[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower

[Bill Totten]

How Rising Oil Prices Are Obliterating America's Superpower Status

by Michael T Klare

Published by TomDispatch.com (May 09 2008)


Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated
the Soviet Union as the world's other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a
political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly
an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites in
Eastern Europe.

Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to
superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the
international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at
American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4.00. As was true of the USSR
following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the USA will no doubt
continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the
nation's economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil
fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as
an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

That the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the erasure of the Soviet
Union's superpower status was obvious to international observers at the
time. After all, the USSR visibly ceased to exercise dominion over an
empire (and an associated military-industrial complex) encompassing
nearly half of Europe and much of Central Asia. The relationship between
rising oil prices and the obliteration of America's superpower status
is, however, hardly as self-evident. So let's consider the connection.


Dry Hole Superpower

The fact is, America's wealth and power has long rested on the abundance
of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world's
leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a
healthy surplus for export.

Oil was the basis for the rise of the first giant multinational
corporations in the US, notably John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil
Company (now reconstituted as Exxon Mobil, the world's wealthiest
publicly-traded corporation). Abundant, exceedingly affordable petroleum
was also responsible for the emergence of the American automotive and
trucking industries, the flourishing of the domestic airline industry,
the development of the petrochemical and plastics industries, the
suburbanization of America, and the mechanization of its agriculture.
Without cheap and abundant oil, the United States would never have
experienced the historic economic expansion of the post-World War II era.

No less important was the role of abundant petroleum in fueling the
global reach of US military power. For all the talk of America's growing
reliance on computers, advanced sensors, and stealth technology to
prevail in warfare, it has been oil above all that gave the US military
its capacity to "project power" onto distant battlefields like Iraq and
Afghanistan. Every Humvee, tank, helicopter, and jet fighter requires
its daily ration of petroleum, without which America's technology-　
driven military would be forced to abandon the battlefield. No surprise,
then, that the US Department of Defense is the world's single biggest
consumer of petroleum, using more of it every day than the entire nation
of Sweden.