BC: THE REAL COST OF "CHEAP" OIL
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By oldfarmermac on TOD ..
Speaking as a reader of history, (but not as a historian, which I an not) I forsee the OIL PROBLEM being taken care of by the military for the forseeable future-as it is currently.
In my estimation anyone who thinks we would have had affordable access to Middle Eastern oil for the last three or four decades , or would have such access today, without our armed forces securing it for us, is historically and politically niave in the extreme.
SOMEBODY IS ALWAYS THE TOP DOG in terms of geopolitics and the world economy.If not US, as in both "us" and as in "United States", then "them" as in a local empire forming, or China, or a resurgent Germany or Japan, or a rising India.
For now we are playing nice and can afford to play nice , as long as the oil flows into a fungible world market;we have to pay a high price for it, but we can buy as much as we want , so long as we are able to outbid the other oil importing countries.
When tshtf for real, we will find that the American public in particular and the Western public in general, as well as Japan, will be more than willing to slip off the gloves and actually FIGHT for the oil.
Right now we are trying to do something that is quite possibly impossible-stabilize the exporters as friendly bau buddies of the West.That policy may fail;a lot of very smart people believe its failure is inevitable.Personally I think it has some reasonable chance of succeeding from one year to the next for quite a while; if not permanently,then for as long as we can keep the troopps on the ground there.
If the Pentagon is directed to do so, the military can simply clear out any person anywhere near the oil fields or the terminals or the pipelines who is not wearing a security badge and subject to immediate forcible random investigation of the depths of his anus.
Machine gun ammunition is cheap, in relation to the trouble it can save,supposing the owners of the machine guns are no longer inhibited by the qualms of the citizens back home from using them.
Some people who believe that a raggedy assed insurgency can defeat a major power ALWAYS forget that such insurgencies win byonly by means of the help of another major power, if they do win;or because the major power is too embarrassed to really stomp on such a weak country and simply kill off the locals.
We could have put a dmz between North and south Vietnam a couple of miles wide with agent orange if we had chosen to do so, and simply killed anybody who entered the open ground, had we had then the technology we have today, such as remote sensors and small remotely operated planes with guns aboard.
Nothing in the Middle East can stop a brutal outright take over if the US decides to implement such a takeover, other than an a possible nuclear intervention by China or Russia.
A few sniper teams and roadside bombers who fade back into the local population and actually work for the occupation troops on days they aren't attacking can create a world of problems-the world of problems existing for our troops today.
If the occupying forces simply give everybody the choice of moving ten miles away and NOT coming back, or dying , and patrol with intent to kill, there will be no problem with an insurgency day to day.
I am no expert in such matters but I have some reason to believe from talking to career military people that such a policy could be implemented and made to stick with many less troops and much less equipment than we are currently using in our attempts to pacify the occupied countries.
Anybody who thinks we and the other Western powers are not capable of such actions once our backs are really to the wall has a lot more faith in the basic decency of people than I do.
I do not believe there is any danger at all of us acting this way for AS LONG as we can keep the oil flowing without doing so.
I don't think the average young liberal woman will have any problem rationalizing such actions once she realizes the choice is severely curbing her own lifestyle and that of her children - or going along.She will of course insist that the thing be managed in as humane a fashion as possible and might even volunteer as a teacher or nurse for a year or so to help out the locals.
But she will still go along when tshtf.
The right wing is already on board and the vast non political middle will hardly notice in any case, so long as thier own children are not drafted and the local service station has gasoline available at an affordable price.
Such an occupy and plunder strategy cannot work forever, but it can work fron one election to the next, or until even the Middle East is fairly well pumped out.
The US can secure the necessary political support of a lot of smaller countries by promising them a small but steady supply of looted crude at a reasonably low price.Ditto Western Europe and Japan in my honest opinion.
We live in times that are due to become WAY to interesting.
The only long term silver lining that I see in such a scenario is that we might last as a powerful industrial society long enough for some really game changing breakthroughs to materialize on the renewables, efficiencies, and conservation fronts.Short term I live out my life without any real sacrifice.
A crashed industrial economy cannot support fast progress and major investments in these fields but research and development in these areas will be vastly accelerated in the near future -assuming it can be paid for-as the real size and nature of the energy crunch becomes obvious even to Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Pelosi. |
