When President George W. Bush used his State of the Union address to decry U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, he made headlines. Two days later, when Donald Rumsfeld offered an apocalyptic rendering of the global war on terror-“they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs”-few paid much attention. In the juxtaposition of the president’s discovery and his defense secretary’s call to arms lies the real story, casting in sharp relief the strategic conundrum facing the United States.
That Americans are “addicted to oil,” relying increasingly on imports from what the president delicately called “unstable parts of the world,” is manifestly true. The admission qualifies as noteworthy only in that it took Bush so long to acknowledge the problematic implications of this dependency.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s extravagant depiction of the war on terror may also be true-but only so long as the United States persists in the very addiction that the president laments. End American dependence on Middle Eastern oil and the very notion of Islamic radicals posing a serious threat to our way of life becomes preposterous. End our dependence on Middle Eastern oil and the notion that the United States should take it upon itself to forcibly change their way of life becomes absurd. Terrorism won’t disappear, but it will become a nuisance rather than a dire threat.
The dependency President Bush inveighs against didn’t spring from nowhere. As with most addictions, it evolved over time, in plain view but incrementally. In its early stages, few Americans approved of this habit outright, but most persuaded themselves that it was manageable. So as our houses got bigger, our cars heavier, and our commutes longer, the amount of oil we import kept creeping up from one year to the next.
To their credit, every one of Bush’s predecessors going back to Richard Nixon has warned against the consequences of permanent energy dependence. None did so more presciently than Jimmy Carter in his much-derided “Crisis of Confidence” speech of July 1979. “Down that road,” he cautioned, “lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict, ending in chaos.” Restoring self-sufficiency, on the other hand, might enable Americans to “seize control again of our common destiny.”
Despite such admirable talk coming from on high, U.S. policies after 1979-Carter’s included-served only to undercut further America’s control over its own fate. Feeding the daily habit of cheap gas took precedence over longer-term considerations. As our appetite for oil increased so too did our exertions in the Middle East. As the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf grew, especially beginning with Operation Desert Storm in 1991, so too did the costs of maintaining our habit. While no one noticed, the pain involved in cleaning up our act had become too great to contemplate.
Only now are we beginning to glimpse the results. By blithely abdicating control of our destiny, we forfeited our freedom of action. Oil now calls the tune to which the self-proclaimed world’s sole superpower is obliged to dance.
Leave it to Donald Rumsfeld to spell out the implications. If we take him at his word, the United States now finds itself with no choice but to transform the politics, culture, and mores of the Islamic world-for surely, it is these things that constitute their “way of life.” If Rumsfeld gets his way, that is, the enterprise that the Pentagon now refers to as “the Long War” will not end with Iraq. Indeed, it has barely begun.
Yet Iraq alone, in addition to taking the lives of over 2,200 American soldiers, is currently draining some $4.5 billion per month from the U.S. Treasury, with no end to those expenditures in sight. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz projects that the war’s total cost may reach $2 trillion. U.S. military spending this year will easily exceed a half-trillion dollars, a figure that will only increase in the years to come.
This is money that we don’t have: continuing to indulge our oil habit means plunging ever deeper into debt. But like the sorriest dopester, we cling to the tacit assumption that our line of credit is endless and that the bills will never come due.
Bush has considerable firsthand experience with dependency. In his memoir A Charge to Keep, he writes candidly of wrestling with a drinking problem. On his own personal day of reckoning, Bush took responsibility for that problem and vowed to “drink no more.” Had he not done so, by his own testimony, Bush today would be hanging out at some bar back in Houston rather than occupying the Oval Office.
As America’s collective day of reckoning draws near, going cold turkey is not a practical option. But neither is demanding that “their” way of life change to accommodate our addiction. In that way lies only the constant conflict and chaos that Jimmy Carter foretold, not to mention moral complications beyond calculation.
In Bush’s personal story is the beginning of wisdom: preserving what you value most requires the will to abandon self-destructive habits. Preserving the American way of life requires that we first regain control of it. We must change. Though not yet fully recognized, this is the real challenge of our times.
