Divergent political camps in the
United States have found common ground in support
of "energy security" and "energy independence". As
high gasoline prices and intensifying conflicts in
the Middle East focus attention on US dependence
on petroleum imports, progressives and
conservatives are organizing to reshape US policy
based on their own views about what the terms
"energy security" and "energy independence" mean.
Although it's the 21st century's high
prices at the pump and terrorism-related security
concerns that have propelled energy
security and energy
independence as policy goals, this terminology is
nothing new: the energy crisis of the late 1970s
prompted similar debate.
At the start of
his presidency, George W Bush directed an energy
task force, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, to
develop a new national energy policy. In its May
2001 report, the National Energy Policy
Development Group framed its policy
recommendations as a matter of ensuring energy
security and reducing energy dependence.
While Cheney's task force recommended
increased domestic energy production to decrease
dependence on imported oil, its main thrust was to
call for a foreign and military policy in Asia,
Africa and the Middle East that would secure
continued US access to foreign energy sources. In
his 2002 book Resource Wars, Michael Klare
reported: "One-third of the recommendations in the
report are for ways to obtain access to petroleum
sources abroad."
In marked contrast to the
Cheney report, a new flurry of initiatives by
citizen groups and politicians advocate breaking
all reliance on foreign energy sources,
particularly oil from Mideast countries. They
argue that US energy security will come not by
looking outward but by looking inward to the
United States' own potential for producing,
altering and conserving homeland energy.
Whether progressive or conservative, the
energy-reform initiatives have a populist and a
nationalist cast, lambasting giant US oil
companies and the Mideast regimes, while promoting
a new "America First" ethic of self-reliance and
energy isolationism.
On the progressive
side, the most prominent "energy independence"
initiative comes from the Apollo Alliance - a
coalition of labor unions, environmental
organizations, policy institutes and businesses -
which advocates a comprehensive economic policy
that promises to generate 3 million "good jobs"
through "clean energy" development. The alliance,
which came together in 2003 with support from a
large array of left-center foundations (and in
anticipation of a Democratic White House after the
2004 elections) calls for a US$300 billion
public-private program that will "free America
from foreign oil dependence in 10 years".
A centerpiece of energy independence for
many progressives is increased government support
for biofuels - especially for the ethanol
industry, based largely in America's agricultural
heartland. In a speech titled "Energy Security is
National Security" that he delivered to the
Governors' Ethanol Coalition this year, Democratic
Senator Barack Obama argued that achieving energy
independence should be central to the "war on
terrorism". He stressed the importance of biofuels
such as ethanol in the fight to ensure that "oil
can never be used as a weapon against us". The
Center for American Progress, a think-tank close
to the Democratic Party, also jumped on the
energy-security bandwagon this year, releasing its
"Energy Security in the 21st Century" report in
July.
Liberals and progressives have long
warned against the environmental and economic
dangers of fossil-fuel dependence. Unlike
conservatives, the left-center has also been more
apt to define national security in broad terms,
asserting that security is about more than
military policy and championing what they term
"human security", a broad-based concept that takes
into account issues of poverty and development.
What's new are recent efforts to link
environmentalism, job creation and economic policy
so closely to real or perceived national-security
threats - in this case the "war on terrorism" and
the related surge of anti-Americanism in the
Middle East.
National-security hardliners
are also trying to put their own spin on the
concepts of energy security and independence. The
neo-conservative Center for Security Policy (CSP),
headed by Frank Gaffney, working closely with the
Institute for the Analysis of Global Security
(IAGS), is cosponsoring the "Set America Free"
coalition, which brings neo-conservatives together
with liberal groups such as the Apollo Alliance
and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The
coalition's slogan: "Cut dependence on foreign
oil. Secure America."
In addition to
Gaffney, other prominent neo-conservatives and
conservatives in the Set America Free coalition
are Gary Bauer of American Values, Congressman
Eliot Engel, former national security adviser
Robert McFarlane, Clifford May of the Foundation
for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), Thomas
Neumann of the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA), Daniel Pipes of the
Middle East Forum, James Woolsey of the Committee
on the Present Danger, and Meyrav Wurmser of the
Hudson Institute. Among the advisers to IAGS are
Woolsey, McFarlane and Eliot Cohen.
In its
"open letter to the American people", the
coalition calls for breaking US dependence on
Mideast oil, asserting that "at the strategic
level it is dangerous to be buying billions [of
dollars' worth] of oil from nations that are
sponsors of or allied with radical Islamists". In
ending oil imports from the Middle East, the
United States would "deny adversaries the
wherewithal they use to harm us".
By
adapting their political agenda to include a focus
on energy security, the national-security
hardliners at CSP, IAGS and other affiliated
groups such as the fervently pro-Israel FDD and
JINSA have made common cause with
appropriate-technology groups, environmental firms
and non-governmental organizations - at the very
time when public disenchantment with US Mideast
policy is deepening. The Set America Free
coalition also includes representatives from
outfits such as the Coalition Advocating Smart
Transportation, the California Cars Initiative and
the American Council on Renewable Energy - groups
not normally associated with militarist
organizations such as CSP and JINSA.
Underlying the right's energy-security
initiatives is a strong criticism of the major oil
companies for having made common cause with
oil-rich Middle Eastern dictatorships - and by
extension with Islamic terrorists and their
supporters. The Terror-Free Energy Coalition, for
example, is dedicated to encouraging Americans to
buy gasoline that originates from countries that
do not export or finance terrorism. The group says
it educates the public "by promoting those
companies that acquire their crude-oil supply from
nations outside the Middle East and by exposing
those companies that do not".
The
organizers of the Terror-Free Energy Coalition are
mostly analysts or business executives
professionally involved in terrorism and
intelligence issues. Three of the 12 men listed as
the coalition's endorsers are principals in the
Intelligence Summit, a pro-Israel intelligence
forum, while another endorser is Joe Kauffman,
chairman of another pro-Israel group called
Americans Against Hate.
Coalition members
also include representatives from a new breed of
private intelligence firms that provide
threat-analysis information and services to the
government and corporations, including Phoenix
Global Intelligence Systems, WorldThreats.com and
WVC3 Group. Another coalition endorser is the
terrorism analyst for the Christian Broadcast
Network.
For many on the right, the energy
crisis is seen as a new opportunity to practice
politics as usual. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson,
one of the most ardent supporters of Bush and
Cheney, helped lead the congressional effort to
approve all aspects of the Cheney energy policy,
including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge.
In her "Energy Security" speech on
the Senate floor on April 9, 2002, Hutchinson
praised the administration's bill for opening up
new lands and waters to energy exploration,
reduced environmental safeguards and new support
for nuclear power plants, declaring: "We are in a
war, and when we are in a war, it means we must
make sure our underlying strength is everything we
can make it. Part of our underlying strength is a
ready supply of energy."
Climate change,
prices at the pump, blackouts and threats of oil
producers to withhold supplies are among the signs
of a brewing energy crisis. But fear and political
opportunism cannot be the engines of a sustainable
energy policy for our future.
In an
increasingly interdependent world, politicking
about energy independence and security -
especially when explicitly linked to misbegotten
foreign and military policies - may not set
America free but rather set the stage for
dangerous outbursts of nationalism and xenophobia
that further isolate the country.
One of
the proponents of the Set America Free camp is
leading congressional hawk Senator Joseph
Lieberman. "It is time to set America free," said
Lieberman. "Cutting our dependence on oil will
strengthen our security, preserve our independence
and energize our economy ... We must diversify the
fuels that power our nation, or risk ceding our
nation's power to rulers separated from us by a
world in geography and by centuries in values."
Tom Barry is policy director of
the International Relations Center. *Published with permission of the International
Relations Center.
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