Oil dependence cries out for U.S. action

  • Jim Hoagland / Washington Post columnist
  • Saturday, November 24, 2001 9:00pm
  • Opinion

WASHINGTON — America’s oil habit helped turn U.S. citizens into targets of choice for the butchers that al-Qaida chose for the grisly work of Sept. 11. Remember that the next time you climb into a fuel-inefficient SUV or leave the furnace thermostat set higher than is needed.

The line that connects energy wasting habits and the gas guzzlers that now clog U.S. highways to the 15 young Saudi Arabians who helped massacre about 4,000 Americans and others 10 weeks ago is both tenuous and clear: There may have been other, more immediate triggering events on the terrorists’ minds as they plotted to inflict maximum pain on a nation that had opened its doors to them. There are no pure one-to-one causes and effects in life.

But it is abundantly clear that the need for imported energy has kept the United States more deeply entangled with decadent regimes of the greater Middle East — and with their deepening contradictions — than many Americans realize or would want. After a promising start in the 1970s on conservation and developing alternatives to hydrocarbon fuels, Americans have slept through two decades of consumption as usual.

Strategic neglect on energy imports is no longer an option. It is urgent and vital for America’s citizens and leaders to think seriously about the interplay of oil, war and global terrorism for these three reasons:

n The campaign against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban has drawn American forces deep into Central Asia, a region that looms increasingly large as a new source for oil and gas. The temptation to repeat the mistakes of our Persian Gulf policies and deployments — by becoming dependent on dictatorships in the new oil El Dorado — will be enormous and must be resisted.

n The long-delayed but now tangible emergence of Russia as a major oil exporter is reshaping and unsettling oil markets long dominated by OPEC and particularly by Saudi Arabia.

A desperate OPEC has threatened to wage a price war that could bankrupt Russia if Vladimir Putin does not agree to join in a cartel price-fixing scheme. The gritty Putin has so far resisted this blackmail and prices continue to drop. But Americans must guard against being lulled once again into false complacency over a commodity too volatile for its own good.

n The extensive participation by Saudi nationals in the Sept. 11 plan puts a spotlight on the failure of the Faustian bargain between Riyadh and Washington. While Saudi Arabia’s control on oil prices and supplies has enabled Americans to continue to be energy addicts, America’s military presence in the Persian Gulf has given the Saudi royal family a false sense of security.

Each nation has squandered a decade in addressing its own urgent challenges. Worse, each has helped the other to avoid comprehending painful realities that can no longer be postponed.

At the end of Operation Desert Storm, American military power seemed to have opened the way for a newly secure Saudi royal family to exert leadership in Arab politics and to embark on a political and economic modernization program at home. The U.S. imprint on victory promised a bright collaboration. It did not happen.

"In 1991, Saudis were naming their sons Bush," Prince Saud al-Faisal recalled shortly after he arrived in Washington on a fence-mending mission of enormous proportions earlier this month. "What happened? How can it be that we were Dr. Jekyll then and Mr. Hyde now?"

He vigorously disputed my suggestion that the regime’s slowness to change was part of the problem: "We will not take chances with the cohesion of our country. We must have an indigenous formula for the participation of our people" in politics. "We are not willing to do what happened in many African countries where democracy was imposed on a tribal society and it broke down into civil war."

Why did so many young affluent Saudis answer bin Laden’s call to exterminate Americans, I asked. The prince claimed that U.S. support for Israel was the key factor, and reiterated his nation’s regret "that even one Saudi was involved in this." Then he added: "History shows that it is not only the poor that can be deluded."

His words seem to me to reach far beyond Sept. 11. They describe rich regimes in the Gulf that monopolize their countries’ wealth and power, as well as affluent American consumers unwilling to sacrifice comfort to save on oil imports. As the man says, you don’t have to be poor to be deluded.

Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.

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