on the other hand it has created weak countries that are independent from demands of the society which include political transparency and accountability. This particular paper seeks to examine the effects of this oil boom on international relations with a bias on regional conflicts and cooperation as well as the involvement of the international superpowers in the region. Keywords: oil boom, political transparency, accountability, superpower, oil reserves, The Middle East is geographically the world’s center of gravity for oil industry. It is a well known and undisputable fact that oil is of critical importance both in terms of domestic and foreign politics of almost every state in the Middle East region. This is true also of both the oil importers and oil exporters as well. This paper seeks to examine the effects of this oil boom on international relations with a bias on regional conflicts and cooperation as well as the involvement of the international superpowers in the region. Second only to having enough arable land for cultivation and feeding of a nation, oil is the world’s most valuable resource that any country can be privileged to have(Philip,2009). Oil can directly be utilised domestically as fuel and if there is surplus, it can be exported to other countries, consequently earning the much needed foreign exchange. However, inspite of this several oil producing countries that are developing have had these blessings turned into curses, a major invitation to political corruption, power intervention, and militarization and ironically given its revenue value, foreign debt. Wealth from oil has also interfered with strategies for development and distorted economies of countries. The oil curse is often associated with a colonial past; however it’s economic and social impact varies from other kinds of colonial exploitation. Production of oil is usually localised. Oil production is thus capital and technology intensive and because of this, it is isolated from the rest of the financial system, making it to be less devastating to local day to day patterns rather than a transfer from peasantry agriculture to cash crops. Thus the simplicity with which outsiders were able to take charge of oil exploration in their own welfare made it less obligatory for them to suppress native populations or substitute native officers than in places where plantation economies were brought into existence by colonialism. In addition to this, oil money changed the balance of power amongst society and state in countries exporting oil, enabling several native leaders the capacity to repress well-liked institutions and put a stop to traditional checks and balances on their authority. It is clear therefore that on the full, oil has reduced lawful political participation in the Middle East region as a whole. Even though oil imperialism was burdensome, it wasn’t the most awful destiny possible for a colonial dependence. Thus in the Middle East, Oil was able to contribute to the geopolitical pull drawing imperialist supremacies to the region. This also led to the easing of the ultimate transition from colonialism to nationwide sovereignty for many countries. This inconsistency is entrenched in the composition of the international oil industry and the abnormal oil history in the Middle East. Oil discovery and its additional utilisation have had a noteworthy effect on the economic development of the Middle East generally and particularly oil-rich countries. Before the discovery of oil, Middle East was generally a poor region which was forbidden ecologically and economically deprived, limited pastoral and agricultural economies and a diminutive but locally significant caravan trade. Since the discovery of the oil and its consequent extraction and utilisation in the first half of 20th century, the state of affairs however has changed radically. Oil exploration concessions have provided royalties and sales from oil revenue have been increasingly steady and still increasing especially to the rulers of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, Sharja, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi. These countries would later join and become UAE. Oil has therefore transformed these economies from basically agricultural to rentier (that is economies that derive most or rather substantial portion of their income from the exterior world and the performance of their political together with economic system is dependent to a large extent on amassing outside incomes that can be grouped as rents).Countries that are rentier depends mostly on allotment and redeployment (allocation states) and therefore exhibit a significant political vibrancy than other countries(production countries).Rents have been referred to as the revenue derived from the gift of nature and are therefore understood to be revenue from the exportation of natural resources, especially gas and oil(Fawcett,2013) . Following in the economic development and other effects of oil exploration, the discovery of oil has also had a big impact on the political processes and development in the region of Middle East. Several political scientists are of the view that the huge oil reserves together with the vast profits gotten from utilisation and exportation of oil have contributed to the political stagnation of countries in the Middle East. Thus at the Middle East there is the challenge of lack of government accountability, especially the oil rich states. It is a historically well known fact that government accountability and democratic representation demands came about due to the rulers’ attempt to impose new forms of taxes. The paradigm of the rentier states has become quite popular via the reversal of the popular saying that “no taxation without representation” into its reflecting image of “no representation without taxation”. Since the Middle East states are rentier states, the rule of “no representation without taxation” applies to them perfectly. Precisely, when the authorities derive enough incomes from the oil sales, they are most likely to tax their people less seriously or even forfeit the whole issue. The population will in return be less likely put forth any demands of accountability from and also representation in their government. Thus, this is the exact scenario that takes place from the oil-rich states of Middle East. These governments therefore have a propensity to excuse their citizens from burden of taxation in exchange for lack of any demands for representation and more importantly accountability. This simply means that governments are at liberty to allocate and redistribute the resources and revenue of the state any way they want without any requirement to get consent from the citizens since practically citizens usually do not have a say towards the revenue of the state .Formally therefore the populace of these countries lack lawful right to ask for accountability from their government. After all the governments are able to provide their citizens with a wide variety of genuine community goods and services such as national security, defense, education, social security, health, employment and world class infrastructure. Thus the quality and level of these public services and goods are usually sufficient, at times even excellent. Thus the government of the day not only allocates favours and benefits to the general public, but also takes the role of the ultimate employer in the country. Clearly therefore, the populace of these countries value the social and economic conditions the government provides and furthermore are completely contented with them, making them become politically passive. Therefore, even if the citizens do not participate in the political policies and views of the government, or are dissatisfied with lack of representation or the government’s unaccountability, they do not raise any issue (Owen, Pamuk, 1998). Just like in many other conflicts in around the world, the presence of oil has raised tensions in most developing countries around the world. Thus there have been internal conflicts, cross border conflicts and even intervention by the world’s super powers all in the game of trying to amass as much control as is possible for this black gold. For instance in 1958, the Suez crisis had serious repercussions in the Middle East. Thus the Arab League (represented all of the Arab countries) pledged its loyalty to Nasser and Arab hostility towards Israel further intensified. There were other crucial changes in other regions of the Middle East region, which traditionally had been in support of the West. In 1958, the pro-western power in Iraq was overthrown, making Libya and Syria look for military aid from the Soviet Union. The same year, Egypt and Syria came up with the United Arab Republic which lasted for only three years up to 1961, when a coup in Syria overthrew the government of the day. The Suez crisis made the Superpowers to get involved in the Middle East on quite a large scale. Things got so worse that the crisis took another turn from just being a middle East problem to straining relations between Israel and her Arab neighbours making it a possible international point of crisis. In order to protect Israel and any other country from the influence of Soviet Union, there was announcement of Eisenhower Doctrine in 1957, which offered aid to any state in the Middle East that was threatened by communism. Around that time, the Soviet Union started transferring military advisers to Egypt. By the clock of 1970, there was an approximated 20,000 and armed forces support worth more than $12,000,000,000 which had been transferred to Arabian nations. All the weapons and equipments that Syria and Egypt had lost of 1967 and 1973 were almost immediately restored by the Soviet Union .After eventually fighting for six days, there was even more involvement of superpowers in the Middle East. There was increased hostility that was felt by most Arab nations; the Soviet Union exploited the chance of acquiring even more influence and power in area that had been predominantly, pro-western. Thus the period between 1968 and 1973, the Soviet Union dispatched $2,600,000,000 worth of assistance to the Arab nations of Egypt and Syria. Conversely, increased Soviet Union help to the Arabs meant more increased American support to the Israelites. In the period between 1960s and 1970s, America sent more than $2,000,000,000 to Israel. This is how the Middle East became a significant part of the cold war. In 1990s, the nation of Iraq, forcefully and aggressively invaded and annexed Kuwait. The dispute between Iraq and Kuwait involved the claims that Kuwait was part of Iraq’s territory. Iraq also blamed Kuwait of exceeding the OPEC quotas for its oil production. Thus for the cartel to uphold its preferred price of $18 per barrel regulation was needed. Kuwait and UAE were constantly overproducing, the former at least to recover losses resulting from Iranian assaults in the Iran-Iraq battle and also to compensate for losses incurred due to an economic scandal. The resultant effect was a slump in the price of the oil going as low as $10 per barrel, with a resultant net loss of $7 billion annually to Iraq which was equivalent to its balance of payments of 1989.The incomes that accrued struggled to help the Iraq government’s fundamental costs leave alone repair the government’s dilapidated infrastructure. Iraq and Jordan both tried more regulation in vain. The government of Iraq described this as an economic warfare, which it maintained was motivated by Kuwait’s slant drilling across Iraq’s border Rumaila oil field. Meanwhile Saddam strengthened his ties with those Arab nations that had assisted Iraq in the war. This move was supported by America who thought that Iraq binds with pro-western Gulf countries would aid in bringing and maintaining Iraq inside the sphere of influence of America. The First Gulf war or the Persian Gulf War started on 2nd August 1990 and ended on 28th Feb 1991. This was a major conflict that resulted because Saddam Hussein claimed that the rich oil fields in Kuwait belonged to Iraq. Thus the invasion of Kuwait by troops from Iraqi began 2nd of August in 1990 and was met with a lot of condemnation from the international community. This action by Iraq brought about instant economic sanctions aimed against Iraq by the powerful U.N Security Council. The then US president George H.W Bush positioned U.S military in Saudi Arabia and push for other countries to follow suit. Several countries joined the coalition, which was by far the largest coalition since the World War 2(Randall, 1997). The majority of the coalition’s forces came from the US, with Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom and Egypt being the leading contributors respectively. The preliminary conflict to drive out Iraqi forces from Kuwait started with an aerial bombardment on January the 17th 1991.This was later pursued by a ground physical attack on February the 24th, which happened to be an important victory for the combined forces, which ensured that Kuwait was liberated from Iraq and marched onto Iraqi territory. Later on the coalition forces ceased their advancement and stated a cessation of hostilities 100 hours after the ground assault begun. Ground and aerial war was restricted to Kuwait, Iraq and some parts on Saudi Arabia’s border. The Iraq forces retaliated by launching Scud missiles against the Coalition forces targets in Saudi Arabia and also against Israel (Randall, 1997). Recently in January 2013, there have been conflicts in and tensions in Kirkuk, which is Iraq’s ethnic Kurdish area. Baghdad is at present disputing the Kurdistan Regional Government’s authority over the northern oil field of Iraq. Kurdish security forces had been patrolling the loosely distinct border. In 2011, Afghanistan’s new energy agenda threatened to worsen the already not so stable situation in the country that had been in war for almost a decade. Thus in 2009, a Hydrocarbon Law transformed the oil and gas sector from being nation owned to all but full privatization. In September 2011, there was discovery of vast oil reserves off Israel’s coast. This could lead to greater insecurity in an already volatile region. Israel obviously could not be having any intentions of sharing this vital resource with the Palestinian authority, even if Palestinians around Gaza strip suffer on a daily basis from power cuts. Presence of underwater gas may also become a slight territorial claim that can be exploited so as to bring about the Lebanese-Israeli disagreement. Additionally, up-and-coming clashes between Lebanon and Cyprus over the offshore gas possibly will provide an opening for Turkey’s retaliation against Israeli stubbornness over the flotilla raid together with other controversial issues. In conclusion, the presence of oil and other major minerals around world has led to development of the involved economies as well as rising tensions and conflicts, leading to scramble for and partition of the same, Middle East has been no exception. References Fawcett, L. (2013). International Relations of the Middle East. London: Oxford University Press. J.W, W. (2013). The Political Economy of Middle East Peace:The Impact of Competing Trade Agendas. New York: Routledge . Kiren, C. A. (1997). The Price of Wealth:Economies and Institutions in the Middle East. New York: Cornell University Press. Owen Roger, P. S. (1998). Middle East Economies:A History of Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century. London: Dexter Haven. Philip, R. (2009). The Middle East:A Beginners Guide. London: One World Publications. Randall, P. (1997). Fast Facts on the Middle East Conflict. New York: Harvest House Publishers. http://www.ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Tetreault.pdf http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/21537/No_80_Terry_Karl_-_Effects_of_Oil_Development.pdf http://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/dark-side-of-natural-resources/oil-and-natural-gas-in-conflict/middle-east.html Read More