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Why We're in the Gulf
A really good background piece on why the U.S. has long concerned itself with the Persian Gulf region, with lots of hard numbers on the production and consumption of oil by America and others. Teaser exerpts -- go read the whole thing. Hat tip Lucianne.comFew subjects matter as much as oil, the Persian Gulf and American foreign policy. But few subjects are less well understood. Even relatively sophisticated observers will attribute American interest in the Persian Gulf to Uncle Sam's insatiable thirst for crude, combined with an effort to gain lucrative contracts for American oil firms. The U.S. on this view is something like a global Count Dracula, roaming the earth in search of fresh bodies, hoping to suck them dry. I'm willing to be known as relatively sophisticated. It's a step up from naive, after all. ;-) The next bit surprised me, but then I'm not terribly knowledgeable about things financial. The U.S. today depends on the Middle East for only a small portion of its energy supplies. Still the world's third largest oil producer and holding large coal reserves, America is significantly less dependent on foreign energy sources than the other great economies. Imports account for 35% of U.S. energy consumption versus 56% for the European Union and 80% for Japan. Nearly half the oil and all the natural gas imported by the U.S. comes from the Western Hemisphere; sub-Saharan Africa supplies most of the balance. Only 17% of U.S. oil imports and less than 0.5% of our natural gas come from the Persian Gulf; 80% of Japan's imports come from the Gulf, and by 2015 70% of China's oil will come from the same source. The oil market, of course, is global, and if something were to happen to the Middle Eastern supplies, prices would rise world-wide, and the U.S. economy would be seriously disrupted. But domestic supply is not the key to American interest in the Gulf. Although I s'pose there are those who'd say that so long as our companies get to pump it out of the ground, we don't care who actually uses it... but I'm under the impression that U.S. companies aren't nearly as much of the pumping in the Gulf as they used to. For the past few centuries, a global economic and political system has been slowly taking shape under first British and then American leadership. As a vital element of that system, the leading global power -- with help from allies and other parties -- maintains the security of world trade over the seas and air while also ensuring that international economic transactions take place in an orderly way. For this system to work, the Americans must prevent any power from dominating the Persian Gulf while retaining the ability to protect the safe passage of ships through its waters. The Soviets had to be kept out during the Cold War, and the security and independence of the oil sheikdoms had to be protected from ambitious Arab leaders like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. During the Cold War Americans forged alliances with Turkey, Israel and (until 1979) Iran, three non-Arab states that had their own reasons for opposing both the Soviets and any pan-Arab state. Posted by: trailing wife 2007-12-28 |
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