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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (2503)	9/19/2008 3:39:43 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 86356

There would be an incremental reduction in our ME focus, but the other scenarios would still exist and would require a similar level of military potential. Most of these scenarios are unlikely (partially because we have such a capable military), but we want to be prepared to deter or defeat attacks against South Korea, Taiwan, various European countries esp. NATO members, and other possible scenarios outside of the Middle East. And we would want the ability to intervene very forcefully in the Middle East as well, even if we would be less likely to use it, we would maintain the capability to do so should it be necessary. Even if we don't do something like the Gulf War, or the Iraq War in the middle east any time soon, we have to be able to do so. So the R&D, personnel, and weapons acquisitions cost don't go down by not needing to import oil (something that's massively unlikely to happen any time soon in any case). At most the operations costs go down. Most of the operations costs over the last several decades where in Iraq, which does seem to be beginning to come to an end. And a war like Iraq doesn't happen very often. Korea and Vietnam where bigger burdens (more deaths, more severe injuries, larger percentage of GDP spent), but they where not in the Middle East or about oil. The Gulf War and Iraq war where in the Middle East, but not exclusively about oil. Even if (to simplify things, and also to not get bogged down in every disagreement we have), we considered them 100% "about oil", and (again ignoring my actual opinion), we considered any spending that was 100% about oil to be a subsidy for oil, then you would have the operations costs for these two wars, spread out over many decades (perhaps since we first became a net oil importer, but I'd say even longer since we where seriously concerned about overseas oil supplies as a strategic resource even when we where the world's biggest oil exporter). Divide that cost by all the oil consumed in the US over those years and its not exactly a very large subsidy.