I am deeply suspicious of economically determinist or conspiratorial explanations for political and historical events. The world is just too complicated, and chance and history play too large a role in the choices we face and the decisions we make. The mantra on the left that President George W. Bush’s rush to war with Iraq is about oil, oil, oil, sounds simplistic to me. Still, I must also confess that the case Bush and his advisers have made for war is so convoluted and contradictory that I have been made equally suspicious about their real motives and goals. In the absence of any convincing evidence that Iraq poses an immediate and grave danger to the United States, why has Saddam Hussein become the prime target of the "war on terrorism"? I want to put forth one theory—and it is only a theory—in the hope that it may help illuminate at least a part of this mystery.

The only chronology that I am aware of which reconstructs the Bush administration’s adoption of a policy of "regime change" in Iraq appeared in a June 14, 2002 Wall Street Journal article by Carla Anne Robbins and Jeanne Cummings. According to Robbins and Cummings, the focus on Iraq "was far from preordained." Indeed, before September 11, 2001, "an interagency review on the country was languishing." Even after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they write, "Iraq didn’t figure prominently in Bush’s thinking, particularly after Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet reported there was ’no evidence’ Iraq was involved." In the president’s speech to Congress on September 20, 2001, he made no mention of Iraq. Yet about a month later, the focus of the U.S. policy began to turn toward Baghdad.

Not all segments of the Bush administration were unconcerned with Iraq before last fall. Vice President Richard Cheney in particular wanted to move against Iraq from the beginning of the new administration. Robbins and Cummings report that "at a celebration dinner after the 2000 presidential campaign, he privately told a group of friends that the new White House team may have a rare historical opportunity to right a wrong committed during a previous term—the mistake of leaving Saddam Hussein in place atop the Iraqi government."

Robbins and Cummings refer to four different reports considered by the administration, all of which it is now clear were either flatly incorrect or grossly exaggerated, but which resulted in "the environment...becoming more welcoming for key officials at the Pentagon, as well as members of Vice President Cheney’s staff who already were eager to target Iraq." The first was a report that four Pakistani scientists had coached the Qaeda organization concerning nuclear weapons. Second, late in October intelligence services intercepted conversations that seemed to predict an imminent follow-up attack, one that might be even more damaging to the United States than those of September 11. The third was information suggesting that Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, had met an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001. This report seemed to provide evidence that tied Iraq "to a terrorist who had just targeted the U.S. mainland." Finally, Iraqi opposition groups began to press the administration. The head of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, brought defectors to Washington "with reports of new Iraqi weapons programs and terrorist training camps."

It was in this context of mounting concern that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hosted a meeting of his Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel that includes Richard Perle, Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich, Tom Foley, and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey. Robbins and Cummings write: "For two days the group debated an attack against Iraq," at the end of which "several members ...were convinced an attack was warranted." By the end of December and in preparation for the State of the Union Address, Iraq had been included with Iran and North Korea as a country that belonged to an "axis of evil."

It turned out, however, that none of the reports was accurate. No second attack occurred. Robbins and Cummings write that, "looking back U.S. officials now say they may well have overestimated Al Qaeda’s access to weapons of mass destruction and the extent of the help provided by the Pakistani scientists." In addition, the intelligence services now concede that they have no hard evidence of Atta’s meeting with Iraqi representatives in Prague. Finally, officials who listened to the Iraqi National Congress gathering "found the defectors’ presentations so well-rehearsed that they suspected that they may have been embroidering the facts."

Though these reports all turned out to lack credibility, Iraq nevertheless remained an object of official loathing. Why? There are two possible, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations. One is that those members of the government who were already actively hostile to Iraq had simply taken advantage of the situation to pursue their prior agenda. Concern over terrorism provided them with an environment favorable to their opposition to Saddam Hussein, an opposition that had long predated the attack on the United States. The inability to connect Iraq with the terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did not move them to rethink their position.

A second hypothesis is that there was something about September 11, over and above the four erroneous reports, that changed the stance of the president and his White House concerning Iraq. If this is so, it is likely that what caught the attention of policymakers concerned neither Iraq nor Al Qaeda, but rather Saudi Arabia. It was stunning to learn of the level of Saudi Arabian involvement in the terrorist assault. First, fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis (as of course is Osama bin Laden). Second, that country, long considered a reliable U.S. partner in the world petroleum market—one that could be trusted to act as a moderating force concerning oil prices—turned out to be the source of financing for the terrorist network. And almost as distressing, even though most of the terrorists were Saudi citizens, that kingdom refused to provide passenger lists of flights from the United States in the aftermath of September 11. Frustration with the Saudis was quickly articulated. Edward L. Morse, an assistant secretary of state for international energy policy in the Reagan administration, said in late October 2001 that "the stark truth is that we’re dependent on this country [Saudi Arabia] that directly or indirectly finances people who are a direct threat to you and me as individuals....they won’t give us information, won’t help track people down, and won’t let us use our bases that are there to protect them."

My conjecture is that awareness of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the September 11 crimes resulted in a dramatic reconsideration of that country’s role as the "swing producer" in the global petroleum market. In the aftermath of September 11, it may have occurred to U.S. officials that Iraq could replace Saudi Arabia as a benign player in the petroleum market. Iraq could do so because, in addition to its proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of oil (compared to Saudi Arabia’s 262 billion), it possesses, according to Michael T. Klare of Hampshire College, "vast areas of promising but unexplored hydrocarbon, potential fields [that] will exercise enormous influence over the global energy markets of the twenty-first century." The emergence of Iraq as the new oil ally of the United States would, of course, first necessitate the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Although no one in the Bush administration has publicly confirmed it, there is good reason to think that the U.S. government’s attitude toward Saudi Arabia has soured. A Rand Corporation analyst, Laurent Murawiece, in a report to the Defense Policy Board last summer, warned "the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." Murawiece concluded that "Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," calling it a country that is "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, and the most dangerous opponent." Subsequently, Rumsfeld insisted that the Rand report did not reflect official thinking in its recommendation that an ultimatum be presented to Saudi Arabia to curb its backing for terrorism or "face the prospect of having its financial assets and its oilfields ’targeted.’’’ Still, the Financial Times reported that Rumsfeld "appeared little moved to dispute the explosive claims" in the Rand report, and the Dow Jones International News Service commented on Rumsfeld’s "lackluster defense of the Saudis."

Admittedly, Murawiece’s statement could have been a provocation issued by one faction within the policy community, not evidence of a new anti-Saudi consensus. Conclusive evidence that there has been what amounts to a reversal of U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia is difficult to piece together. Nonetheless, Woolsey has linked Saudi Arabia with Iran and Iraq as countries "that have chosen to be at war with us," and has declared that it was "imperative that we take steps to reduce their hold over us."

Woolsey was the head of the CIA in the early years of the Clinton administration and is a continuing member of that very Defense Policy Board that met and discussed Iraq in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. His relationship to the Bush cabinet is unclear. Still, the fact that such an influential insider spoke out strongly suggests the degree of disillusionment with Saudi Arabia among knowledgeable Washington insiders. Woolsey approvingly quoted an oil industry authority saying that in its role as "swing producer" Saudi Arabia possessed "the energy equivalent of nuclear weapons." He acknowledged that the United States had a "working partnership with the Saudis for much of the cold war," but complained that the Saudi royal family has "turned over education in the kingdom to the Wahhabis and more momentously enabled their expansion into the rest of the world." The problem could not be more serious; according to Woolsey, "Wahhabi and Islamist extremism funded by the Saudis are the soil in which Al Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are flourishing."

Has the administration really decided to find an alternative to Saudi oil? The New Republic’s editor, Peter Beinart, has taken issue with the argument that the Bush administration’s plan to remove Saddam Hussein is based on its concerns about petroleum rather than terrorism. Beinart argues that if Iraqi oil is the sought-after goal, all the Bush administration has to do is lift the sanctions put in place after the Gulf War. That, after all, was what the petroleum companies were lobbying for as late as October 2001. If the "talk about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons was merely a smoke screen, we should accommodate Saddam Hussein rather than engaging in a costly and risky war," Beinart writes. The fact that the Bush administration has decisively rejected this option is sufficient evidence to dismiss the possibility that an oil grab is behind the anti-Iraq policy.

Omitted from Beinart’s consideration, however, is the possibility that oil and terrorism may be linked. There is no reason to doubt that the Bush administration’s change in policy toward Iraq is driven by a concern for terrorism. Yet Beinart ignores the abundant evidence that the administration’s altered "view of the world" also entails a changed view of Saudi Arabia. All along, officials such as the vice president had seen a menace in Baghdad. What changed is that similar concerns now were felt with respect to Riyadh. If the world looked more menacing after September 11, that foreboding had more to do with growing doubts about the reliability of the Saudis than the possibility of any enlarged Iraqi threat. The predominant Saudi role in the September 11 attacks was a dismaying, even worldview-shattering, revelation. No comparable new information emerged concerning the danger of Saddam Hussein’s regime. In fact, while the Saudi role in the deaths of thousands of Americans is unambiguous, no firm connection has yet been established between the hijackings and the Iraqi government.

The case that a change in attitude toward Saudi Arabia lies behind Bush’s war talk gets stronger when we look at the alleged danger of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In support of Bush’s position, British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in September 2002, "In recent months I have been increasingly alarmed by the evidence from inside Iraq that...Saddam Hussein is continuing to develop WMD, and with them the ability to inflict real damage upon the region and the stability of the world."

Blair’s comments were part of the preface to the only publicly available assessment of the Iraqi capability with regard to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons—what has come to be called the British Dossier. A close reading of the document suggests, however, that the threat has been exaggerated. In part this exaggeration stems from equating chemical and biological weapons with nuclear weapons. That is a mistake. As journalist Gregg Easterbrook has argued, only atomic and nuclear devices are "utterly unmistakably 'weapons of mass destruction.'" Linking nuclear to chemical and biological weapons "lumps together a category of truly terrible weapons [atomic bombs] with two other categories that are either less dangerous than conventional weapons [chemical arms] or largely an unknown quantity [biological agents]."

If attention were directed exclusively to Iraq’s nuclear capability, that country would appear much less menacing. For while the British Joint Intelligence Committee believes "Iraq has the means to deliver chemical and biological weapons," its assessment of Iraq’s nuclear capacity is much more subdued. In fact, the Dossier makes clear that Iraq possesses no immediate nuclear capability nor is it likely to develop one in the near future. The Dossier specifically reports that UN sanctions "were hindering the import of crucial goods for the production of fissile material," and that "while sanctions remain effective, Iraq would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon." Even in the absence of on-site weapons inspection, most experts agree that Iraq’s nuclear threat can be contained with a modicum of international cooperation. In short, the danger hardly justifies a preemptive attack to forestall a nuclear holocaust.

The fact that Iraq does not present a substantial military threat lends credibility to the hypothesis that the goal of "regime change" in Iraq has more to do with the market for petroleum than with a concern for security. In the aftermath of September 11, it must have appeared to the Bush administration that the reliability of the flow of petroleum imports was tenuous at best. The United States had been attacked and the attackers were connected in manifold ways to the most important player on the supply side of the oil market—Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the most promising alternative source of crude lay under the sands of our sworn enemy, Iraq. If a severing of ties or even an attack on Saudi Arabia remained unthinkable for economic and geopolitical reasons, no such obstacles stood in the way of getting at Iraqi oil. Saddam Hussein was already an enemy and an international pariah; there is little or no American investment in Iraq; and any temporary interruption in the oil supply caused by a U.S.-Iraq war would minimally affect the United States. Better still, if the "liberation of the Iraqi people" were successful, a tyrant would be overthrown and a compliant "swing producer" acquired in one blow.

The United States faces a serious energy problem. We are heavily dependent on oil-producing nations whose people and governments are increasingly hostile to us. At the same time, the risks and costs of military action to secure access to oil are incalculable. In a context in which, as Woolsey has put it, the Middle Eastern sources of oil—Iraqi Baathists, Iranian mullahs, and Saudi financiers of Al Qaeda—are already at war with us, the question that remains is whether the use of force is the only or most efficient way to respond.

Alternative energy strategies exist. Woolsey himself is on record in favor of a turn toward greater energy diversity and efficiency. In articles that have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Commentary, he has called for policies to diminish the power Saudi Arabia holds over us. His four-part proposal includes a substantial increase in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, assistance to countries such as Russia to increase alternative production capacity, substantial improvements in the energy efficiency of our vehicles, and research and development in waste-fuel technologies, fuels which, if developed, would "require no new oil production."

Proposals like Woolsey’s have fallen on deaf ears in this administration. Bush’s "National Energy Policy," issued in May 2001, gave specific emphasis to exploration and development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), an approach that draws Woolsey’s scorn since, as he points out, the opening of ANWR would increase the U.S. share of world reserves insignificantly, from 3 percent to 3.3 percent. It is no secret that former excutives of the energy industry are disproportionately represented in the Bush administration. Both George W. Bush and the vice president have business backgrounds in energy and petroleum. According to the Center for Public Integrity, "the top 100 Bush appointees collectively had most of their holdings in the energy sector." That represents 221 separate investments with a market value of more than $140 million. Energy companies were significant contributors to Bush’s campaign coffers. Consequently, a program like Woolsey’s—no matter how well conceived—has little chance of getting a hearing. The Bush officials and appointees are simply too tightly bound to the oil and petroleum status quo.

In the end, then, a war in Iraq may be a response to a crisis, but not the crisis the president has identified. The real crisis is our dependence on petroleum producers, something that has been bitterly revealed in Saudi Arabia’s involvement with terrorism and terrorists. Despite the now manifest dangers of such dependency, we still have not declared it our national policy to reduce petroleum imports. Instead, we are gearing up for war.

War may succeed. Iraq may, ultimately, become a new, more friendly, swing producer. Saudi Arabia’s power in the petroleum market may be eclipsed. Certainly the costs in money and lives will be high. If we do go to war, many will ask why an energy policy that could reduce the leverage our adversaries have over us was not tried. The answer, unfortunately, will be found in the close ties that bind the Bush administration to oil.