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Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade Hardcover – October 7, 1997
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- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFree Press
- Publication dateOctober 7, 1997
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.5 x 10 inches
- ISBN-100684827263
- ISBN-13978-0684827261
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actually works. Investigative reporting.
Mr. Tirman also outlines American involvement in Iran while supporting the Shah (King), in Afghanistan while supporting the Mujahideen, and gives a very simple, believable explanation of why Israel has become the recipient of so much American military aid.
To my knowledge there has been no serious criticism of Mr. Tirman's book and certainly nobody has refuted his numbers, which are a matter of public record but startling to read as he puts them together.
Like most journalists Tirman is most comfortable with contemporary facts and figures, but, when it comes to history, he tends to be credulous to the point of superficiality. His knowledge of the oil industry, for example, is surprisingly weak, given the importance of petroleum to his story. As a case in point, in the very first chapter of the book, Tirman sets the stage for his later argument by claiming that at the time of the oil embargo of 1973-74 half of US imports came from the Gulf. Had this in fact been true, then Tirman's later claims that the embargo panicked the US into fostering policies that established the Middle East as an area of national security would have had some basis. However, as a brief glance at Department of Energy data will show, (and it really only takes a minute), oil imports from the Gulf amounted to less than five percent in 1973. The misnamed "embargo" - actually a very small reduction in output -was largely a symbolic flexing of muscle by Saudi Arabia to prove to the rest of the Arab world that it was not a toady to the US. In terms of US oil consumption, the embargo was a mosquito bite. In terms of politics, however, it was a godsend. Carter used the "embargo" to justify a doctrine of military intervention in the Mid-East, and the convenient bogeyman of OPEC (now hopelessly conflated with "Islamic fundamentalists") was firmly established in the minds of the media - never again to be questioned.
Later in the book, Tirman compounds his error, referring to the "disastrous" price hikes of 1974 and 1979. Again, a little bit of oil industry knowledge would have gone a long way. Tirman fails to realize that crude oil prices are set by oil refineries - not oil producers. The "price hikes" (quotes are necessary, here) which OPEC demanded were actually an attempt to bring Gulf oil prices in line with the prices charged by American oil companies. (Historically, the so-called "posted price", the price of US oil plus phantom shipping charges from the Caribbean to Great Britain, has set the price of crude.)
In short, US oil companies hiked international prices, not OPEC.
In sum, Tirman misses a very important point. The reason oil-producing nations of the Mid-East have been deemed vital to our "national security" is not because our economy is dependent on Mid-Eastern oil (it isn't), but because our principle satellite, "our man in Asia", Japan, with its hundreds of US military bases, is dependent on Mid-Eastern oil. Europe, now a major competitor, also imports heavily from the Middle-East. China, with its burgeoning economy, and, incidentally, its control of most of our international debt, is also well on the way to becoming a heavy importer. The name of the game is not "national security," or "arms trade," or even "US economy," it's "eliminate the competition" (including pesky separatists like the Kurds, irritating nationalizers like Saddam, and uncooperative socialists like Chavez).
Placing Turkey within the world-wide picture of US oil interests would have made Mr. Tirman's argument much stronger. However, it also would have forced him to re-evaluate the importance of the arms trade. One can only hope that Mr. Tirman will make a stronger effort to delve into some of the underlying factors influencing Mid-Eastern politics in his future writings. A broader perspective is badly needed.
