It's The Oil, Stupid

Oil is the common thread in many of the geopolitical threats we face today. Victor Davis Hanson ties the pieces together in his column today.

Islamic jihadists, fed from petrodollar wealth of the Middle East, have the cash to arm and plan operations from Baghdad and Kabul to Madrid and London. Thanks to oil, unhinged leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Chavez in Venezuela can stay in power (and demand the world's attention) despite policies that ultimately harm their people, ruin their economies and imperil their neighbors.

Russia, meanwhile, is essentially threatening Eastern Europe with energy cutbacks and reviving the old Soviet nuclear and arms industries. It's stirring up an already volatile Middle East by selling radical Islamists everything from nuclear reactors to high-tech anti-tank guns. President Bush may have seen, as he attests, something reassuring in the heart of President Putin. But Russia's new oil riches offer a fast track back to superpower status -- which we're already seeing them use to silence critics at home and abroad.

Furthermore, the global thirst for oil distorts interstate relations. Take the case of China. Its amoral foreign policy is aimed mostly at securing petroleum. Because Beijing is involved in long-term oil deals with Sudan, it's reluctant to join the West in pressuring the corrupt Sudanese government to cease the genocide in Darfur. (Of course, the West, beholden to China for economic reasons, is in turn reluctant to pressure China.) Similarly, China worries far more about getting its hands on Iran's oil than stopping its nuclear proliferation.

The U.S. is often subject to the same blackmail. Take away its need for imported oil and American officials long ago would have ceased visiting Saudi Arabia -- a monarchy based on sharia law and the cash nexus for Islamist madrassas and Wahhabi terrorism. Rather than appeasing a few hundred sheiks in the Gulf, American presidents -- both Democratic and Republican -- might have instead worried more about the poor millions slaughtered in Chad, Darfur, Ethiopia and Rwanda.

High-priced oil also warps the entire world's limited attention span. We hear daily about Israeli "occupation" in the Middle East because the oil-rich patrons of the Palestinians have sent their terrorists ample subsidies and in the past leveled oil embargoes to punish those sympathetic to Israel. Yet millions more people the world over have also lost land. We don't televise daily refugees from, say, Tibet or Cyprus, since their patrons have no ability to shut down global commerce. MORE

In the 1980s Reagan and Thatcher found a way to use this weapon in reverse to bring down the Soviet Union. By getting the Arabs to drive down the oil price, they starved the Soviet Union of hard currency and simultaneously started a massive arms race. The Soviets could not keep up and eventually collapsed.

Maybe this is what Bush should have done after 9/11. Had he launched a massive drive to free the U.S. from depending on its enemies for energy, we might be much better off today. (Yes, I know this is hindsight; I didn't think of it then either.) The strategy can be implemented in both directions: reduce the environmental restrictions that prevent the U.S. from exploiting our own oil and gas reserves (which the GOP will like) and at the same time make a massive push for alternative energy sources like solar, wind, ethanol, nuclear, etc. The Democrats will like this, except the nuclear part. Anyway it seems like a grand bargain could be struck. This makes so much sense you can be assured our Leaders will never do it.

Meanwhile another item today reveals that our so-called friends, the Saudis, have decided to use their control of oil as a weapon against the UK. It's a typically complex financial scheme but a fascinating story. MORE.