2008 Woodie Awards
Foreign oil & homeland security
Nikhil Sekaran
Issue date: 9/11/07 Section: News/Features
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Oil is viewed as an indispensable natural resource that protects our country's economic supremacy, fueling the nation's incessant desire to surpass geopolitical competitors in technological innovation and monetary wealth. Our nation has been consumed with the ideal that it is prudent, albeit necessary, to be the world's unquestionable hegemonic power. However, it is precisely this deluded vision that has exposed a major strategic vulnerability. Our dependence on foreign oil and our use of hydrocarbons pose a serious threat to America's security and economy, the health of our planet. It is not too late to take smart steps toward pursuing cleaner energy alternatives; nor is it unrealistic to believe we can. What we need most urgently is renewed leadership.
Progress-oriented American leadership must first realize that the world has begun to play by a different set of rules concerning the energy industry. Petropolitics have always been a common theme in international relations, but the past decade has witnessed its critical alignment as a deciding factor in maintaining or upsetting worldwide peace. It is now readily accepted amongst many security strategists that the structural rise in global crude oil prices has contributed to a great deal of the political instability in our world today. In fact, the minimal political and social freedoms afforded to Iranians, Russians, Venezuelans and Nigerians (among others) by their own government are directly associated with the high oil prices that flush the state apparatus with money. Nations that are able to sell crude oil at large markups are much more likely to erode the fundamental rights of what constitute liberal democracies. These negative trends are reinforced by the fact that the higher the price goes, the less sensitivity petrolist leaders have to how the world perceives them. The same direct correlation holds for a decrease in prices and a move toward civil freedoms: the lower the price of oil, the more incentive these leaders have to move toward transparent government.
Progress-oriented American leadership must first realize that the world has begun to play by a different set of rules concerning the energy industry. Petropolitics have always been a common theme in international relations, but the past decade has witnessed its critical alignment as a deciding factor in maintaining or upsetting worldwide peace. It is now readily accepted amongst many security strategists that the structural rise in global crude oil prices has contributed to a great deal of the political instability in our world today. In fact, the minimal political and social freedoms afforded to Iranians, Russians, Venezuelans and Nigerians (among others) by their own government are directly associated with the high oil prices that flush the state apparatus with money. Nations that are able to sell crude oil at large markups are much more likely to erode the fundamental rights of what constitute liberal democracies. These negative trends are reinforced by the fact that the higher the price goes, the less sensitivity petrolist leaders have to how the world perceives them. The same direct correlation holds for a decrease in prices and a move toward civil freedoms: the lower the price of oil, the more incentive these leaders have to move toward transparent government.
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