Posted on 01/02/2004 7:42:38 AM PST by knighthawk
America's dependence on Saudi Arabia and its supply of fuel is "so strong it's almost like a narcotic," according to a former CIA agent, in a May interview with Atlantic Unbound, the Atlantic Monthly's online journal.
"If we don't curtail our dependence, a failure in Saudi Arabia could have catastrophic consequences for the United States," says Robert Baer, who worked for the CIA in the Middle East for two decades.
The United States' policies on Saudi Arabia, Baer argues, are built upon a delusion that "the flow of its most precious commodity can continue on indefinitely".
Oil and the defence contracts underpinning its protection bind these two countries together in such a way that if Saudi Arabia falls, the US falls too, he claims.
Baer, who has written several books on Saudi Arabia, warns of the vulnerability of the Saudi oil infrastructure "if people inside the oil industry were co-opted".
"Externally, a truck bomb at the gate would do minimal damage. But, if an employee who knew the system could place explosives, could hit a couple key places, including the redundant systems, then you could take 25 percent of Saudi oil off the market for a long period of time. That's the worst-case scenario," he says.
If terrorists could hit residential compounds with multiple car bombs, he asks, "why couldn't these same groups hit the oil industry and really do serious damage?"
Baer adds that terrorists could easily procure a submarine from the "global arms bazaar" and use it to attack Saudi oil.
"A lot of countries that make these advanced arms are impoverished and they're willing to sell the arms. They are more and more available. My understanding is that the two most recent suicide bombings in Israel used explosives that weren't locally made.
"Plastique has almost become a commodity like heroin or cocaine. You can pick it up anywhere on the black market for a certain price. Guns are easily available and heavier weapons are easily available.
"And that's not to speak of a person like bin Laden, who bought a lot of weapons in the mid-'90s that came from this market," he explains.
"In Yemen, you can buy weapons – surface-to-surface rockets, surface-to-air missiles, the shoulder-fired ones, which closed down British Airways going into Kenya. In fact, availability of arms, the spreading of hate and demographic problems, all mean it's going to be a long time before we can get over this. It's going to take a lot of hard work.
"A country that it could really affect is Saudi Arabia. If you fired at one civilian airliner leaving Riyadh and shot it down, there would just be an exodus of foreigners. The people who run Saudi Arabia's oil industry are just going to get up and leave. So it's all interconnected."
Baer contends that the US did not foresee "the Sunnis would turn on us". "(They) helped us defeat Egypt in a large sense, and helped us in the Yemen civil war in the 1960s, and then in Afghanistan.
So we were supportive of 'Sunni fundamentalism', never thinking that once the Russians were run out of Afghanistan the Sunnis would turn on us. It was a failure to see forward to this possibility," he said.
"It wasn't just the CIA. It was the CIA, the State Department, the White House, and the American press as well. They all said, 'Saudi Arabia is a medieval country, we don't really need to worry about it, it's very conservative, it doesn't change very fast, it's a mutually beneficial relationship. They pump the oil, they bank our oil, they buy our weapons, it's all to our advantage'."
Baer believes American and global dependency on Saudi oil, as well as oil from other "unstable" parts of the world, must be changed.
"The increase in our dependence on oil can only make matters worse, because oil unfortunately sits in the most unstable parts of the world: Venezuela, Nigeria, Chad, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Even Russia's not particularly stable. When our future is in the hands of parts of the world that are spinning out of control, it worries me," he says.
Change can be brought by taxing carbon-based energy sources, he suggests.
"We have a huge gas problem in the United States; I'd start taxing those sources in order to force down consumption. Then I'd use incentives and start investigating practical alternatives – fuel cells, wind energy," he said.
"Pumping more oil is just not going to do it. Alaska's going to last us for, what, 60 days of oil consumption? I think that's wishful thinking. Once we back away from this dependence on foreign oil or oil at all, we can have a more independent foreign policy," he maintains.
Baer is sceptical with regard to the reforms Saudi Arabia is currently pushing through.
"They've created a pseudo-parliament, to give people some measure of representation. But what are they going to do with the radicals, who say 'Let's break relations with the United States, let's stop pumping so much oil, let's raise the price of oil, and let's support a jihad in Iraq against American troops'? The Saudi royal family is never going to let that happen."
He believes that America cannot expect to quell regional tensions simply by pulling its troops out of Saudi Arabia.
"It's not enough to pull our troops out… I would say you're going to have to start by doing something serious about Israel and the Palestinians," he said.
"The problem is that going into Iraq, the way the Saudi in the street looks at it, was an invasion of an Islamic country. We decided, for whatever reason, to ignore that. Can we turn back this wave by military force? It depends on how bad things are in the Islamic world. But it's a risky strategy."
Middle East list
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
These types of statistics make light of a more serious situation. If the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia or other Middle Eastern states is disrupted, the amount that the U.S., the Europeans, and others need to obtain from current U.S. suppliers will increase. This means that no matter what percentage of our oil we import from certain countries, the demand on our supply system from others will substantially increase, thus affecting our supplies much more than the supposed 11% (or however much) we import from the Middle East.
Demographic - meaning there's a population explosion in the third world. What should we do about it?
because oil unfortunately sits in the most unstable parts of the world:
That's because the first world has already consumed most of its oil
We have a huge gas problem in the United States; I'd start taxing those sources in order to force down consumption
Perhaps its not a good idea to grant tax breaks to potential Hummer buyers.
It's not enough to pull our troops out… I would say you're going to have to start by doing something serious about Israel and the Palestinians
Like what? Are we willing to sacrifice Israel in order to keep Arab oil flowing or, conversely, are we willing to kill several hundred million Muslims?
We all know this stuff. It's a risk we take. We've been taking it for fifty years. If the Bad Guys are going to blow up Saudi Arabia, there's never been a better time... we occupy the next biggest source, and they've been off-line for ten years. Buy this guy a windmill, and send him back to Berkeley. |
This appears on the front page of the Financial Post in today's National Post.
That said, the **only** LONG-term, cost-efficient, standalone (i.e. no foreign dependence) energy supply solution is nuclear power -- but you greenweenies won't sit still for that, will you? In short, you've no interest at all in actually solving the problem. Yawn.
I'm now discovering that the Right is equally blind.
For all his years in the CIA covering the Middle East he still does not understand it nor the threat we are facing. He thinks we can buy off the enemy by appeasement.
20 years? Why,why...that's infinite. Who can think so far into the future?
you greenweenies won't sit still for that, will you?
And I thought you were a serious person. It turns out you're just a name-caller, too lazy to learn the opinions of those with whom you converse. Show me a post where I've categorically opposed nuclear power.
Yawn
Don't let me stop you. The conversation will certainly improve if you get some much-needed sleep.
''Categorically'', is it? Sorry, not required. Had you styled yourself merely ''larry'', it would be so required, but since you've chosen to self-indentify otherwise, and absent a disclaimer to the contrary on your part, the identification of your views on the topic is probable to about 2 sigma, perhaps more.
''Greenweenies'' is name-calling? Wow. A milder, yet still accurate, epithet can hardly be found. Oh, but that's right, I forgot; that's what you lot do, isn't it? Define terms to suit your mindset, and redefine them if and as convenient, and attempt to dictate to others the ''proper'' use of the terms. Sorry, I don't play with the language in such a fashion. Ta-ta.
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What is this, except a collection of liberal talking points dressed up as some sort of expertise about Saudi Arabia? "We need to tax gasoline, we need the wind and the Sun and renewable yadayada." Gimme a break, he's got everything in there except the standard-issue rant about SUV's.