[R-G] US garrisons and global gas stations

[Anthony Fenton]

Middle East
Jun 14, 2008
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF14Ak03.html	
	
Page 1 of 2
US garrisons and global gas stations
By Michael T Klare

American policymakers have long viewed the protection of overseas oil  
supplies as an essential matter of "national security", requiring the  
threat of - and sometimes the use of - military force. This is now an  
unquestioned part of American foreign policy.

On this basis, the George H W Bush administration fought a war against  
Iraq in 1990-1991 and the George W Bush administration invaded Iraq in  
2003. With global oil prices soaring and oil reserves expected to  
dwindle in the years ahead, military force is sure to be seen by  
whatever new administration enters Washington in January 2009 as the  
ultimate guarantor of the US's well-being in the oil heartlands of the  
planet.

But with the costs of militarized oil operations - in both blood and



dollars - rising precipitously, isn't it time to challenge such  
"wisdom"? Isn't it time to ask whether the US military has anything  
reasonable to do with American energy security, and whether a reliance  
on military force, when it comes to energy policy, is practical,  
affordable or justifiable?

How energy policy got militarized
The association between "energy security" (as it's now termed) and  
"national security" was established long ago. President Franklin D  
Roosevelt first forged this association in 1945, when he pledged to  
protect the Saudi Arabian royal family in return for privileged  
American access to Saudi oil.

The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when president  
Jimmy Carter told the US Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted  
flow of Persian Gulf oil was a "vital interest" of the United States,  
and attempts by hostile nations to cut that flow would be countered  
"by any means necessary, including military force".

To implement this "doctrine", Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid  
Deployment Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat  
operations in the Persian Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later  
turned that force into a full-scale regional combat organization, the  
US Central Command, or CENTCOM. Every president since Reagan has added  
to CENTCOM's responsibilities, endowing it with additional bases,  
fleets, air squadrons and other assets. As the country has, more  
recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa,  
US military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well.

As a result, the US military has come to serve as a global oil  
protection service, guarding pipelines, refineries and loading  
facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere. According to one  
estimate, provided by the conservative National Defense Council  
Foundation, the "protection" of Persian Gulf oil alone costs the US  
Treasury US$138 billion per year - up from $49 billion just before the  
invasion of Iraq.

For Democrats and Republicans alike, spending such sums to protect  
foreign oil supplies is now accepted as common wisdom, not worthy of  
serious discussion or debate. A typical example of this attitude can  
be found in an "Independent Task Force Report" on the "National  
Security Consequences of US Oil Dependency" released by the Council on  
Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2006.

Chaired by former secretary of defense James R Schlesinger and former  
Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch, the CFR report  
concluded that the US military must continue to serve as a global oil  
protection service for the foreseeable future. "At least for the next  
two decades, the Persian Gulf will be vital to US interests in  
reliable oil supplies," it noted. Accordingly, "the United States  
should expect and support a strong military posture that permits  
suitably rapid deployment to the region, if necessary." Similarly, the  
report adds, "US naval protection of the sea lanes that transport oil  
is of paramount importance."

The Pentagon as Insecurity Inc
These views, widely shared, then and now, by senior figures in both  
major parties, dominate - or, more accurately, blanket - American  
strategic thinking. Yet the actual utility of military force as a  
means for ensuring energy security has yet to be demonstrated.

Keep in mind that, despite the deployment of up to 160,000 US troops  
in Iraq and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, Iraq  
is a country in chaos and the Department of Defense has been  
notoriously unable to prevent the recurring sabotage of oil pipelines  
and refineries by various insurgent groups and militias, not to  
mention the systematic looting of government supplies by senior oil  
officials supposedly loyal to the US-backed central government and  
often guarded (at great personal risk) by American soldiers.

Five years after the US invasion, Iraq is producing only about 2.5  
million barrels of oil per day - about the same amount as in the worst  
days of Saddam Hussein in 2001. Moreover, the New York Times reports,  
"At least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq's  
largest refinery ... is [being] diverted to the black market,  
according to American military officials." Is this really conducive to  
American energy security?

The same disappointing results have been noted in other countries  
where US-backed militaries have attempted to protect vulnerable oil  
facilities. In Nigeria, for example, increased efforts by American- 
equipped government forces to crush rebels in the oil-rich Niger Delta  
region have merely inflamed the insurgency while actually lowering  
national oil output. Meanwhile, the Nigerian military, like the Iraqi  
government (and assorted militias), has been accused of pilfering  
billions of dollars' worth of crude oil and selling it on the black  
market.

In reality, the use of military force to protect foreign oil supplies  
is likely to create anything but "security". It can, in fact, trigger  
violent "blowback" against the United States. For example, the  
decision by the senior president Bush to maintain an enormous,  
permanent US military presence in Saudi Arabia following Operation  
Desert Storm in Kuwait is now widely viewed as a major source of  
virulent anti-Americanism in the kingdom and became a prime recruiting  
tool for Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to the September 11,  
2001, terror attacks.

"For over seven years," bin Laden proclaimed in 1998, "the United  
States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places,  
the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers,  
humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its  
bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight  
neighboring Muslim peoples." To repel this assault on the Muslin  
world, he thundered, it was "an individual duty for every Muslim" to  
"kill the Americans" and drive their armies "out of all the lands of  
Islam".

As if to confirm the veracity of bin Laden's analysis of US  
intentions, then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld flew to Saudi  
Arabia on April 30, 2003, to announce that the American bases there  
would no longer be needed due to the successful invasion of Iraq, then  
barely one month old. "It is now a safer region because of the change  
of regime in Iraq," Rumsfeld declared. "The aircraft and those  
involved will now be able to leave."

Even as he was speaking in Riyadh, however, a dangerous new case of  
blowback had erupted in Iraq: on their entry into Baghdad, US forces  
seized and guarded the Oil Ministry headquarters while allowing  
schools, hospitals and museums to be looted with impunity. Most Iraqis  
have since come to regard this decision, which insured that the rest  
of the city would be looted, as the ultimate expression of the Bush  
administration's main motive for invading their country.

They have viewed repeated White House claims of a commitment to human  
rights and democracy there as mere fig leaves that barely covered the  
urge to plunder Iraq's oil. Nothing American officials have done since  
has succeeded in erasing this powerful impression, which continues to  
drive calls for an American withdrawal.

These are but a few examples of the losses to American national  
security produced by a thoroughly militarized approach to energy  
security. Yet the premises of such a global policy continue to go  
unquestioned, even as American policymakers persist in relying on  
military force as their ultimate response to threats to the safe  
production and transportation of oil. In a kind of energy "Catch-22",  
the continual militarizing of energy policy only multiplies the  
threats that call such militarization into being.

If anything, this spiral of militarized insecurity is worsening. Take  
the expanded US military presence in Africa - one of the few areas in  
the world expected to experience an increase in oil output in the  
years ahead.

This year, the Pentagon will activate the US Africa Command (AFRICOM),  
its first new overseas combat command since Reagan created CENTCOM a  
quarter century ago. Although Department of Defense officials are  
loathe to publicly acknowledge any direct relationship between  
AFRICOM's formation and a growing US reliance on that continent's oil,  
they are less inhibited in private briefings.

At a February 19 meeting at the National Defense University, for  
example, AFRICOM deputy commander, Vice Admiral Robert Moeller,  
indicated that "oil disruption" in Nigeria and West Africa would  
constitute one of the primary challenges facing the new organization.

AFRICOM and similar extensions of the Carter Doctrine into new oil- 
producing regions are only likely to provoke fresh outbreaks of  
blowback, while bundling tens of billions of extra dollars every year  
into an already bloated Pentagon budget. Sooner or later, if US policy  
doesn't change, this price will be certain to include as well the loss  
of American lives, as more and more soldiers are exposed to hostile  
fire or explosives while protecting vulnerable oil installations in  
areas torn by ethnic, religious and sectarian strife.

Why pay such a price? Given the all-but-unavoidable evidence of just  
how ineffective military force has been when it comes to protecting  
oil supplies, isn't it time to rethink Washington's reigning  
assumptions regarding the relationship between energy security and  
national security? After all, other than George W Bush and Vice  
President Dick Cheney, who would claim that, more than five years  
after the invasion of Iraq, either the United States or its supply of  
oil is actually safer?

Creating real energy security
The reality of America's increasing reliance on foreign oil only  
strengthens the conviction in Washington that military force and  
energy security are inseparable twins. With nearly two-thirds of the  
country's daily oil intake imported - and that percentage still going  
up - it's hard not to notice that significant amounts of our oil now  
come from conflict-prone areas of the Middle East, Central Asia and  
Africa. As long as this is the case, US policymakers will  
instinctively look to the military to ensure the safe delivery of  
crude oil. It evidently matters little that the use of military force,  
especially in the Middle East, has surely made the energy situation  
less stable and less dependable, while fueling anti-Americanism.

This is, of course, not the definition of "energy security", but its  
opposite. A viable long-term approach to actual energy security would  
not favor one particular source of energy - in this case, oil - above  
all others, or regularly expose American soldiers to a heightened risk  
of harm and American taxpayers to a heightened risk of bankruptcy.  
Rather, an American energy policy that made sense would embrace a  
holistic approach to energy procurement, weighing the relative merits  
of all potential sources of energy.

It would naturally favor the development of domestic, renewable  
sources of energy that do not degrade the environment or imperil other  
national interests. At the same time, it would favor a thoroughgoing  
program of energy conservation of a sort notably absent these past two  
decades - one that would help cut reliance on foreign energy sources  
in the near future and slow the atmospheric buildup of climate- 
altering greenhouse gases.

Petroleum would continue to play a significant role in any such  
approach. Oil retains considerable appeal as a source of  
transportation energy (especially for aircraft) and as a feedstock for  
many chemical products. But given the right investment and research  
policies - and the will to apply something other than force to energy  
supply issues - oil's historic role as the world's paramount fuel  
could relatively quickly draw to a close.

It would be especially important that American policymakers not  
prolong this role artificially by, as has been the case for decades,  
subsidizing major US oil firms or, more recently, spending $138  
billion a year on the protection of foreign oil deliveries. These  
funds would instead be redirected to the promotion of energy  
efficiency and especially the development of domestic sources of energy.

Some policymakers who agree on the need to develop alternatives to  
imported energy insist that such an approach should begin with oil  
extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected  
wilderness areas. Even while acknowledging that such drilling would  
not substantially reduce US reliance on foreign oil, they nevertheless  
insist that it's essential to make every conceivable effort to  
substitute domestic oil supplies for imports in the nation's total  
energy supply. But this argument ignores the fact that oil's day is  
drawing to a close, and that any effort to prolong its duration only  
complicates the inevitable transition to a post-petroleum economy.

A far more fruitful approach, better designed to promote American self- 
sufficiency and technological vigor in the intensely competitive world  
of the mid-21st century, would emphasize the use of domestic ingenuity  
and entrepreneurial skills to maximize the potential of renewable  
energy sources, including solar, wind, geothermal and wave power. The  
same skills should also be applied to developing methods for producing  
ethanol from non-food plant matter ("cellulosic ethanol"), for using  
coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere (via "carbon capture  
and storage," or CCS), for miniaturizing hydrogen fuel cells, and for  
massively increasing the energy efficiency of vehicles, buildings and  
industrial processes.

All of these energy systems show great promise and so should be  
accorded the increased support and investment they will need to move  
from the marginal role they now play to a dominant role in American  
energy generation. At this point, it is not possible to determine  
precisely which of them (or which combination among them) will be best  
positioned to transition from small to large-scale commercial  
development. As a result, all of them should be initially given enough  
support to test their capacity to make this move.

In applying this general rule, however, priority clearly should be  
given to new forms of transportation fuel. It is here that oil has  
long been king, and here that oil's decline will be most harshly felt.  
It is thanks to this that calls for military intervention to secure  
additional supplies of crude are only likely to grow. So emphasis  
should be given to the rapid development of biofuels, coal-to-liquid  
fuels (with the carbon extracted via CCS), hydrogen, or battery power,  
and other innovative means of fueling vehicles. At the same time, it's  
obvious that putting some of the US's military budget into funding a  
massive increase in public transit would be the height of national  
sanity.

An approach of this sort would enhance American national security on  
multiple levels. It would increase the reliable supply of fuels,  
promote economic growth at home (rather than sending a veritable flood  
of dollars into the coffers of unreliable petro-regimes abroad), and  
diminish the risk of recurring US involvement in foreign oil wars. No  
other approach - certainly not the present traditional, unquestioned,  
unchallenged reliance on military force - can make this claim. It's  
well past time to stop garrisoning the global gas station.

Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at  
Hampshire College and the author of several books on energy politics,  
including Resource Wars (2001), Blood and Oil (2004), and, most  
recently, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of  
Energy.

(Copyright 2008 Michael T Klare.)

(Used by permission Tomdispatch)