Page 2 of
2 The wars that oil the
Pentagon's engine By Michael T
Klare
all, to the form of energy
most in demand by the Pentagon, the petroleum
liquids used to power planes, ships, and armored
vehicles.
The Bush Doctrine faces peak
oil Peak oil is not one of the global
threats the DoD has ever had to face before. Like
other US government agencies, it tended to avoid
the issue, viewing it until recently as a
peripheral matter. As intimations of peak oil's
imminent arrival increased, however, it
has
been forced to sit up and take notice.
Spurred perhaps by rising fuel prices, or
by the growing attention being devoted to "energy
security" by academic strategists, the DoD has
suddenly taken an interest in the problem. To
guide its exploration of the issue, the Office of
Force Transformation within the Office of the
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy commissioned
LMI to conduct a study on the implications of
future energy scarcity for the Pentagon.
The study, "Transforming the Way the DoD
Looks at Energy", was a bombshell. Determining
that the Pentagon's favored strategy of global
military engagement is incompatible with a world
of declining oil output, LMI concluded that
"current planning presents a situation in which
the aggregate operational capability of the force
may be unsustainable in the long term".
LMI arrived at this conclusion from a
careful analysis of current US military doctrine.
At the heart of the national military strategy
imposed by the Bush administration - the Bush
Doctrine - are two core principles:
transformation, or the conversion of America's
stodgy, tank-heavy Cold War military apparatus
into an agile, continent-hopping high-tech,
futuristic war machine; and pre-preemption, or the
initiation of hostilities against "rogue states"
such as Iraq and Iran, suspected of pursuing
weapons of mass destruction. What both principles
entail is a substantial increase in the Pentagon's
consumption of petroleum products - either because
such plans rely, to an increased extent, on air
and sea power or because they imply an accelerated
tempo of military operations.
As
summarized by LMI, implementation of the Bush
Doctrine requires that US forces "expand
geographically and be more mobile and
expeditionary so that they can be engaged in more
theaters and prepared for expedient deployment
anywhere in the world". At the same time, they
"must transition from a reactive to a proactive
force posture to deter enemy forces from
organizing for and conducting potentially
catastrophic attacks". It follows that, "to carry
out these activities, the US military will have to
be even more energy intense ... Considering the
trend in operational fuel consumption and future
capability needs, this 'new' force employment
construct will likely demand more energy/fuel in
the deployed setting."
The resulting
increase in petroleum consumption is likely to
prove dramatic. During Operation Desert Storm in
1991, the average American soldier consumed only
15 liters of oil per day; as a result of President
George W Bush's initiatives, a US soldier in Iraq
is now using four times as much. If this rate of
increase continues unabated, the next major war
could entail an expenditure of about 240 liters
per soldier per day.
It was the
unassailable logic of this situation that led LMI
to conclude that there is a severe "operational
disconnect" between the Bush administration's
principles for future war-fighting and the global
energy situation. The administration has, the
company notes, "tethered operational capability to
high-technology solutions that require continued
growth in energy sources" - and done so at the
worst possible moment. After all, it is likely
that the global energy supply is about to begin
diminishing. Clearly, writes LMI, "it may not be
possible to execute operational concepts and
capabilities to achieve our security strategy if
the energy implications are not considered". And
when those energy implications are considered, the
strategy appears "unsustainable".
The
Pentagon as an oil-protection service How
will the military respond to this unexpected
challenge? One approach, favored by some within
the DoD, is to go "green" by emphasizing the
accelerated development and acquisition of
fuel-efficient weapons systems so that the
Pentagon can retain its commitment to the Bush
Doctrine, but consume less oil while doing so.
This approach, if feasible, would have the obvious
attraction of allowing the Pentagon to assume an
environmentally friendly facade while maintaining
and developing its existing interventionist force
structure.
But there is also a more
sinister approach that may be far more highly
favored by senior officials: to ensure for itself
a "reliable" source of oil in perpetuity, the
Pentagon will increase its efforts to maintain
control over foreign sources of supply, notably
oilfields and refineries in the Persian Gulf
region, especially in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This would
help explain the recent talk of US plans to retain
"enduring" bases in Iraq, along with its already
impressive and elaborate basing infrastructure in
the other countries.
The US military first
began procuring petroleum products from Persian
Gulf suppliers to sustain combat operations in the
Middle East and Asia during World War II and has
been doing so ever since. It was, in part, to
protect this vital source of petroleum for
military purposes that in 1945 president Franklin
Roosevelt first proposed the deployment of a US
military presence in the Persian Gulf region.
Later, the protection of Persian Gulf oil became
more important for the economic well-being of the
United States, as articulated in president Jimmy
Carter's "Carter Doctrine" speech of January 23,
1980, as well as in president George H W Bush's
August 1990 decision to stop Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait, which led to the first Gulf
War - and, many would argue, the decision of the
younger Bush to invade Iraq over a decade later.
Along the way, the US military has been
transformed into a "global oil-protection service"
for the benefit of US corporations and consumers,
fighting overseas battles and establishing its
bases to ensure that Americans get their daily
fuel fix. It would be both sad and ironic if the
US military now began fighting wars mainly so that
it could be guaranteed the fuel to run its own
planes, ships and tanks - consuming hundreds of
billions of dollars a year that could instead be
spent on the development of petroleum
alternatives.
Michael T Klare,
professor of Peace and World Security Studies at
Hampshire College, is the author of Blood and
Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's
Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Owl
Books).
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
