In the doubtful case there is any significant production and revenue, none of it will be going to the US Treasury; it will be used to pay off whatever proxy Kurdish or jihadi fighting forces the US can keep stringing along, and whatever "contractors" and corrupt distributors they use to smuggle the oil. See the Russian Ministry of Defense report of how Syrian crude oil has been "massively smuggled outside of the country 'under the strong protection of the US,'" with "the revenue from the illegal oil trade "ultimately land[ing] in the hands of the 'American private military contractors and the US security agencies.'"
Indeed, "smuggling" it is. As McGurk acknowledges: "It's not really possible for us to exploit those oil resources unless we want to be oil smugglers." Because the other little problem for Trump's new " We're keeping the oil" mantra is that the oil he's talking about belongs to the Syrian government, and, succinctly, per law professor Laurie Blank: "International law seeks to protect against exactly this sort of exploitation."
That's not the dispensable objection Trump thinks (and his neocon advisors pretend to think) it is. As John Kiriakou and even " senior U.S. service leaders, administrators and politicians" acknowledge, Trump's plan is "pillage"-a black-letter war crime. And everybody outside of the US media bubble knows that the Russian Foreign Ministry is absolutely correct in stating that "Any actions whatsoever" that the United States undertake to keep themselves militarily present in Syria are unacceptable and illegal from our point of view and under international law."
Especially as embodied in the personality and rhetoric of Donald Trump, ignoring that truth introduces a severe weakness in the US position.
First of all, it means that Trump is not going to "make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly." Adding the legal issues deriving from such blatant imperial theft to the " the modest size of the resource [and] risk of conflict" makes it a very unattractive "deal" for any major oil compangy. As Giraldi says: "The petroleum production is not enough to pay for the occupation, even if the oil is successfully stolen and sold, by no means a certainty as the rest of the world minus Israel regards it as the property of Damascus."
Trump's flat-out declaration that the Syrian military mission is "an oil grab"what many in the Middle East have long suspected is the purpose of U.S. wars" devastates any pretense of US imperialism's ethical and legal legitimacy. Even Hillary's sidekick, Senator Tim Kaine, knows that it's "not only reckless, it's not legally authorized."
(Of course, though the Democrats will snipe at Trump in these terms, they would never actually do anything to prevent this crime or punish Trump for it, preferring instead to pass a bipartisan resolution condemning the withdrawal of US troops from an illegal presence of foreign territory. Remind me again how progressive the impeachment inquiry is.)
His crass oil-grabbing rhetoric is another example of what I've called the salutary Trump-effect we should all welcome-his inability to coat US imperialism with the patina of a "humanitarian mission," which undermines the possibility of widespread domestic or international support that was possible with a smooth-talker like Obama.
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