Whose Foreign Policy?

Yesterday as I was driving around on my appointed rounds, I listened for a while to the wonderful NPR program, Fresh Air. The show’s host, Terry Gross, interviewed Steve Coll, former managing editor the Washington Post, presently a staff writer for The New Yorker, and who has written a book on ExxonMobil:

In Private Empire, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Steve Coll investigates how ExxonMobil has used its money and power to wield significant influence in Washington, D.C., particularly during the Bush administration.

Executives at the company maintained close personal connections with members of the Bush administration — but Coll says the “cliched idea that Exxon-Mobil was just an instrument of the Bush administration’s foreign policy — a kind of extension of the American government during the Bush years — is just wrong.”

Coll has written extensively about Afghanistan and Pakistan and the uses of government power. But in Private Empire, he turns his attention to ExxonMobil, one of the largest private corporations in the United States.

Exxon, which merged with Mobil in 1999, descends from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. and has ranked as one of the country’s most profitable companies for the past 60 years. Each year ExxonMobil makes about $450 billion in revenue, exceeding the great majority of countries.

Coll says ExxonMobil executives “see themselves — ExxonMobil — as an independent sovereign with their own foreign policy,” he says. “Sometimes their interests ally with the United States government, sometimes they find themselves in opposition to the United States — and sometimes they try to stay out of the way.”

That took me aback. I don’t ever recall hearing anyone complain that “Exxon-Mobil was just an instrument of the Bush administration’s foreign policy”. I think the complaint was almost exactly the reverse: that the Bush Administration’s foreign policy was just an instrument of ExxonMobil’s foreign policy, which is quite a different thing. Am I misremembering?

I also recall wondering myself whether it was the right time to have an oil man as president, not because there’s anything inherently wrong with oil men but because he would necessarily bring prejudices along with him that might not really be in the country’s best interests. Said another way, I don’t think that ExxonMobil’s interests are necessarily those of the United States of America.

7 comments… add one
  • Drew Link

    Snark Alert

    I wonder when the “wonderful” Nitrous Oxide for the Left, er, Fresh Air will do an expose on your previous post.

    I used to listen to NPR, All Things Considered, Fresh Air etc. Then they all donned the nitrous masks, held hands, and became leftist shills. It was after the Reagan election, and they all lost their shit.

    I’ll not hold my breath, although a little nitrous might go along way to watching the left take us to financial ruin…….

  • PD Shaw Link

    I think the people who read and extrapolated from Kinzer’s book (All the Shah’s Men) have described U.S. foreign policy as inextricably intertwined with oil companies around mutual interests in rights of access. There’s always a strain of political thought that sees corporate America acting abroad as “Little Eichmanns” for the military industrial complex.

    I didn’t read Kinzer’s book, though I read his previous one based upon his experience as a correspondent in Tureky, which was pretty good. I didn’t see that he had the background on Iran. But the book, pitched as continuingly relevant to understanding the basic problems in the Middle East was quite popular.

  • Dave,

    Don’t you remember that we invaded Iraq to steal Iraq’s oil for “big oil” and to establish permanent bases for the sake of Israel?

    Drew,

    I’m still a pretty die-hard NPR listener. I’m always a member of whatever my local station is as well. I think they do have a bit of a left-bias but they are better than just about everyone else. They still actually do “news” instead of opinion and/or entertainment masquerading as news.

    Fresh Air is probably one of my least-favorite shows. It’s a mixed-bag, IMO, some shows are really great, others don’t interest me at all (mainly the TV-show related ones since I don’t watch TV), but the biggest problem I have is that Terry Gross displays a pretty steep lefty-bias in many of her interviews. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not something I particularly care to listen to most of the time.

  • Steve Coll is great, though, I still reference “Ghost Wars” frequently.

  • Don’t you remember that we invaded Iraq to steal Iraq’s oil for “big oil” and to establish permanent bases for the sake of Israel?

    Yes, exactly. That would be the U. S. furthering ExxonMobil’s interests, not the other way around (as Mr. Coll would have it).

  • steve Link

    I am with Andy on NPR. My anarcho-capitalist co-blogger is now a defender of NPR since they have changed. Along with Ghost Wars I also read Coll’s Bin Laden book. Great writer. The only place you can hear extended interviews with some real depth. I think of Fresh Air as a very inconsistent show. With non-political guests Gross is quite good.

    Steve

  • michael reynolds Link

    I don’t recall Terry Gross having a lot of political interviews. She’s a very good interviewer when she gets a good guest — unusually well-prepared. Dismissing NPR as leftist is ignorant. A bit elitist? Yeah. About 30 IQ points up-curve from Fox? Definitely.

    On the main topic, yeah, I think someone isn’t understanding the relationship between dog and tail.

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