John Kerry beamed while accepting the Democratic party nomination for presidential candidate in Boston July 29, and for a few moments, it was easy to forget he is proposing himself as Commander-in-Chief of a powerful military currently at war. His 5,200-word speech mentioned “Iraq” just twice, fewer times than he mentioned World War II, which was finished six decades ago.

Even the nebulous and wholly conceptual “War on Terror” merited more attention on the Democratic Convention floor than the quite real war in the Persian Gulf that currently finds about 180,000 American soldiers, and up to 20,000 privateers, besieged on their far-flung bases up and down that hard desert country.

And yet the stakes in the outcome of this war are exceedingly high for the US. Success or failure by American military adventurism in Iraq imply consequences of profound depth for that country. And for Canada: an accurate assessment of the American situation is crucial to deciding the best path for Canada in these most perilous times.

The true reason for America's thirst for Middle East war lies in control of Iraq's excess oil production capacity. If Iraq could ever simultaneously be free of international trade sanctions, not at war, and independent and sovereign (a rarity in all its 84-year history), it would be in a position to influence the global daily market price of oil to the same degree the Saudi regime does.

The big difference is the Saudi regime's profound lack of popularity and legitimacy among its subjects, making the various princes who comprise it very dependent on British and American protection for their survival. The Bathhist regime of Saddam Hussein, by contrast, never needed outside protection to show itself resilient to popular overthrow, not least because modern Iraq sported a large and content middle class not terribly anxious for change. Never needing Western military support, Iraq's leadership could ignore Western economic interests.

The result is that, while Saudi oil production policies could always be dictated by American interests to a large degree, Iraqi oil production policies, whenever peace and open trade allowed, were geared wholly toward Iraqi interests, or pan-Arabian interests at their widest.

Middle Eastern oil producing nations and Western oil consuming nations have mostly coincident economic interests when it comes to production levels. The producers naturally want higher prices, but have learned that there is a limit beyond which returns decline due to economic recession in the West. Consuming nations want lower prices, but have learned that too much downward pressure leads to local rebellions or nationalizations of the oil industry. The price of oil has consequently been fixed in the range between those two limits.

However, other interests besides economic, and besides those of the West, can find expression in national oil production policies of regimes not controlled by the West. This is where America has found itself dangerously vulnerable. And this is why the cause of war in Iraq is not particularly Republican, or why its continuance will not be particularly Democratic if the Democrats win the White House in November. And it's also why Canadian leaders should take more careful notice of the road America is charging down.

There are those in the Arabic world whose reading of history tells them that malign Western machinations are to account for artificial national borders that keep Arabic nations divided and conquered. These scholars also sometimes tend to see the state of Israel as a hostile Western military and cultural outpost meant to provide surveillance and control of the Arabic world.

Correct or not, these scholars find long-standing Western policies toward Arabia to blame for their inferior economies, education, social cohesion, and national power. They see these old W estern urges toward Arabia currently embodied in present US policy. America is able to project these urges onto Arabia, they surmise, because of the immense wealth and military power of the American economy. Hence, the solution to Arabic emergence from centuries of Western bondage lies in knocking down a few notches the wealth and military power of America. This can be achieved by winning Arabic-centric control of a significant part of global excess oil production capacity—such as that which is found in the Iraqi oil industry.

It is possible to knock America back with control of significant excess oil production capacity because America is currently highly exposed to extraordinary economic risks. Currently, the annual trade deficit for American industry exceeds US$600 billion. That outflow of money must be offset with an equal inflow of foreign investment, or the American currency would have to collapse in value far enough to erase the deficiency. Foreigners invest in America so long as American industry appears to be stable and profitable. But American industry can only remain stable and profitable if the global price of oil remains stable within the established price range.

By withholding from the market excess production over a long enough period, a country such as Iraq can drive the long term price of oil up, bringing on recession for America. A structural recession of this nature would precipitate a withdrawal of investment from American industry, causing the US dollar to collapse in value, and thereby switching the American economy off overnight. Without economic growth to sustain it through each fiscal quarter, the much-vaunted American military would be, for the same reasons as the Russian, British, Ottoman, and Roman before it, corroded.

It's certainly debatable whether a much-reduced American projection of power in the Arabic world would lead to renewed pan-Arabism. It's possible a resurgent European empire could simply step back in where it left off prior to its members falling into civil war among themselves throughout the last centurty. Or a newly emergent China, perhaps in collusion with Japan in an East Asian empire, could take over the job America did, running the world's gas station. It's further possible that Russian and Caspian Sea reserves could be soon enough brought to market providing a diffusion of excess oil production capacity so that Iraq's does not provide nearly as much power as it would today.

But in each of these possible future scenarios, America is not present. The only scenario acceptable to American business interests is the one that sees American-dependent client regimes firmly in control of Persian Gulf excess oil production capacity. That means American interests are only served by American military control over Saudi and Iraqi oilfields in and around the Persian Gulf. Without that control, the precarious American economic house of cards will come tumbling down.

Prior to 2003, Iraq was independent and sovereign, was not at war, and was getting around trade sanctions sufficiently to constitute a bona fide threat to American influence on the global price of oil. Thus it is that America, and not just the Republicans or George Bush, launched pre-emptive war on Iraq.

It has been misguided American political leadership over the course of several recent administrations of both political parties that brought that nation to the point now where the fortunes of one war in one far off land have become the deciding factor in whether an entire globe-straddling American economic empire will be sustained or lost. It is also why a new Democratic administration headed up by Kerry will be in no better a position to quit that war than Bush is today. Victory in that desert is an American, and not just a Republican, imperative.

This fact is well reflected in Kerry's July speech meant to introduce him to American voters: “ I will build a stronger American military,” Kerry intoned. “We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations. We will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives—and win the battle. . . . As President, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal: our economic as well as our military might.” These are not the words of a man opposed to a misguided war; these are the words of a candidate who fully understands the uniquely vulnerable position his country is in.

They are also the words of a man who has no solution to the present problem, and it is a problem: the last year-and-a-half have shown that no degree of American military superiority, whether Bush or Kerry wields it, can win what needs to be won in Iraq if the present American project is to succeed. The American economy cannot be rescued by the deployment of its military. What is really required is, first, a re-casting of America's role in the world, and second, a bonding of that role with the interests of other nations that support it.

But Kerry is not prepared to re-cast America in the world, nor is he prepared to bond American interests with those of others: “I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President,” he said. “Let there be no mistake:  I will never hesitate to use force when it is required.  Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security.” The statement is a direct reference to the United Nations, and in particular, the vetoes enjoyed by the five permanent members of the security council.

The Europeans, no strangers to highly destructive war, are happy to find more ways to bind their interests one to another to avoid going down that road again. The Americans, by contrast, are not there yet, and tend to belittle such efforts and openly sneer at multi-lateralism.

Kerry has the same attitude that got America painted into the corner it is presently in. One might suppose that when the matter of its future got serious enough, the American public and their leaders would begin to take a serious look at alternative ways of dealing with the world. But one can hardly imagine matters being more serious than they are now, and yet both political parties have nominated candidates that not only cannot see a different way, but cannot even see that a different way is called for.

The demise of that nation, then, seems at this point to be a sealed fate, and this is the fact that ought to be of primary concern to Canadians. Canada straddles the space between America and Europe geographically, culturally, and economically. Throughout this country's history, we have swayed one way or the other depending on our own reading of where our future lay.

For several decades up till the free trade debates in the first decade of the 20 th Century, Canada looked to America for its future. After the decisive anti-Free Trade election win by Robert Borden and the Conservatives in 1911, and until the end of World War II, Canada was thoroughly European. In the period following that war and until the present, Canada has been just as thoroughly American. We are at a point now when it is time to switch again. Canada's future is in Europe, and no longer in America, for the simple reason that America itself has no future.

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