KeghartBy Appo Jabarian Executive Publisher / Managing Editor USA Armenian Life Magazine, February 13, 2009
Since its first discovery about 150 years ago, oil has made both positive and negative impacts on humanity. Some would argue that had there not been oil, the nearly seven billion inhabitants of this planet could not have been fed properly, and that a sizeable segment could not have survived without oil-supported food industry.
By Appo Jabarian Executive Publisher / Managing Editor USA Armenian Life Magazine, February 13, 2009
Since its first discovery about 150 years ago, oil has made both positive and negative impacts on humanity. Some would argue that had there not been oil, the nearly seven billion inhabitants of this planet could not have been fed properly, and that a sizeable segment could not have survived without oil-supported food industry.
But oil has already "harvested" a great portion of the world’s population by way of two major world wars, and a series of genocidal campaigns starting with the Armenian Genocide, all the way to Darfur, the catastrophic war in Iraq, and the miscalculated war against South Ossetia/Russia instigated by Georgia’s oil-financed Pres. Mikheil Saakashvili.
Dependence on foreign oil has undermined the interests of the American people. According to several economists and other observers, uncontrolled importing of oil has become one of the top reasons of the weakening of the U.S. economy.
And now, the United States recognizes its need to transform its economy from war-time to peace-time. In an effort to usher in the latter, the issue of over-dependence on foreign oil has become part and parcel of a set of problems that are being addressed.
As a petroleum over-consuming nation, the U.S. is in the process of re-evaluating the pros and cons of oil as a dominant factor in its economy.
Armed with healthier ideas on alternative energy policies, a home-grown American political movement, led by Pres. Barack Obama, is actively contemplating on ending oil’s political and economic dictates.
Speaking of oil’s negative impact on U.S. foreign policy in the former Soviet block, George Gregoriou, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Critical Theory and Geopolitics at The William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J., wrote on Feb. 9 on The Greek News Online: "Bush II’s White House’s … geopolitical strategy to encircle Russia, control the paths to oil, and push the Russian borders to Russia ‘proper’ seems not only troublesome, but costly as well. This is due primarily to the United States spreading its resources and energies too thin, maintaining 769 overseas bases and thousands of facilities, and short-changing the American people of basic needs."
He added: "The country was exhausted, politically, militarily, and economically, in two wars without an end in sight, the global war on terrorism, and the requirements of maintaining spheres of influence and access to markets and trade; borrowing billions or trillions of dollars from banks and lending institutions, spending this money without any return benefits to the American people, other (than) the defense contractors connected to the White House; the national debt leapfrogging to over 10 trillion dollars, with an annual interest of $700 billion paid to banks and foreign investors; and a collapsing economy due to a frenzy of deregulation policies in the Clinton and Bush II years."
He continued: "The Wall Street financial meltdown and the collapse of capitalism, globally, have yet to hit bottom. The Bush (II) White House was really on a path to nowhere, at home and abroad, other than warmongering, and bullying Russia to submit to US power and the facts created on the ground. The Russian response to Washington was given in the Georgian military adventure. The Bush plan to install the radar system in the Czech Republic and the missile system in the Poland to protect Europe from Iranian missiles (not now, but fifteen years from now!), had credibility only inside the Bush White House and among those still fighting the Cold War."
Prof. Gregoriou asked: "If Washington were to continue this path towards Cold War II, could the US economy and the American people sustain such a confrontational policy and the sacrifices, as in the last 70 years?"
In the light of presidential promotion of the Stimulus Package to resuscitate the economy, it is refreshing to learn that Pres. Obama declared on Feb. 6 in Williamsburg: "This plan will begin to end the tyranny of oil in our time. It doubles our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and bio-fuels in three years."
Speaking of oil’s other casualties; its dictates have also inflicted so much devastation and deprivations on Armenia.
At the end of WWI in 1918, according to the Treaty of Sèvres, Armenia, as an Associated Power, had entered into agreement with the Allied Powers and then-defeated Turkey to recover the Turkish-occupied Western Armenia also known as Wilsonian Armenia. Since the borders of Armenia were drawn by President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, "Ottoman" Armenia was also referred to as "Wilsonian Armenia." But conniving U.S.-based oil interests sabotaged the implementation of the Treaty and as a result, the reunification of Wilsonian Armenia with Eastern Armenia has been delayed until now.
Post-WWI Turkey (1918-), benefiting from active support from self-serving oil interests in the U.S.; and from the general apathy actively promoted by these interests, went on to complete its genocidal campaign against the Armenians. Kemalist Turkey not only reneged on returning Western or Wilsonian Armenia, but additionally occupied Kars and Ardahan regions that belonged to Eastern Armenia (Armenia 1918-1920).
Pres. Obama’s drive to free the U.S. from the tyranny of oil will benefit the American people. And it will also pave the way for the correction of the historic wrong done to the Armenians through the long overdue reunification of their homeland.
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