http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch27.html
The Irrepressible Rothbard
Essays of Murray N. Rothbard
Edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Why the War? The Kuwait Connection
Why, exactly, did we go to war in the Gulf? The answer remains
murky, but perhaps we can find one explanation by examining the strong
and ominous Kuwait Connection in our government. (I am indebted to an
excellent article in an obscure New York tabloid, Downtown, by Bob
Feldman, "The Kissinger Affair," March 27.) The Sabahklatura
that runs the Kuwait government is immensely wealthy, to the tune of
hundreds of billions of dollars, derived from tax/"royalty" loot
extracted from oil producers simply because the Sabah tribe claims
"sovereignty" over that valuable chunk of desert real estate. The
Sabah tribe has no legitimate claim to the oil revenue; it did nothing
to homestead or mix its labor or any other resource with the crude
oil.
It is reasonable to assume that the Sabah family stands ready to
use a modest portion of that ill-gotten wealth to purchase defenders
and advocates in the powerful United States. We now focus our
attention on the sinister but almost universally Beloved figure of Dr.
Henry Kissinger, a lifelong spokesman, counselor, and servitor of the
Rockefeller World Empire. Kissinger is so Beloved, in fact, that
whenever he appears on Nightline or Crossfire he appears
alone, since it seems to be lese-majeste (or even blasphemy)
for anyone to contradict the Great One's banal and ponderous Teutonic
pronouncements. Only a handful of grumblers and malcontents on the
extreme right and extreme left disturb this cozy consensus.
In 1954, the 31-year-old Kissinger, a Harvard political scientist
and admirer of Metternich, was plucked out of his academic obscurity
to become lifelong foreign policy advisor to New York Governor Nelson
Aldrich Rockefeller. Doctor K continued in that august role until he
assumed the mastery of foreign policy throughout the Nixon and Ford
administrations. In that role, Kissinger played a major part in
prolonging and extending the Vietnam War, and in the mass murder of
civilians entailed by the terror bombings of Vietnam, the secret
bombing of Cambodia, and the invasion of Laos.
Since leaving office in 1977, Dr. Kissinger has continued to play a
highly influential role in U.S. politics, in the U.S. media, and in
the Rockefeller world empire. It was Kissinger, along with David
Rockefeller, who was decisive in the disastrous decision of President
Carter to admit the recently toppled Shah of Iran, old friend and ally
of the Rockefellers into the United States, a decision that led
directly to the Iranian hostage crisis and to Carter's downfall.
Today, Kissinger still continues to serve as a trustee of the powerful
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, as a counselor to Rockefellers' Chase
Manhattan Bank, and as a member of Chase's International Advisory
Committee. Kissinger's media influence is evident from his having
served on the board of CBS, Inc., and having been a paid consultant to
both NBC News and ABC News. That takes care of all three networks.
But Kissinger's major, and most lucrative role, has come as head of
Kissinger Associates in New York City, founded on a loan obtained in
1982 from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus and
Company. Nominally, Kissinger Associates (KA) is an "international
consulting firm" but "consultant" covers many sins, and in KA's case,
this means international political influence-peddling for its two
dozen or so important corporate clients. In the fullest report on KA,
Leslie Gelb in the New York Times Magazine for April 20, 1986,
reveals that, in that year, 25 to 30 corporations paid KA between
$150,000 and $420,000 each per annum for political influence and
access." As Gelb blandly puts it: "The superstar international
consultants [at KA] were certainly people who would get their
telephone calls returned from high American government officials and
who would also be able to get executives in to see foreign leaders." I
dare say a lot more than mere access could be gained thereby. KA's
offices in New York and Washington are small, but they pack a powerful
punch. (Is it mere coincidence that KA's Park Avenue headquarters is
in the same building as the local office of Chase Manhattan Bank's
subsidiary, the Commercial Bank of Kuwait?)
Who were these "superstar international consultants?" One of them,
who in 1986 was the vice chairman of KA, is none other than General
Brent Scowcroft, former national security advisor under President
Ford, and, playing the exact same role under George Bush, serving as
the chief architect of the Gulf War. One of the General's top clients
was Kuwait's government-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, who paid
Scowcroft for his services at least from 1984 through 1986. In
addition, Scowcroft became a director of Santa Fe International (SFI)
in the early 1980s, not long after SFI was purchased by the Kuwait
Petroleum Corporation in 1981. Joining Scowcroft on the SFI board was
Scowcroft's old boss, Gerald Ford. One of SFI's activities is drilling
oil wells in Kuwait, an operation which, of course, had to be
suspended after the Iraq invasion.
Brent Scowcroft, it is clear, has enjoyed a long-standing and
lucrative Kuwait connection. Is it a coincidence that it was
Scowcroft's National Security Council presentation on August 3, 1990,
which according to the New York Times (February 21)
"crystallized people's thinking and galvanized support" for a "strong
response" to the Iraq invasion of Kuwait?
Scowcroft, by the way, does not exhaust the Republican
administrations' revolving door among Kissinger Associates. Another
top KA official, Lawrence Eagleburger, undersecretary of state under
Reagan, has returned to high office after a stint at KA as deputy
secretary of state under George Bush.
Also vitally important at KA are the members of its board of
directors. One director is T. Jefferson Cunningham III, who is also a
director of the Midland Bank of Britain, which has also been a KA
client. The fascinating point here is that 10.5 percent of this $4
billion bank is owned by the Kuwait government. And Kissinger, as head
of KA, is of course concerned to advance the interests of his clients
- which include the Midland Bank and therefore the government of
Kuwait. Does this connection have anything to do with Kissinger's
ultra-hawkish views on the Gulf War? In the meantime, Kissinger
continues to serve on President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board, which gives Kissinger not only a channel for giving advice but
also gives him access to national security information which could
prove useful to KA's corporate clients.
Another KA client is the Fluor Corporation, which has a special
interest in Saudi Arabia. Shortly before the August 2 invasion, Saudi
Arabia decided to launch a $30 to $40 billion project to expand oil
production, and granted two huge oil contracts to the Parson and Fluor
corporations. (New York Times, August 21)
One member of KA's board of directors is ARCO Chairman Robert O.
Anderson; ARCO, also one of KA's clients, is engaged in joint
oil-exploration and oil-drilling in offshore China with Santa Fe
International, the subsidiary of the Kuwait government.
Other KA board members are William D. Rogers, undersecretary of
state in the Eisenhower administration, and long-time leading
Dewey-Rockefeller Republican in New York; former Citibank
(Rockefeller) Chairman Edward Palmer; and Eric Lord Roll, economist
and chairman of the board of the London international banking house of
S.F. Warburg.
Perhaps the most interesting KA board member is one of the most
Beloved figures in the conservative movement, William E. Simon,
secretary of treasury in the Nixon and Ford administrations. When
Simon left office in 1977, he became a consultant to the Bechtel
Corporation, which has had the major massive construction contracts to
build oil refineries and cities in Saudi Arabia. In addition, Simon
became a consultant to Suliman Olayan, one of the wealthiest and most
powerful businessmen in Saudi Arabia. Long a close associate of the
oil-rich Saudi royal family, Olayan had served Bechtel well by getting
it the multi-billion contract to build the oil city of Jubail. In
1980, furthermore, Olayan hired William Simon to be chairman of two
investment firms owned jointly by himself and the influential Saudi
Prince Khaled al Saud.
Bechtel, the Rockefellers, and the Saudi royal family have long had
an intimate connection. After the Saudis granted the Rockefeller
dominated Aramco oil consortium the monopoly of oil in Saudi Arabia,
the Rockefellers brought their pals at Bechtel in on the construction
contracts. The Bechtel Corporation, of course, has also contributed
George Schultz and Cap Weinberger to high office in Republican
administrations. To complete the circle, KA director Simon's former
boss Suliman Olayan was, in 1988, the largest shareholder in the Chase
Manhattan Bank after David Rockefeller himself.
The pattern is clear. An old New Left slogan held that "you don't
need a weatherman to tell you how the wind is blowing." In the same
way, you don't need to be a "conspiracy theorist" to see what's going
on here. All you have to do is be willing to use your eyes.
May 1991
