Published: March 21, 2008 09:29 am            

For America and Europe, a sticky oil situation

Commenting on the damage to America’s international image caused by the war in Iraq, France’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner recently told the International Herald Tribune, “It will never be as it was before.”

Kouchner went on to say that for America, “the magic is over,” meaning our country will never again be widely admired around the world.

Perhaps he is correct.

Kouchner should be worried, however, because if the magic is really over for America, France and the rest of Europe can’t be far behind.

Since the end of World War II, Europe has made a habit of letting the United States do its heavy lifting. It was U.S. generosity and leadership that, through the Marshall Plan, rebuilt war-torn Europe.

Thousands of Americans gave their lives to liberate France from Germany in World War II. Many Americans lie buried on the shores of Normandy today. To show its gratitude, France withdrew from NATO’s integrated military command structure in 1966 and gave the United States one year to remove all U.S. military forces from French soil.

While the first generation of German baby boomers protested in the streets against the presence of U.S. forces in West Germany, it was U.S. leadership and sacrifices that ultimately brought down the Berlin Wall and caused the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In early 2003, as the United States was planning for the Iraq invasion, a troika comprising France, Germany and Russia hurriedly maneuvered in the U.N. Security Council attempting to thwart the U.S. plan. Two years later, the world learned that many high-level political and civilian officials from the troika had been implicated in paying billions of dollars in kickbacks to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein through the now-infamous U.N. Oil for Food program.

China’s Chairman Mao Zedong was right when he said, “Power proceeds from the barrel of a gun.”

The world has changed a lot since Mao died in 1976. Today, power proceeds from a barrel of oil. Unfortunately, the United States and Europe alike have bet their futures on oil.

This has left both in a position where any unscrupulous oil-producing nation can employ economic blackmail to impose its will on the petroleum needy.

This is nothing new. The Soviet Union used energy as a tool for controlling its satellite nations. Most electric power generation plants were built in mother Russia and in dependable allies, such as Belarus and the Ukraine.

Major transmission networks carried electricity to less-reliable countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. If a Soviet satellite nation got out of line, the Russians could literally turn off the lights.

Since the 1991 Gulf War, the United States has maintained a large military presence in the Persian Gulf. While ostensibly about liberating Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion, the war was more about keeping Hussein from seizing Saudi Arabia’s oil fields and potentially disrupting the supply to the West.

When I served as a military planner, every order I saw for the Middle East included the requirement to “maintain an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Persian Gulf” as one of its objectives.

In the years since the Gulf War, many European countries have sought to lessen their energy dependency on the Middle East, turning instead toward Russia.

This strategy was called into question during the early days of 2006, when Russia shut off a major natural gas pipeline over a political dispute with the Ukraine. The pipeline to the Ukraine also serviced Germany and other European Union nations. In 2007, Russia temporarily cut off oil to Belarus. This again impacted many EU nations.

Today, even as German Prime Minister Angela Merkel proclaims that her country must cut its dependency on Russian oil, a natural gas pipeline is being built beneath the North Sea to carry Russian natural gas from Western Siberia to Germany. From Germany, the gas will be distributed throughout the EU.

As Europe’s oil and gas dependency on Russia grows, so will its susceptibility to Russia’s use of energy as a tool of foreign policy. The EU is therefore bound to grow more politically supportive of Russia and its surrogate Iran with respect to Russia’s foreign policy.

Today, the United States continues to maintain a large military presence in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region, ensuring an uninterrupted supply of oil for America and the EU. Most EU nations are nonpaying beneficiaries of that U.S. presence.

As an American war with Iran appears increasingly possible, Russia will continue to back Iran in order to prevent U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.

Because Russia can deny oil and gas supplies to Europe, the EU nations will come under increasing pressure to support or at least remain neutral toward Russian foreign policy in the Middle East.

While the United States remains stuck in the Middle East, the EU will be stuck paying tribute to Russia’s political will.

In many ways, the EU position is even graver than that of the United States. Europeans have known extreme pain at the gas pumps for years. Despite EU solidarity, when push comes to shove, national interests will take precedence during an energy crisis.

America has a significant Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We have at least a century’s supply of coal still in the ground.

In a national emergency, the United States could resume production from domestic oil and gas wells that today are not deemed cost-effective to operate.

America has more energy options than Europe. So I ask you, Monsieur Kouchner, who is the magic really over for if not the EU?



Zachary Hubbard is a retired Army officer and freelance writer who lives in Upper Yoder Township. He is a member of The Tribune-Democrat Readership Advisory Committee.

        

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