18 June 2014 - Wrapping Up the Trifecta
The Strategic Picture - Part Three
The third major strategic threat to
U.S. sovereignty, after our federal debt and our failure to deal with illegal
immigration, is our dependence on unreliable sources of foreign energy.
This threatens our sovereignty because some of the very countries that sell us
oil, use their petrodollars to fund Islamic jihadist attacks on the United
States. As well, our reliance on these
foreign sources of energy puts pressure on our foreign policy process to try to
solve intractable problems in places like the Middle East and Africa. Our dependence on foreign energy overly
complicates what should be a more straightforward, effective foreign policy and
more secure sovereignty.
The solution to this energy dependence
is not complicated: we drill for oil everywhere we can in the United States and
in its sovereign waters. The increase in natural gas and petroleum
production in the U.S. during the last decade has come from entrepreneurial drilling
on private lands. Now, the President should immediately lift the
moratorium on drilling on leased federal lands, and even encourage expansion of
the program by stipulating that companies that do not start exploration and
drilling within a year will lose their federal leases. He should also allow drilling in places like
Alaska’s Coastal Plain, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
(ANWR).
The President should facilitate the building
of new oil and natural gas refineries in such ports as Houston, Long Beach, and
Seattle. He should encourage this construction by taking back the
billions of federal dole dollars now being wasted on failed alternate energy
production and give that money back to the energy industry in the form of lower
taxes.
The President should lead out in creating
a long-term accord with Canada and Mexico to coordinate their energy production
and export systems with those of the United States. This North American Petroleum
Exporting Countries (NAOPEC) pact would further cement our friendship with
Canada and promote a much firmer friendship with Mexico. This last step
obviously should include the immediate building of the Keystone pipeline from
Canada to Texas. The pipeline will
create jobs, infuse money into the economy, and reduce our reliance on foreign
oil. Such increase in exploration and
production would give the United States the independence, flexibility, and
market dominance it does not now have, and would help secure our sovereignty in
the world.
In addition to increasing prosperity, a
burgeoning energy industry would fortify U.S. sovereignty by reducing the flow
of dollars into countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. These nations use dollars to fund terrorist
activity against the United States, and they finance radical Islamic jihad
movements in their neighboring states. If we bought far less of their
oil, the terrorists and rebels—domestic and international—would have far less
money for weapons, logistics, and training.
With far less money, Middle East conflicts would continue to simmer but
would explode far less often.
The petrodollar-funded jihad of the
last several decades is just the latest campaign in the thirteen-hundred-year
war between Western civilization and the civilization of Islam. Radical
Islamists hate the U.S. – the Great Satan – with a fervor that most westerners
refuse to understand or accept. Using petrodollars,
they plot greater, bloodier wars against us. We cannot change their minds or
win their hearts; therefore, it would be prudent for us to defund their
campaign.
With fare less reliance on foreign
sources of oil, our decision matrix for U.S. involvement in Middle East and
Africa’s messy, centuries-old, intractable, hostile-to-infidel religious and
tribal conflicts would change. No matter
the crise du jour, a compelling case
for involvement would be harder for either interventionist or do-gooders to
make. We would continue to make mistakes
because that is the nature of foreign policy decision-making. But, those mistakes would not have the
effects on our sovereignty that our mistakes are having now.
Oil is our defining strategic interest
in the Middle East, and it is also the fuel for Islamic jihad. Both sides
of that petro dollar erode our sovereignty.
If the President really wants his domestic and foreign policy legacy to
endure the next generations, he must enable our energy independence, not stifle
it.
Then, in our increased safety and
prosperity, many more Americans will be playing golf as much as he does.
Comments can be sent to
mac.coleman.colonel@gmail.com
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