When the Money Stops Working, the Bombs Come Back

Part 4 of 5

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For forty years, the loud weapon mostly stayed in the cupboard. The IMF, the World Bank, the ratings agencies, the sanctions — were enough to bring most countries into line. No tanks needed.

Then some leaders stopped bending. Some countries had assets the world wanted too badly. The old weapon came back out.

Iraq, 2003

The invasion was justified by weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. What followed was the opening of Iraqi oil to foreign contractors and a restructuring of the economy along the same lines the IMF used to impose through loans.

Coalition Provisional Authority Order 39, signed by the US occupation in September 2003, allowed one hundred percent foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses outside oil. The terms used to come with a loan agreement. Now they came with American soldiers.

Libya, 2011

Muammar Gaddafi — whatever else he was — had been pushing for a pan-African gold-backed currency that would have priced African oil outside the dollar system. The motive was discussed in leaked emails from inside the US State Department.

Within months, NATO bombed his country into civil war and he was killed in a ditch. The state collapsed. Migrants started drowning in the Mediterranean by the thousand. They are still drowning.

Afghanistan

Twenty years. Beyond the rhetoric about terrorism, the country sits on an estimated one trillion dollars in untapped minerals — including the rare earths that go into every fighter jet and every iPhone — and it shares a border with Iran and China.

The Pattern That Never Changes

Each story is told as separate. They are not.

The pattern is always the same. Financial pressure first. If that fails, military pressure. If both succeed, the resources flow out and the markets open up for whichever powerful country benefits most.

The justifications change. The mechanism never does.

The Intervention Ends. The Wound Does Not.

And here is what nobody tells you about these wars. They do not end when the headlines stop.

Iraq is still recovering twenty years later. Libya is still in pieces. Afghanistan is poorer now than the day America arrived. The same families are still burying people. Still rebuilding the same homes. Still missing the same generation that was killed or scattered when the cameras were on.

The intervention ends. The wound does not.

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Sources

• Coalition Provisional Authority Order 39, Iraq, 19 September 2003.
• US Senate Intelligence Committee report on prewar Iraq intelligence, July 2004.
• NATO Operation Unified Protector, Libya, March–October 2011.
• WikiLeaks US State Department cables on Libya, released 2010–2011.
• US Geological Survey and Pentagon estimates of Afghan mineral wealth, 2010.