Part 12 (2/2)

Signs of that future were already in evidence by the time hurricane season rolled around in 2006. In just one year, the disaster-response industry had exploded, with a slew of new corporations entering the market, promising safety and security should the next Big One hit. One of the more ambitious ventures was launched by an airline in West Palm Beach, Florida. Help Jet bills itself as ”the first hurricane escape plan that turns a hurricane evacuation into a jet-setter vacation.” When a storm is coming, the airline books holidays for its members at five-star golf resorts, spas or Disneyland. With the reservations all made, the evacuees are then whisked out of the hurricane zone on a luxury jet. ”No standing in lines, no ha.s.sle with crowds, just a first cla.s.s experience that turns a problem into a vacation. . . . Enjoy the feeling of avoiding the usual hurricane evacuation nightmare.”24 For the people left behind, there is a different kind of privatized solution. In 2006, the Red Cross signed a new disaster-response partners.h.i.+p with Wal-Mart. ”It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over,” said Billy Wagner, chief of emergency management for the Florida Keys. ”They've got the expertise. They've got the resources.” He was speaking at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Florida, a fast-growing annual trade show for the companies selling everything that might come in handy during the next disaster. ”Some folks here said, 'Man, this is huge business-this is my new business. I'm not in the landscaping business anymore; I'm going to be a hurricane debris contractor,'” said Dave Blandford, an exhibitor at the conference, showing off his ”self-heating meals.”25 Much of the parallel disaster economy has been built with taxpayers' money, thanks to the boom in privatized war-zone reconstruction. The giant contractors that have served as ”the primes” in Iraq and Afghanistan have come under frequent political fire for spending large portions of their income from government contracts on their own corporate overhead-between 20 and 55 percent, according to a 2006 audit of Iraq contractors.26 Much of those funds have, quite legally, gone into huge investments in corporate infrastructure- Bechtel's battalions of earth-moving equipment, Halliburton's planes and fleets of trucks, and the surveillance architecture built by 1^3, CACI and Booz Allen. Much of those funds have, quite legally, gone into huge investments in corporate infrastructure- Bechtel's battalions of earth-moving equipment, Halliburton's planes and fleets of trucks, and the surveillance architecture built by 1^3, CACI and Booz Allen.

Most dramatic has been Blackwater's investment in its paramilitary infrastructure. Founded in 1996, the company has used the steady stream of contracts during the Bush years to build up a private army of twenty thousand mercenary soldiers on call and a ma.s.sive military base in North Carolina worth between $40 million and $50 million. According to one account, Blackwater's capacity now includes the following: ”A burgeoning logistics operation that can deliver 100- or 200-ton self-contained humanitarian relief response packages faster than the Red Cross. A Florida aviation division with 26 different platforms, from helicopter guns.h.i.+ps to a ma.s.sive Boeing 767. The company even has a Zeppelin. The country's largest tactical driving track. ... A 20-acre man-made lake with s.h.i.+pping containers that have been mocked up with s.h.i.+p rails and portholes, floating on pontoons, used to teach how to board a hostile s.h.i.+p. A K-9 training facility that currently has 80 dog teams deployed around the world. . . . A 1,200-yard-long firing range for sniper training.”*27 A right-wing journal in the U.S. p.r.o.nounced Blackwater ”al Qaeda for the good guys.”28 It's a striking a.n.a.logy. Wherever the disaster capitalism complex has landed, it has produced a proliferation of armed groupings outside the state. That is hardly a surprise: when countries are rebuilt by people who don't believe in governments, the states they build are invariably weak, creating a market for alternative security forces, whether Hezbollah, Black-water, the Mahdi Army or the gang down the street in New Orleans. It's a striking a.n.a.logy. Wherever the disaster capitalism complex has landed, it has produced a proliferation of armed groupings outside the state. That is hardly a surprise: when countries are rebuilt by people who don't believe in governments, the states they build are invariably weak, creating a market for alternative security forces, whether Hezbollah, Black-water, the Mahdi Army or the gang down the street in New Orleans.

The emergence of this parallel privatized infrastructure reaches far beyond policing. When the contractor infrastructure built up during the Bush years is looked at as a whole, what is seen is a fully articulated state-within-a-state that is as muscular and capable as the actual state is frail and feeble. This corporate shadow state has been built almost exclusively with public resources (90 percent of Blackwater's revenues come from state contracts), including the training of its staff (overwhelmingly former civil servants, politicians and soldiers).29Yet the vast infrastructure is all privately owned and controlled. The citizens who have funded it have absolutely no claim to this parallel economy or its resources.

The actual state, meanwhile, has lost the ability to perform its core functions without the help of contractors. Its own equipment is out of date, and the best experts have fled to the private sector. When Katrina hit, FEMA had to hire a contractor to award contracts to contractors. Similarly, when it came time to update the Army Manual on the rules for dealing with contractors, the army contracted out the job to one of its major contractors, MPRI -it no longer had the know-how in-house. The CIA is losing so many staffers to the parallel privatized spy sector that it has had to bar contractors from recruiting in the agency dining room. ”One recently retired case officer said he had been approached twice while in line for coffee,” reported the Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. And when the Department of Homeland Security decided it needed to build ”virtual fences” on the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the department, told contractors, And when the Department of Homeland Security decided it needed to build ”virtual fences” on the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the department, told contractors, * One of the most worrying aspects of this industry is how unabashedly partisan it is. Blackwater, for instance, is closely aligned with the antiabortion movement and other right-wing causes. It donates almost exclusively to the Republican Party, rather than hedging its bets like most big corporations. Halliburton sends 87 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans, CH2M Hill 70 percent. Is it beyond the realm of the imagination to conceive of a day when political parties will hire these companies to spy on their rivals during an election campaign-or to engage in covert operations too shady even for the CIA?

”This is an unusual invitation. . . . We re asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business.” The department's inspector general explained that Homeland Security ”does not have the capacity needed to effectively plan, oversee and execute the [Secure Border Initiative] program.”30 Under Bush, the state still has all the trappings of a government-the impressive buildings, presidential press briefings, policy battles-but it no more does the actual work of governing than the employees at Nike's Beaverton campus st.i.tch running shoes.

The implications of the decision by the current crop of politicians to systematically outsource their elected responsibilities will reach far beyond a single administration. Once a market has been created, it needs to be protected. The companies at the heart of the disaster capitalism complex increasingly regard both the state and nonprofits as compet.i.tors-from the corporate perspective, whenever governments or charities fulfill their traditional roles, they are denying contractors work that could be performed at a profit.

”Neglected Defense: Mobilizing the Private Sector to Support Homeland Security,” a 2006 report whose advisory committee included some of the largest corporations in the sector, warned that ”the compa.s.sionate federal impulse to provide emergency a.s.sistance to the victims of disasters affects the market's approach to managing its exposure to risk.” Published by the Council on Foreign Relations, the report argued that if people know the government will come to the rescue, they have no incentive to pay for privatized protection. In a similar vein, a year after Katrina, CEOs from thirty of the largest corporations in the United States joined together under the umbrella of the Business Roundtable, which includes in its members.h.i.+p Fluor, Bech-tel and Chevron. The group, calling itself Partners.h.i.+p for Disaster Response, complained of ”mission creep” by the nonprofit sector in the aftermath of disasters. Apparently charities and NGOs were infringing on their market by donating building supplies rather than having Home Depot supply them for a fee. The mercenary firms, meanwhile, have been loudly claiming that they are better equipped to engage in peacekeeping in Darfur than the UN. Published by the Council on Foreign Relations, the report argued that if people know the government will come to the rescue, they have no incentive to pay for privatized protection. In a similar vein, a year after Katrina, CEOs from thirty of the largest corporations in the United States joined together under the umbrella of the Business Roundtable, which includes in its members.h.i.+p Fluor, Bech-tel and Chevron. The group, calling itself Partners.h.i.+p for Disaster Response, complained of ”mission creep” by the nonprofit sector in the aftermath of disasters. Apparently charities and NGOs were infringing on their market by donating building supplies rather than having Home Depot supply them for a fee. The mercenary firms, meanwhile, have been loudly claiming that they are better equipped to engage in peacekeeping in Darfur than the UN.32 Much of this new aggressiveness flows from the fact that the corporate world knows that the golden era of bottomless federal contracts cannot last much longer. The U.S. government is barreling toward an economic crisis, in no small part thanks to the deficit spending that has bankrolled the construction of the privatized disaster economy. That means that sooner rather than later, the contracts are going to dip significantly. In late 2006, defense a.n.a.lysts began predicting that the Pentagon's acquisitions budget could shrink by as much as 25 percent in the coming decade.33 When the disaster bubble bursts, firms such as Bechtel, Fluor and Black-water will lose much of their primary revenue streams. They will still have all the high-tech gear and equipment bought at taxpayer expense, but they will need to find a new business model, a new way to cover their high costs. The next phase of the disaster capitalism complex is all too clear: with emergencies on the rise, government no longer able to foot the bill, and citizens stranded by their can't-do state, the parallel corporate state will rent back its disaster infrastructure to whoever can afford it, at whatever price the market will bear. For sale will be everything from helicopter rides off rooftops to drinking water to beds in shelters.

Already wealth provides an escape hatch from most disasters -it buys early-warning systems for tsunami-p.r.o.ne regions and stockpiles of Tamiflu for the next outbreak. It buys bottled water, generators, satellite phones and rent-a-cops. During the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, the U.S. government initially tried to charge its citizens for the cost of their own evacuations, though it was eventually forced to back down.34 If we continue in this direction, the images of people stranded on New Orleans rooftops will not only be a glimpse of America's unresolved past of racial inequality but will also foreshadow a collective future of disaster apartheid in which survival is determined by who can afford to pay for escape. If we continue in this direction, the images of people stranded on New Orleans rooftops will not only be a glimpse of America's unresolved past of racial inequality but will also foreshadow a collective future of disaster apartheid in which survival is determined by who can afford to pay for escape.

Looking ahead to coming disasters, ecological and political, we often a.s.sume that we are all going to face them together, that what's needed are leaders who recognize the destructive course we are on. But I'm not so sure. Perhaps part of the reason why so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it. This may also partially explain why so many Bush supporters are Christian end-timers. It's not just that they need to believe there is an escape hatch from the world they are creating. It's that the Rapture is a parable for what they are building down here -a system that invites destruction and disaster, then swoops in with private helicopters and airlifts them and their friends to divine safety.

As contractors rush to develop alternative stable sources of revenue, one avenue is disaster-proofing other corporations. This was Paul Bremer's line of business before he went to Iraq: turning multinationals into security bubbles, able to function smoothly even if the states in which they are functioning are crumbling around them. The early results can be seen in the lobbies of many major office buildings in New York or London-airport-style check-ins complete with photo-ID requirements and X-ray machines-but the industry has far greater ambitions, including privatized global communications networks, emergency health and electricity, and the ability to locate and provide transportation for a global workforce in the midst of a major disaster. Another potential growth area identified by the disaster capitalism complex is munic.i.p.al government: the contracting-out of police and fire departments to private security companies. ”What they do for the military in downtown Falluja, they can do for the police in downtown Reno,” a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin said in November 2004.35 The industry predicts that these new markets will expand dramatically over the next decade. A frank vision of where these trends are leading is provided by John Robb, a former covert-action mission commander with Delta Force turned successful management consultant. In a widely circulated manifesto for Fast Company Fast Company magazine, he describes the ”end result” of the war on terror as ”a new, more resilient approach to national security, one built not around the state but around private citizens and companies. . . . Security will become a function of where you live and whom you work for, much as health care is allocated already.” magazine, he describes the ”end result” of the war on terror as ”a new, more resilient approach to national security, one built not around the state but around private citizens and companies. . . . Security will become a function of where you live and whom you work for, much as health care is allocated already.”36 Robb writes, ”Wealthy individuals and multinational corporations will be the first to bail out of our collective system, opting instead to hire private military companies, such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, to protect their homes and facilities and establish a protective perimeter around daily life. Parallel transportation networks-evolving out of the time-share aircraft companies such as Warren Buffett's Netjets-will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily pad to the next.” That elite world is already largely in place, but Robb predicts that the middle cla.s.s will soon follow suit, ”forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security.” These ” 'armored suburbs' will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links” and be patrolled by private militias ”that have received corporate training and boast their own state-of-the-art emergency-response systems.”

In other words, a world of suburban Green Zones. As for those outside the secured perimeter, ”they will have to make do with the remains of the national system. They will gravitate to America's cities, where they will be subject to ubiquitous surveillance and marginal or nonexistent services. For the poor, there will be no other refuge.”

The future Robb described sounds very much like the present in New Orleans, where two very different kinds of gated communities emerged from the rubble. On the one hand were the so-called FEMA-villes: desolate, out-of-the-way trailer camps for low-income evacuees, built by Bechtel or Fluor subcontractors, administered by private security companies who patrolled the gravel lots, restricted visitors, kept journalists out and treated survivors like criminals. On the other hand were the gated communities built in the wealthy areas of the city, such as Audubon and the Garden District, bubbles of functionality that seemed to have seceded from the state altogether. Within weeks of the storm, residents there had water and powerful emergency generators. Their sick were treated in private hospitals, and their children went to new charter schools. As usual, they had no need for public transit. In St. Bernard Parish, a New Orleans suburb, DynCorp had taken over much of the policing; other neighborhoods hired security companies directly. Between the two kinds of privatized sovereign states was the New Orleans version of the Red Zone, where the murder rate soared and neighborhoods like the storied Lower Ninth Ward descended into a post-apocalyptic no-man's-land. A hit song by the rapper Juvenile in the summer after Katrina summed up the atmosphere: ”We livin' like Haiti without no government”-failed state U.S.A.37 Bill Quigley, a local lawyer and activist, observed, ”What is happening in New Orleans is just a more concentrated, more graphic version of what is going on all over our country. Every city in our country has some serious similarities to New Orleans. Every city has some abandoned neighborhoods. Every city in our country has abandoned some public education, public housing, public healthcare, and criminal justice. Those who do not support public education, healthcare, and housing will continue to turn all of our country into the Lower Ninth Ward unless we stop them.”38 The process is already well under way. Another glimpse of a disaster apartheid future can be found in a wealthy Republican suburb outside Atlanta. Its residents decided that they were tired of watching their property taxes subsidize schools and police in the county's low-income African-American neighborhoods. They voted to incorporate as their own city, Sandy Springs, which could spend its taxes on services for its 100,000 citizens and not have the revenues redistributed throughout the larger Fulton County. The only difficulty was that Sandy Springs had no government structures and needed to build them from scratch -everything from tax collection, to zoning, to parks and recreation. In September 2005, the same month that New Orleans flooded, the residents of Sandy Springs were approached by the construction and consulting giant CH2M Hill with a unique pitch: let us do it for you. For the starting price of $27 million a year, the contractor pledged to build a complete city from the ground up.39 A few months later, Sandy Springs became the first ”contract city.” Only four people worked directly for the new munic.i.p.ality-everyone else was a contractor. Rick Hirsekorn, heading up the project for CH2M Hill, described Sandy Springs as ”a clean sheet of paper with no governmental processes in place.” He told another journalist that ”no one in our industry has done a complete city of this size before.”40 The Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution reported that ”when Sandy Springs hired corporate workers to run the new city, it was considered a bold experiment.” Within a year, however, contract-city mania was tearing through Atlanta's wealthy suburbs, and it had become ”standard procedure in north Fulton [County].” Neighboring communities took their cue from Sandy Springs and also voted to become stand-alone cities and contract out their government. One new city, Milton, immediately hired CH2M Hill for the job-after all, it had the experience. Soon, a campaign began for the new corporate cities to join together to form their own county, which would mean that none of their tax dollars would go to the poor neighborhoods nearby. The plan has encountered fierce opposition outside the proposed enclave, where politicians say that without those tax dollars, they will no longer be able to afford their large public hospital and public transit system; that part.i.tioning the county would create a failed state on the one hand and a hyperserviced one on the other. What they were describing sounded a lot like New Orleans and a little like Baghdad. reported that ”when Sandy Springs hired corporate workers to run the new city, it was considered a bold experiment.” Within a year, however, contract-city mania was tearing through Atlanta's wealthy suburbs, and it had become ”standard procedure in north Fulton [County].” Neighboring communities took their cue from Sandy Springs and also voted to become stand-alone cities and contract out their government. One new city, Milton, immediately hired CH2M Hill for the job-after all, it had the experience. Soon, a campaign began for the new corporate cities to join together to form their own county, which would mean that none of their tax dollars would go to the poor neighborhoods nearby. The plan has encountered fierce opposition outside the proposed enclave, where politicians say that without those tax dollars, they will no longer be able to afford their large public hospital and public transit system; that part.i.tioning the county would create a failed state on the one hand and a hyperserviced one on the other. What they were describing sounded a lot like New Orleans and a little like Baghdad.41 In these wealthy Atlanta suburbs, the three-decade corporatist crusade to strip-mine the state was complete: it wasn't just every government service that had been outsourced but also the very function of government, which is to govern. It was particularly fitting that the new ground was broken by CH2M Hill. The corporation was a multimillion-dollar contractor in Iraq, paid to perform the core government function of overseeing other contractors. In Sri Lanka after the tsunami, it had not only built ports and bridges but was ”responsible for the overall management of the infrastructure program.”42 In post-Katrina New Orleans, it was awarded $500 million to build FEMA-villes and put on standby to be ready to do the same for the next disaster. A master of privatizing the state during extraordinary circ.u.mstances, it was now doing the same under ordinary ones. If Iraq was a laboratory of extreme privatization, the testing phase was clearly over. In post-Katrina New Orleans, it was awarded $500 million to build FEMA-villes and put on standby to be ready to do the same for the next disaster. A master of privatizing the state during extraordinary circ.u.mstances, it was now doing the same under ordinary ones. If Iraq was a laboratory of extreme privatization, the testing phase was clearly over.

CHAPTER 21.

LOSING THE PEACE INCENTIVE.

ISRAEL AS WARNING.

Big border fences belong not to the world of the gulag but to the world of noise barriers along highways, luxury boxes in sports stadiums, no-smoking areas, security zones in airports and ”gated communities.” ... They make explicit the privileges of the haves and the envy of the have-nots in a way that is embarra.s.sing for both. That is not the same as saying they do not work. -Christopher Caldwell, senior editor, -Christopher Caldwell, senior editor, The Weekly Standard, The Weekly Standard, November 2006 November 20061 For decades, the conventional wisdom was that generalized mayhem was a drain on the global economy. Individual shocks and crises could be harnessed as leverage to force open new markets, of course, but after the initial shock had done its work, relative peace and stability were required for sustained economic growth. That was the accepted explanation for why the nineties had been such prosperous years: with the Cold War over, economies were liberated to concentrate on trade and investment, and as countries became more enmeshed and interdependent, they were far less likely to bomb each other.

At the 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, however, political and corporate leaders were scratching their heads over a state of affairs that seemed to flout this conventional wisdom. It was being called the ”Davos Dilemma,” which the Financial Times Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf described as ”the contrast between the world's favourable economics and troublesome politics.” As he put it, the economy had faced ”a series of shocks: the stock market crash after 2000; the terrorist outrages of September 11, 2001; wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; friction over US policies; a jump in real oil prices to levels not seen since the 1970s; the cessation of negotiations in the Doha round [of WTO . talks]; and the confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions”-and yet it found itself in ”a golden period of broadly shared growth.” Put bluntly, the world was going to h.e.l.l, there was no stability in sight and the global economy was roaring its approval. Soon after, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers described the ”near complete disconnect” between politics and markets as ”something out of d.i.c.kens, you talk to international relations experts and it's the worst of all times. Then you talk to potential investors and it's one of the best of all times.” columnist Martin Wolf described as ”the contrast between the world's favourable economics and troublesome politics.” As he put it, the economy had faced ”a series of shocks: the stock market crash after 2000; the terrorist outrages of September 11, 2001; wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; friction over US policies; a jump in real oil prices to levels not seen since the 1970s; the cessation of negotiations in the Doha round [of WTO . talks]; and the confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions”-and yet it found itself in ”a golden period of broadly shared growth.” Put bluntly, the world was going to h.e.l.l, there was no stability in sight and the global economy was roaring its approval. Soon after, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers described the ”near complete disconnect” between politics and markets as ”something out of d.i.c.kens, you talk to international relations experts and it's the worst of all times. Then you talk to potential investors and it's one of the best of all times.”2 This puzzling trend has also been observed through an economic indicator called ”the guns-to-caviar index.” The index tracks the sales of fighter jets (guns) and executive jets (caviar). For seventeen years, it consistently found that when fighter jets were selling briskly, sales of luxury executive jets went down and vice versa: when executive jet sales were on the rise, fighter jet sales dipped. Of course, a handful of war profiteers always managed to get rich from selling guns, but they were economically insignificant. It was a truism of the contemporary market that you couldn't have booming economic growth in the midst of violence and instability.

But that truism is no longer true. Since 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, the index found that spending has been going up on both fighter jets and executive jets rapidly and simultaneously, which means that the world is becoming less peaceful while acc.u.mulating significantly more profit.3 The galloping economic growth in China and India played a part in the increased demand for luxury items, but so did the expansion of the narrow military-industrial complex into the sprawling disaster capitalism complex. Today, global instability does not just benefit a small group of arms dealers; it generates huge profits for the high-tech security sector, for heavy construction, for private health care companies treating wounded soldiers, for the oil and gas sectors-and of course for defense contractors. The galloping economic growth in China and India played a part in the increased demand for luxury items, but so did the expansion of the narrow military-industrial complex into the sprawling disaster capitalism complex. Today, global instability does not just benefit a small group of arms dealers; it generates huge profits for the high-tech security sector, for heavy construction, for private health care companies treating wounded soldiers, for the oil and gas sectors-and of course for defense contractors.

The scale of the revenues at stake is certainly enough to fuel an economic boom. Lockheed Martin, whose former vice president chaired the committee loudly agitating for war in Iraq, received $25 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars in 2005 alone. The Democratic congressman Henry Waxman noted that the sum ”exceeded the gross domestic product of 103 countries, including Iceland, Jordan, and Costa Rica . . . [and] was also larger than the combined budgets of the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, the Small Business Administration, and the entire legislative branch of government.” Lockheed itself was an ”emerging market.” Companies like Lockheed (whose stock price tripled between 2000 and 2005) are a large part of the reason why the U.S. stock markets were saved from a prolonged crash following September 11. While conventional stock prices have under-performed, the Spade Defense Index, ”a benchmark for defense, homeland security and aeros.p.a.ce stocks,” went up every year from 2001 to 2006 by an average of 15 percent-seven and a half times the Standard Poor's 500 average increase in that same period.4 The Davos Dilemma is being further fueled by the intensely profitable model of privatized reconstruction that was forged in Iraq. Heavy-construction stocks, which include the big engineering firms that land juicy no-bid contracts after wars and natural disasters, went up 250 percent between 2001 and April 2007. Reconstruction is now such big business that every new destruction is greeted with the excitement of hot initial public stock offerings: $30 billion for Iraq reconstruction, $13 billion for tsunami reconstruction, $100 billion for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, $7.6 billion for Lebanon.5 Terrorist attacks, which used to send the stock market spiraling downward, now receive a similarly upbeat market reception. After September 11, 2001, the Dow Jones plummeted 685 points as soon as markets reopened. In sharp contrast, on July 7, 2005, the day four bombs ripped through London's public transport system, killing dozens and injuring hundreds, the U.S. stock market closed higher than it did the day before, with the Nasdaq up 7 points. The following August, on the day British law enforcement agencies arrested twenty-four suspects allegedly planning to blow up jetliners headed to the U.S., the Nasdaq closed 11.4 points higher, largely thanks to soaring homeland security stocks.

Then there are the outrageous fortunes of the oil sector-a $40 billion profit in 2006 for ExxonMobil alone, the largest profit ever recorded, and its colleagues at rival companies like Chevron were not far behind.6 Like those corporations linked to defense, heavy construction and homeland security, the oil sector's fortunes improve with every war, terrorist attack and Category 5 hurricane. In addition to reaping the short-term benefits of high prices linked to uncertainty in key oil-producing regions, the oil industry has consistently managed to turn disasters to its long-term advantage, whether by ensuring that a large portion of the reconstruction funds in Afghanistan went into the expensive road infrastructure for a new pipeline (while most other major reconstruction projects stalled), by pus.h.i.+ng through Iraq's oil law while the country burned, or by piggybacking on Hurricane Katrina to plan the first new refineries in the United States since the seventies. The oil and gas industry is so intimately entwined with the economy of disaster-both as root cause behind many disasters and as a beneficiary from them-that it deserves to be treated as an honorary adjunct of the disaster capitalism complex. Like those corporations linked to defense, heavy construction and homeland security, the oil sector's fortunes improve with every war, terrorist attack and Category 5 hurricane. In addition to reaping the short-term benefits of high prices linked to uncertainty in key oil-producing regions, the oil industry has consistently managed to turn disasters to its long-term advantage, whether by ensuring that a large portion of the reconstruction funds in Afghanistan went into the expensive road infrastructure for a new pipeline (while most other major reconstruction projects stalled), by pus.h.i.+ng through Iraq's oil law while the country burned, or by piggybacking on Hurricane Katrina to plan the first new refineries in the United States since the seventies. The oil and gas industry is so intimately entwined with the economy of disaster-both as root cause behind many disasters and as a beneficiary from them-that it deserves to be treated as an honorary adjunct of the disaster capitalism complex.

No Conspiracies Required

The recent spate of disasters has translated into such spectacular profits that many people around the world have come to the same conclusion: the rich and powerful must be deliberately causing the catastrophes so that they can exploit them. In July 2006, a national poll of U.S. residents found that more than a third of respondents believed that the government had a hand in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop them ”because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.” Similar suspicions dog most of the catastrophes of recent years. In Louisiana in the aftermath of Katrina, the shelters were alive with rumors that the levees hadn't broken but had been covertly blown up in order ”to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry,” as the Nation of Islam's leader, Louis Farrakhan, suggested.7 In Sri Lanka I often heard that the tsunami had been caused by underwater explosions detonated by the United States so that it could send troops into Southeast Asia and take full control over the region's economies. In Sri Lanka I often heard that the tsunami had been caused by underwater explosions detonated by the United States so that it could send troops into Southeast Asia and take full control over the region's economies.

The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous. An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial. The appet.i.te for easy, short-term profits offered by purely speculative investment has turned the stock, currency and real estate markets into crisis-creation machines, as the Asian financial crisis, the Mexican peso crisis and the dot-com collapse all demonstrate. Our common addiction to dirty, nonrenewable energy sources keeps other kinds of emergencies coming: natural disasters (up 430 percent since 1975) and wars waged for control over scarce resources (not just Iraq and Afghanistan but lower-intensity conflicts such as those that rage in Nigeria, Colombia and Sudan), which in turn create terrorist blowback (a 2007 study calculated that the number of terrorist attacks since the start of the Iraq war had increased sevenfold).8 Given the boiling temperatures, both climatic and political, future disasters need not be cooked up in dark conspiracies. All indications are that simply by staying the current course, they will keep coming with ever more ferocious intensity. Disaster generation can therefore be left to the market's invisible hand. This is one area in which it actually delivers.

While the disaster capitalism complex does not deliberately scheme to create the c

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