"At all costs these oil fields must be kept in Western hands. We need, when things go wrong, to ruthlessly intervene."

So declared Britain’s foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, about Middle East oil in the 1950s. Yet, these words apply with equal force to what is developing in the Middle East today. In the coming war on Iraq, oil will be central to the calculations of Western governments, as it has been for 80 years.

In fact, a US general admitted as much at the time of the 1991 war on Iraq. Policy makers claimed they launched the war to liberate Kuwait. However, "if Kuwait grew carrots we wouldn’t give a damn," the general stated at the time.

The suspicion that oil figures prominently in the Bush administration’s war aims has recently been confirmed by two staff writers for the Washington Post. "American and foreign oil companies," they write, "have already begun maneuvering for a stake in the country’s huge proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of crude oil, the largest in the world outside Saudi Arabia." Since the 1991 Gulf War, companies from over a dozen nations –including France, Italy, Russia and China – have reached agreements to develop Iraqi oil fields. If the US military topples Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and installs a government to its own liking, however, those agreements will become meaningless. And the field will be open to US oil behemoths. Representatives of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC) have already declared that, should they form a government, they will review all existing oil agreements. The INC leader, Ahmed Chalabi, goes even further, proclaiming his commitment to US oil giants. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," he states. Of course, control over oil is not simply about reaping huge profits. It is also about controlling a natural resource that is indispensable to modern industry and warfare. For this reason, Western governments have long defined oil as a "strategic resource" whose control cannot be allowed to slip from their hands. At the moment, the US is becoming more dependent on imported oil, andthe Middle East has the world’s largest known reserves outside the former Soviet Union. War in Afghanistan has now given US firms the dominant position in oil development in central Asia. Victory over Iraq would secure that country’s huge reserves for US corporations and the American military.

Control over oil supplies is also a hefty stick with which to keep competitors, like France and China, in their place. Defy American policy, goes the threat, and access to oil might be imperiled. So power over oil becomes enhanced world dominance.

All of this underlines the crass material interests at work in Western warfare against Iraq. The US government and its allies, including Canada, are preparing to "ruthlessly intervene" in Iraq – and take thousands of lives – to maintain control over one of the world’s strategic resources. That’s why anti-war activists are right to demand "No Blood for Oil."