Page 1 of 2 Is Washington out of gas?
By Michael Klare
America and Oil. It's like bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin. As the old song
lyric went, you can't have one without the other. Once upon a time, it was also
a surefire formula for national greatness and global preeminence. Now, it's a
guarantee of a trip to hell in a hand basket. The Chinese know it. Does
Washington?
America's rise to economic and military supremacy was fueled in no small
measure by its control over the world's supply of oil. Oil powered the
country's first giant corporations, ensured success in World War II, and
underlay the great economic boom of the postwar period. Even in an era of
nuclear weapons, it was the global deployment of oil-powered ships,
helicopters, planes, tanks, and missiles that sustained America's superpower
status during and after the Cold War. It should come as no surprise, then, that
the country's current economic and military decline
coincides with the relative decline of oil as a major source of energy.
If you want proof of that economic decline, just check out the way America's
share of the world's gross domestic product has been steadily dropping, while
its once-powerhouse economy now appears incapable of generating forward
momentum. In its place, robust upstarts like China and India are posting annual
growth rates of 8% to 10%. When combined with the growing technological prowess
of those countries, the present figures are surely just precursors to a
continuing erosion of America's global economic clout.
Militarily, the picture appears remarkably similar. Yes, a crack team of SEAL
commandos did kill Osama bin Laden, but that single operation - greeted in the
United States with a jubilation more appropriate to the ending of a major war -
hardly made up for the military's lackluster performance in two recent wars
against ragtag insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If anything, almost a decade after the Taliban was overthrown, it has
experienced a remarkable resurgence even facing the full might of the US ,
while the assorted insurgent forces in Iraq appear to be holding their own.
Meanwhile, Iran - that bete noire of American power in the Middle East - seem
as powerful as ever. Al Qaeda may be on the run, but as recent developments in
Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and unstable Pakistan suggest, the United States
wields far less clout and influence in the region now than it did before it
invaded Iraq in 2003.
If American power is in decline, so is the relative status of oil in the global
energy equation. In the 2000 edition of its International Energy Outlook, the
Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy
confidently foresaw ever-expanding oil production in Africa, Alaska, the
Persian Gulf area, and the Gulf of Mexico, among other areas. It predicted, in
fact, that world oil output would reach 97 million barrels per day in 2010 and
a staggering 115 million barrels in 2020. EIA number-crunchers concluded as
well that oil would long retain its position as the world's leading source of
energy. Its 38% share of the global energy supply, they said, would remain
unchanged.
What a difference a decade makes. By 2010, a new understanding about the
natural limits of oil production had sunk in at the EIA and its experts were
predicting a disappointingly modest petroleum future.
In that year, world oil output had reached just 82 million barrels per day, a
stunning 15 million less than expected. Moreover, in the 2010 edition of its
International Energy Outlook, the EIA was now projecting 2020 output at 85
million barrels per day, hardly more than the 2010 level and 30 million barrels
below its projections of just a decade earlier, which were relegated to the
dustbin of history. (Such projections, by the way, are for conventional, liquid
petroleum and exclude "tough" and "dirty" sources that imply energy desperation
- like Canadian tar sands, shale oil, and other "unconventional" fuels.)
The most recent EIA projections also show oil's share of the world total energy
supply - far from remaining constant at 38% - had already dropped to 35% in
2010 and was projected to continue declining to 32% in 2020 and 30% in 2035. In
its place, natural gas and renewable sources of energy are expected to assume
ever more prominent roles.
So here's the question all of us should consider, in part because until now no
one has: are the decline of the United States and the decline of oil connected?
Careful analysis suggests that there are good reasons to believe they are.
From standard oil to the Carter Doctrine
More than 100 years ago, America's first great economic expansion abroad was
spearheaded by its giant oil companies, notably John D Rockefeller's Standard
Oil Company - a saga told with great panache in Daniel Yergin's classic book The
Prize. These companies established powerful beachheads in Mexico and
Venezuela, and later in parts of Asia, North Africa, and of course the Middle
East. As they became ever more dependent on the extraction of oil in distant
lands, American foreign policy began to be reorganized around acquiring and
protecting US oil concessions in major producing areas.
With World War II and the Cold War, oil and US national security became
thoroughly intertwined. After all, the United States had prevailed over the
Axis powers in significant part because it possessed vast reserves of domestic
petroleum while Germany and Japan lacked them, depriving their forces of vital
fuel supplies in the final years of the war. As it happened, though, the United
States was using up its domestic reserves so rapidly that, even before World
War II was over, Washington turned its attention to finding new overseas
sources of crude that could be brought under American control. As a result,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and a host of other Middle Eastern producers would become
key US oil suppliers under American military protection.
There can be little question that, for a time, American domination of world oil
production would prove a potent source of economic and military power. After
World War II, an abundance of cheap US oil spurred the development of vast new
industries, including civilian air travel, highway construction, a flood of
suburban housing and commerce, mechanized agriculture, and plastics.
Abundant oil also underlay the global expansion of the country's military
power, as the Pentagon garrisoned the world while becoming one of the planet's
great oil guzzlers. Its global dominion came to rest on an ever-expanding array
of oil-powered ships, planes, tanks, and missiles. As long as the Middle East -
and especially Saudi Arabia - served essentially as an American gas station and
oil remained a cheap commodity, all this was relatively painless.
In addition, thanks to its control of Middle Eastern oil, Washington had its
hand on the economic jugular of Europe and Japan, both of which remain highly
dependent on imports from the region. Not surprisingly, then, one president
after another insisted Washington would not permit any rival to challenge
American control of that oil jugular - a principle enshrined in the Carter
Doctrine of January 1980, which stated that the United States would go to war
if any hostile power threatened the flow of Persian Gulf oil.
The use of military force, in accordance with that doctrine, has been a staple
of American foreign policy since 1987, when President Ronald Reagan first
applied the "principle" by authorizing US warships to escort Kuwaiti tankers
during the Iran-Iraq War. George H W Bush invoked the same principle when he
authorized American military intervention during the first Gulf War of
1990-1991, as did Bill Clinton when he ordered missile attacks on Iraq in the
late 1990s and George W Bush when he launched the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
At that moment, the United States and oil seemed at the pinnacle of their
power. As the victor in the Cold War and then the first Gulf War, the American
military was ranked supreme, with no conceivable challenger on the horizon. And
nowhere were there more fervent believers in "unilateralist" America's ability
to "shock and awe" the planet than in Washington.
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