[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Pentagon as Energy Insecurity Inc

[Bill Totten]

by Michael Klare

Tom Dispatch (June 12 2008)


Preface by Tom Engelhardt

If you thought things were bad, with a barrel of crude oil at $136 and
the oil heartlands of our planet verging on chaos, don't be surprised,
but you may still have something to look forward to. Alexei Miller,
chairman of Russia's vast state-owned energy monopoly, Gazprom, just
suggested that, within eighteen months, that same barrel could be
selling for a nifty $250. Put that in your tank and ... well, don't
drive it. It will be far too valuable.

Think of Miller's sobering prediction as, at least in part, a result of
the Bush administration's attempt to "secure" the Middle East and the
oil-rich Caspian basin by force in two failing wars (and occupations).
Now, imagine for a moment, what his price scenario might be if, as
journalist Jim Lobe - never one to leap from rumors to sensational
conclusions - recently suggested, forces in the Bush administration (and
in Israel) in favor of launching an air campaign against Iran are
gaining strength. Just the suggestion last week by Shaul Mofaz, an
Israeli deputy prime minister, that an attack on Iran is "unavoidable"
if that country doesn't halt its nuclear program - "If Iran continues
with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The
sanctions are ineffective." - helped send the price of crude oil
soaring. Imagine what an actual air attack might do.

You know that old joke: military justice is to justice as military music
is to music; well, someday, not so far into the future, a similar,
though far grimmer joke, is likely to be made about Washington's
attempts to secure the US oil supply by military means. In the meantime,
Michael Klare, author most recently of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet:
The New Geopolitics of Energy (2008), considers the madness of
Washington's long-term militarization of oil delivery and the
devastating oil wars that have resulted. His previous book, Blood and
Oil (2004), by the way, has recently been turned into a documentary
film. Check it out: http://www.bloodandoilmovie.com/

_____

Garrisoning the Global Gas Station

Challenging the Militarization of US Energy Policy

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 first Bush administration fought a war against Iraq
in 1990-1991 and the second 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 our 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 way back 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 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 $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 CIA 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. And 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 (DoD) 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 only producing about 2.5 million barrels of oil per
day - about the same amount as in the worst days of Saddam Hussein back
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 9/11 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: Upon 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.

And 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 19th 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 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. So
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 last 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 (ANWR) 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 our 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
(2008).  A movie version of his book Blood and Oil is now available on
DVD. A brief video of Klare discussing key subjects in his new book can
be viewed by clicking here: http://www.bloodandoilmovie.com/

Copyright 2008 Michael T. Klare

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174943


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