Energy and National Security

Our national security is deeply threatened by our economic addiction to foreign oil. In short, our addiction to foreign oil warps our foreign policy in a way that creates enemies (who resent our military intrusions to secure their oil for our use) and threatens our national security.

As a former U.S. Senator/member of the Senate Energy Committee said in February of 2007, "Our government does not yet have an official national energy policy, but it does have a working one. Our current national energy policy is to depend on foreign supplies of oil to fuel our energy-inefficient economy and transportation system, and if that supply is threatened, we'll sacrifice the blood of our sons and daughters to secure it."

That's a strong statement, but the fact is, our government spends billions of dollars a year on military protection of national and global oil interests in the Middle East. When you include what U.S. taxpayers spend on the military protection of our foreign oil interests, it's been estimated that we spend $6-$7 on every gallon of gas.

More than 50% of American troops deployed around the world are based in the Middle East. And those troops are being used not only to protect U.S. oil interests, but also the oil interests of other countries (e.g., European nations), who, in effect, pay our government to use our fighting men and women as mercenaries to secure their Middle Eastern oil supplies. As of April 2007, we have spent around $410 billion on the war in Iraq, and continue to require around $6 billion per month to maintain our force structure there. In fact we actually fund both sides of the war in Iraq, as a large portion of the dollars we spend on oil go into the hands of the very terrorist regimes and dictators we send our sons and daughters to fight. A national energy policy that foments and fuels foreign hostility in an era of increasing nuclear weapons proliferation is a serious and mounting threat to our national security.

Of course, the inevitable cost in human lives is tragic and impossible to calculate. Unfortunately, none of these costs are adequately valued when you and I pull up to the pump to buy gasoline. But with Middle Eastern countries holding over 66% of known global oil supplies -- and by far the most easily harvested oil reserves -- this situation simply will not change until our government moves in a bi-partisan way to create a comprehensive national energy policy that, 1) incentivizes adequate alternative energy industry investment, and, 2) mandates significantly greater energy efficiency -- thereby reducing our dependency on foreign oil.

As former U. S. Senator Gary Hart recently wrote, "Our policy of oil dependence is why we are engaged in the second Persian Gulf war in a decade and why we will continue to fight wars in the Gulf for decades to come. To believe that military intervention is the key to security is to badly miss the point. Were we to become sufficiently independent of Persian Gulf oil, so that our economy could flourish without it, we would liberate our foreign and defense policies, contribute substantially to solving climate change, make our livelihood more secure, liberate resources for education and health, and dramatically increase our sense of genuine security."

Americans use twice as much energy as other developed western nations to create the same economic output. And we have no comprehensive national energy policy that combines conservation, energy efficiency, and adequate investment in our own national energy resources. Why sacrifice our security at home and the blood of our sons and daughters abroad to maintain our status as one of the most wasteful, foreign resource-dependent energy economies on earth? As the war in Iraq has taught us, we have neither the moral inclination nor the military power to impose our national will on the global oil supply.

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