LINKING THE BUSH ENERGY PLAN TO THE BUSH MILITARY PLAN
The implications of all of the above are unmistakable: in its pursuit of ever-growing supplies of imported petroleum, the United States is intruding ever more assertively into the internal affairs of the oil-supplying nations and, in the process, exposing itself to an ever-increasing risk of involvement in local and regional conflict situations. This reality has already influenced U.S. relations with the major oil-producing nations and is sure to have an even greater impact in the future.
At no point, however, does the NEP acknowledge this fundamental reality. Instead, the Cheney plan focuses on the economic and diplomatic dimensions of U.S. energy policy – suggesting thereby that America’s energy dilemmas can somehow be overcome in this fashion. But the architects of the Bush/Cheney policy know better: an energy plan that calls for increased reliance on the Persian Gulf countries and on other suppliers located in areas of recurring turmoil will not be able to overcome every conceivable threat to American energy interests through economic and diplomatic efforts alone. At some point, it may prove impossible to ensure access to a particular source of oil without the use of military force.
It is in this regard that one cannot help but be struck by the striking parallels between the Administration’s energy policy and its preferred military strategy. Here again, as in the case of the Administration’s energy plan, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what is truly intended. In the view of most observers, the principal thrust of the Administration’s military policy is the development of super-sophisticated weapons and the establishment of a national ballistic missile defense system. But while these are, in fact, major objectives of the Administration plan, they are not the most important objective. Rather, the Administration’s top objective is the enhancement of America’s "power projection" forces – meaning those forces that can be transported from established bases in the United States and Europe to distant combat zones, and then fight their way into the area or otherwise come to the assistance of a beleaguered ally. Typically, power projection forces are said to include both the ground and air combat units intended for penetration of enemy territory plus the ships and planes used to carry these units into the battle zone. Power projection forces also include long-range bombers and the naval platforms – aircraft carriers, surface combatants, and submarines – used to launch planes or missiles against onshore targets.
It is precisely these sorts of forces that have been accorded top priority in the military plans of the Bush Administration. In his first major speech on U.S. military policy, while still a candidate, Bush declared, "Our forces in the next century must be agile, lethal, readily deployable, and require a minimum of logistical support." In particular, our land forces "must be lighter [and] more lethal"; our naval forces must be able "to destroy targets from great distances"; and our air forces "must be able to strike from across the world with pinpoint accuracy."/47/ These are exactly the sort of weapons that the Bush Administration has sought since assuming office in February 2001, and, as we have seen, these are precisely the sort of weapons that the Department of Defense relied upon when conducting the March/April 2003 invasion of Iraq.
By the beginning of 2003, the White House had succeeded in incorporating many of its basic strategic objectives into formal military doctrine. These objectives stress the steady enhancement of America’s capacity to project military power into areas of turmoil – that is, to strengthen precisely those capabilities that would be used to protect or gain access to overseas sources of petroleum. Whether this was the product of a conscious linkage between energy and security policy is not something that can be ascertained at this time; what is undeniable is that President Bush has given top priority to the enhancement of America’s power projection capabilities while at the same time endorsing an energy strategy that entails increased U.S. dependence on oil derived from areas of recurring crisis and conflict.
What we have, therefore, is a two-pronged strategy that effectively governs U.S. policy toward much of the world. One arm of this strategy is aimed at securing more oil from the rest of the world; the other is aimed at enhancing America’s capacity to intervene in exactly such locales. And while these two objectives have arisen from different sets of concerns, one energy-driven and the other security-driven, they have merged into a single, integrated design for American world dominance in the 21st Century. And it is this combination of strategies, more than anything else, that will govern America’s international behavior in the decades ahead.
So cheney was the guy making energy decisions AND directing the very areas needed to be controlled to put 9/11 in motion.
bin laden...a longtime CIA asset is just a cutout.
But we all know the CIA would NEVER create a cutout...right? |
