Globalisation and war are two sides of the same coin. So, too, are oil and imperialism. Former Shell scientist Claude Ake, commenting on Shell's activities in Nigeria, spoke of a process of the `militarisation of commerce and the privatisation of the state'. Surely, we can see those processes sweeping across the world, including Iraq.

In 1999, neoconservative journalist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times:

"The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States' Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

Among today's transnational corporations (TNCs), the modern-day heirs of the colonial chartered corporations, the world's oil and gas giants are some of the most politically and economically powerful players in the world. The ancestor of the Royal Dutch Shell group was `Royal Dutch Company for the Exploitation of Petroleum Wells in the Netherlands East Indies'. With so much of the world's economy dependent on oil, the colonial exploitation and genocide continues on an unprecedented scale. The lyrics may have changes a little, but the tune remains much the same.

The U'wa people in Colombia believe that oil maintains the balance of the world and is the blood of Mother Earth and that to take the oil is worse than killing your own mother. To the US corporate/political/military elites, oil is the lifeblood of capitalist expansion, a national security concern, and a vital resource to be controlled by US corporate interests for American economic and geopolitical dominance. Because it is central to US imperial interests, the interests of the oil and defence sectors are closely intertwined.

It has been 42 years since Dwight Eisenhower coined the phrase `military-industrial complex'. And while the US is not the only part of the world with a military-industrial complex, or indeed an `oil-military-industrial complex', because of the time I have, and the dominance of the US, I will focus most of my presentation on US corporate/political agenda.

Weapons production and the maintenance of US military and economic might across the world depends on massive consumption of oil and petroleum. In turn, massive defence and security boosts an ailing US economy and is boon to the profits of TNCs which dominate the US and global economy. We hear a lot of talk about weapons of mass destruction. But the so-called `war on terror' is a weapon of mass distraction away from i) the growing US deficit, ii) the naked corporate greed and colonial mindset that underpins the US and iii) a model of development that is as exploitative as it is unsustainable, lurching, as it does, from one crisis of capitalism to the next.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks and a few weeks before the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting in Doha, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick wrote an article in the Washington Post (September 20, 2001) entitled `Countering Terror with Trade':

"... America's might and light emanate from our political, military and economic vitality. Our counteroffensive must advance US leadership across all these fronts... Economic strength, at home and abroad, is the foundation of America's hard and soft power."

Behind the convenient cloak of `war on drugs' the US Plan Colombia has provided US$ 98 million to train and equip Colombian military to protect an Occidental Petroleum (`Oxy') pipeline. With a US presidential election looming next year, let us remember that it was the Clinton administration that quadrupled military aid for the Colombian government for the `war on drugs' between 1996 and 1999 and recalled the Gore family's deep financial ties with Oxy. With making the country `safe' for US investors and regional geopolitical goals a real priority, Oxy, and defence contractor United Technologies Corporation (UTC)whose subsidiary Sikorsky's Black Hawk helicopters are used therehave been key lobbyists for increased US `aid' to Colombia. US military hardware has been used against the U'wa Indians who opposed oil and gas exploration by Oxy and Shell on their lands, leftist guerrillas and many other communities.

The militarisation of the Selva Lacandon in Chiapas, Mexico and the harassment and planned forced removal of Zapatista and autonomous indigenous communities in the region which pose obstacles to corporate exploitation of rich oil reserves of interest to US and Mexican corporations are being, partly, justified by the Mexican government in the name of preventing deforestation despite evidence that it is not these communities who are destroying the forest.

The 1823 Monroe doctrine remains alive and well in the 21st century as the US seeks to ensure that Latin America and the Carribean are its sphere of influence by military and economic means and to place itself at an advantage over its European rivals. This month's Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Ministerial Meeting in Miami is a key part of its economic strategy to strengthen and expand US hegemony across 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere.

We can recall how Conoco's Mogadishu office became the de-facto US embassy before the Marines landed in Somalia. It was not a war on terror but supposedly, a `humanitarian mission'. But protecting oil concessions to Conoco and other corporations was a key factor behind this invasion after major oil finds in Somalia. The president of the company's subsidiary in Somalia served as the US government's volunteer `facilitator' before and during the US invasion and occupation.

In a month that marks the eight anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders who stood up against the military occupation and the ecological devastation wrought by Shell in their territory, we should remember how, in the Niger Delta, Shell and Chevron both directly supported military operations against Ogoni and Ijaw communities protesting their activities by providing helicopters and boats to armed forces. Shell admitted to have imported weapons into Nigeria to arm the police, paid field allowances to the Nigerian military and bribed witnesses to testify against Saro-Wiwa in his military trial.

Long before this latest `war on terror' the operations of oil and gas corporations have been frequently characterised by militarization, human rights abuses, economic injustice and ecological disaster and obscene profits. Sometimes this means protection for drilling operations and pipelines by local military, police or private security firms, frequently backed by military aid from the US or UK. Increasingly, it means the direct deployment of US forces, on some other pretext, just as we can see in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines and, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the North and South, oil corporations backed by state security forces confront indigenous peoples struggling for self-determination and control over their lands and resources. These battlefronts range from the unceded territory of the Lubicon Cree in Northern Alberta, Canada from which billions of dollars of oil revenues have been extracted without consent, backed by armed police, while disrupting Lubicon Cree society and poisoning the lands on which they hunt and trap, to BP's Tangguh LNG project in West Papua where a longstanding struggle for independence from Indonesia has met with massive military force and human rights abuses in the name of protecting foreign investments extracting the territory's rich resources. In Aceh, Exxon Mobil has colluded with the Indonesian military, the beneficiaries of US and British military aid, who have been conducting a brutal war of terror against the Acehnese independence movement which has been challenging the oil and gas plunder of their territory.

The Bush regime is an `oiligarchy'. George Bush is former CEO of Harken Energy. Harken has lodged a claim against Costa Rica for US$ 57 million over the cancellation of an oil exploration contract because of serious concerns about its impact in an environmentally-sensitive area. The compensation demanded by the oil company is equivalent to more than three times the Costa Rican GDP, some US$17 million a year, and 11 times larger than the annual government budget.

After serving as Bush senior's Secretary of Defence, Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of oil services corporation Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Halliburton was awarded a massive contract in Iraq and is poised to control Iraqi oil production for US interests. Cheney also served on the board of defence giant TRW, while his wife Lyn sat on Lockheed Martin's board. Donald Evans, Bush's Commerce Secretary, was with Colorado Oil's Tom Brown Inc. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former board director of Chevron. She is its principal expert on Kazakhstan where Chevron has major interests and until recently, had an oil tanker named in her honour.

Oil and defence corporations donate generously to both Republican and Democratic party coffers. If the US was in the global South its governments would be slammed for corruption, crony capitalism and nepotism. Instead, we are told that it is the world's champion of freedom, integrity and democracy.

Meanwhile, TNCs shape national economies and global trade and investment rules using the World Bank, the IMF, the baby banks like the Asian Development Bank, the WTO, official development aid and other international economic agreements as weapons of mass extraction with which to pursue economic warfare.

The World Bank, other multilateral and bilateral agencies like US Agency for International Development (USAID) have encouraged the expansion of oil and gas development for export, deregulation, corporatisation, privatisation, and liberalisation. In the name of economic development and poverty reduction through oil and gas sector development and reform, the World Bank has funded a number of controversial oil and gas production and pipeline projects in areas where there are popular resistance to these activities and despite the threats posed to the environment. Meanwhile, USAID is actively involved in promoting the interests of US oil corporations, from its role in the so-called reconstruction of Iraq to its public-private alliance for enterprise development with Chevron Texaco in Angola, to its involvement in rewriting hydrocarbon laws and regulations to suit US companies in Central Asian republics.

Ironically, the World Bank highlights Bolivia's Hydrocarbon Sector Reform and Capitalization as a success story. The 1995 World Bank-imposed partial privatisation of the oil and gas industry forms part of the backdrop of last month's uprising which was largely triggered by plans of US-backed neoliberal President Gonzales Sanchez De Lozada to export gas to the US and Mexico. Many Bolivians see this as yet another unjust neoliberal policy which would deliver great benefits to the Spanish-British consortium, Pacific LNG, but none to them. Scores of people died in the military crackdown after the uprising. Sanchez De Lozada was forced to resign.

While enjoying corporate welfare through generous subsidies and other forms of government support at home, not least a revolving door into politics for many big business executives, US oil, gas and defence corporations are active lobbyists for expanded trade and investment liberalisation through the WTO and other regional and bilateral trade and investment agreements. They seek to remove governments' ability to regulate their economies. For example, US oil and gas corporations seek unrestricted access to markets in the entire range of energy services through further liberalisation of services and investment and rules on competition policy. These could severely constrain government's ability to set energy policy, to regulate oil and gas industry and control its own energy supply. Through neoliberal prescriptions or outright military occupation, or both, TNCs have been able to gain control over these resources. And while markets are prised open while social spending is slashed and an attractive investment climate created, there is no shortage of funds being turned over to the police and the military which are the muscle of neoliberal globalisation.

While oil, literally and figuratively, fuels this war, or these wars, on terror, there is much more to it than that. Surely, the US wants to control as much of the world's oil resources for its own use and for the power and leverage such dominance it affords over economic and political rivals such as China, Russia and Europe. This strategy aims to maintain, expand and defend a twenty-first-century colonial empire for the US military and economic elites. And a central feature to this agenda is about attacking countries and social movements which are standing up against US imperialism and the neoliberal agenda, wherever they may be.

As this is an NGO conference, I want to conclude with some critical remarks about the role of NGOs. In the face of rising global resistance against the operations of oil and gas corporations, war and the military-industrial complex these companies now employ public relations (PR) firms to craft illusions that they are environmentally- and socially-conscious corporate citizens. Look at the websites of the top ten defence contractors in the US and you will find heart-warming stories about how these corporate killers `help' the poor and disadvantaged, how employees take care of the environment through voluntary work, or corporate contributions to various NGOs and foundations. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon propaganda tries to sell weapons production as a contribution to peacemaking while Shell, BP, Chevron Texaco and Statoil join corporate NGOs like Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy in the Energy and Biodiversity Initiative which aims to integrate biodiversity conservation into upstream oil and gas development. Last month the Guardian reported that Exxon Mobil has been holding a series of secret meetings with selected environmental and human rights NGOs in attempt to change its negative public image. Such PR spin reinvents Shell and Exxon as champions of human rights and defenders of the environment and the world's biggest defence contractors as peace activists. NGOs which collude with such corporations should be exposed and denounced.

In our struggles to confront war and neoliberal globalisation and for social and economic and environmental justice we must be clear that neither can be humanised nor reformed. We need to vigorously oppose both the economic warfare waged by the TNCs and the Bretton Woods institutions and the militarisation of the planet and continually expose the interconnections between the hidden hand of the market and the not-so-hidden fist.

* Paper presented at the APRN 5th Annual Conference with the theme `War and Terror: People's Rights and the Militarization of Globalization' held in Beirut, Lebanon on 3-5 November 2003.

Aziz Choudry is an activist, writer and researcher with GATT Watchdog, Aotearoa/New Zealand. He is also a member of the board of convenor of the Asia-Pacific Research Network, a commentator on social, economic and environmental justice issues, NGOs and social movements for ZNet (www.zmag.org) and an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Developing Area Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Email: azizch@spl.at.

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