Was the Iraq war of 2003 driven principally by US interest in oil - Essay Example

It is only in December 2011 that the US completed the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq. Since the post war era, a great attention has been raised as regards to the US motives of getting involved in Iraq. The Bush Administration proposed different justifications for its decision to invade Iraq. At the beginning, it singled out the threat to US national security caused by the alleged assembling of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by the Saddam administration and connection with international terrorists.

Then, it emphasized the necessity to spread democracy in the Middle East in addition to also stressed Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime and human rights misuse (Boot, 2003). However, many sceptics consider that all of these justifications were just distractions and bureaucratic arguments. In their view, the real key driver was US interest in Iraqi oil as it is one of the main components of global power. The Persian Gulf is the heart of the world petroleum industry. It holds 65 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 34 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves (Everest, 2004).

The Gulf has strategic importance as the global race for oil has grown. Since the end of World War II, domination in the Middle East and control its oil supplies have been very important to US foreign policy. In pursuit of these objectives, the US made various actions – political and military pressure, overthrowing governments and even menacing the use of nuclear weapons. The subordination of repressive Arab rulers, the support of Israel and Shah’s regime in Iran are good examples of US attempts to control the Middle East.

There are many disputes surrounding the role of the Iraqi oil in US invention of 2003. It is argued that one of the main reasons for this war was for the acquisition of the second largest oil reserves in the world. As it has become the major factor of today’s global military-economic-political balance (Fawn & Hinnebusch, 2006). There are many arguments that this was mainly commercial purpose in order to maintain the US economy and oil lobbyist. Moreover, it is widely argued that Iraqi oil has great strategic value for the US as it could decrease dependency on the undemocratic oil producing countries and undermine their economic and political situation (Alkadiri & Mohamedi, 2003).

This essay will analyse the oil factor in Iraq war 2003 and its role in American hegemony. It will analyse the case for the numerous attempts made in a bid to have control over Iraqi energy resources and analyse its relationship with the US policy in the context of this war. We however observe an almost failure for the Iraq case which further resulted into the US getting weaker in terms of global domination and in terms of energy security. This study is divided into various sections. The first section of the essay provides a positive opinion about the struggle for Gulf energy resources being a major requisite of Iraq war.

The second section of the paper offers an in-depth analysis of US interest in Iraqi oil while the third section identifies the implications for US policy in achieving their main goal in Iraq war. What was the main origin in Iraq war? President Bush has been indicted by many people for concealment of his real motives for the Iraq war of 2003 (Pfiffner, 2004). To gain an in-depth understanding of the origin of the war, the essay will examine several sets of