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Divergent political camps have found
common ground in support of "energy security" and "energy
independence." As high gas prices and intensifying conflicts
in the Middle East focus attention on U.S. dependence on petroleum
imports, progressives and conservatives are organizing to reshape
U.S. policy based on their own views about what the terms "energy
security" and "energy independence" mean.
Although it's the 21st century's
high prices at the pump and terrorism-related security concerns
that have propelled energy security and energy independence as
policy goals, this terminology is nothing new: The energy crisis
of the late 1970s prompted similar debate.
At the start of his presidency,
George W. Bush directed an energy task force, led by Vice President
Dick Cheney, to develop a new national energy policy. In its
May 2001 report, the National Energy Policy Development Group
framed its policy recommendations as a matter of ensuring energy
security and reducing energy dependence.
While Cheney's energy task
force recommended increased domestic energy production in order
to decrease dependence on imported oil, its main thrust was to
call for a foreign and military policy in Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East that would secure continued U.S. access to foreign
energy sources. In his 2002 book Resource Wars, Michael Klare
reported: "One-third of the recommendations in the report
are for ways to obtain access to petroleum sources abroad."
In marked contrast to the Cheney
report, a new flurry of initiatives by citizen groups and politicians
advocate breaking all reliance on foreign energy sources, particularly
oil from Mideast countries. They argue that U.S. energy security
will come not by looking outward but by looking inward to our
own potential for producing, altering, and conserving homeland
energy. Whether progressive or conservative, the energy reform
initiatives have a populist and a nationalist cast, lambasting
giant U.S. oil companies and the Mideast regimes while promoting
a new "America First" ethic of self-reliance and energy
isolationism.
On the progressive side, the
most prominent "energy independence" initiative comes
from the Apollo Alliance-a coalition of labor unions, environmental
organizations, policy institutes, and businesses-which advocates
a comprehensive economic policy that promises to generate 3 million
"good jobs" through "clean energy" development.
The alliance, which came together in 2003 with support from a
large array of left-center foundations (and in anticipation of
a Democratic White House after the 2004 elections) calls for
a $300 billion public-private program that will "free America
from foreign oil dependence in 10 years."
A centerpiece of energy independence
for many progressives is increased government support for biofuels-especially
for the ethanol industry, based largely in America's agricultural
heartland. In a speech titled "Energy Security is National
Security" that he delivered to the Governors' Ethanol Coalition
earlier this year, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) argued that achieving
energy independence should be central to the war on terrorism.
He stressed the importance of biofuels like ethanol in the fight
to ensure that "oil can never be used as a weapon against
us." The Center for American Progress, a think tank close
to the Democratic Party, also jumped on the energy security bandwagon
this year, releasing its "Energy Security in the 21st Century"
report in late July.
Liberals and progressives have
long warned against the environmental and economic dangers of
fossil fuel dependence. Unlike conservatives, the left-center
has also been more apt to define national security in broad terms,
asserting that security is about more than military policy and
championing what they term "human security," a broad-based
concept that takes into account issues of poverty and development.
What's new are recent efforts to link environmentalism, job creation,
and economic policy so closely to real or perceived national
security threats-in this case the war on terrorism and the related
surge of anti-Americanism in the Middle East.
National security hardliners
are also attempting to put their own spin on the concepts of
energy security and independence. The neoconservative Center
for Security Policy (CSP), headed by Frank Gaffney, working closely
with the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS),
is cosponsoring the "Set America Free" coalition, which
brings neoconservatives together with liberal groups like the
Apollo Alliance and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The
coalition's slogan: "Cut dependence on foreign oil. Secure
America."
In addition to Gaffney, other
prominent neoconservatives and conservatives in the Set America
Free coalition include Gary Bauer of American Values, Rep. Eliot
Engel (D-NY), former national security adviser Robert McFarlane,
Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
(FDD), Thomas Neumann of the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA), Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, James
Woolsey of the Committee on the Present Danger, and Meyrav Wurmser
of the Hudson Institute. Among the advisors to IAGS are Woolsey,
McFarlane, and Eliot Cohen.
In its "open letter to
the American people," the coalition calls for breaking U.S.
dependence on Mideast oil, asserting that "at the strategic
level it is dangerous to be buying billions [worth] of oil from
nations that are sponsors of or allied with radical Islamists."
In ending oil imports from the Middle East, America would "deny
adversaries the wherewithal they use to harm us."
By adapting their political
agenda to include a focus on energy security, the national security
hardliners at CSP, IAGS, and other affiliated groups such as
the fervently pro-Israel FDD and JINSA have made common cause
with appropriate-technology groups, environmental firms, and
nongovernmental organizations-at the very time when public disenchantment
with U.S. Mideast policy is deepening. The Set America Free coalition
also includes representatives from outfits such as the Coalition
Advocating Smart Transportation, the California Cars Initiative,
and the American Council on Renewable Energy-groups not normally
associated with militarist organizations like CSP and JINSA.
Underlying the right's energy
security initiatives is a strong criticism of the major oil companies
for having made common cause with oil-rich Middle Eastern dictatorships-and
by extension with Islamic terrorists and their supporters. The
Terror-Free Energy Coalition, for example, is dedicated to encouraging
Americans to buy gasoline that originates from countries that
do not export or finance terrorism. The group says it educates
the public "by promoting those companies that acquire their
crude oil supply from nations outside the Middle East and by
exposing those companies that do not."
The organizers of the Terror-Free
Energy Coalition are mostly analysts or business executives professionally
involved in terrorism and intelligence issues. Three of the twelve
men listed as the coalition's endorsers are principals in the
Intelligence Summit, a pro-Israel intelligence forum, while another
endorser is Joe Kauffman, chairman of another pro-Israel group
called Americans Against Hate. Coalition members also include
representatives from a new breed of private intelligence firms
that provide threat-analysis information and services to the
government and corporations, including Phoenix Global Intelligence
Systems, WorldThreats.com, and WVC3 Group. Another coalition
endorser is the terrorism analyst for the Christian Broadcast
Network.
For many on the right, the
energy crisis is seen as a new opportunity to practice politics
as usual. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), one of the most
ardent supporters of Bush and Cheney, helped lead the congressional
effort to approve all aspects of the Cheney energy policy, including
drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In her
"Energy Security" speech on the Senate floor on April
9, 2002, Hutchinson praised the administration's bill for opening
up new lands and waters to energy exploration, reduced environmental
safeguards, and new support for nuclear power plants, declaring:
"We are in a war, and when we are in a war, it means we
must make sure our underlying strength is everything we can make
it. Part of our underlying strength is a ready supply of energy."
Climate change, prices at the
pump, blackouts, and threats of oil producers to withhold supplies
are among the signs of a brewing energy crisis. But fear and
political opportunism cannot be the engines of a sustainable
energy policy for our future.
In an increasingly interdependent
world, politicking about energy independence and security-especially
when explicitly linked to misbegotten foreign and military policies-may
not set America free but rather set the stage for dangerous outbursts
of nationalism and xenophobia that further isolate the country.
One of the proponents of the
Set America Free camp is leading congressional hawk, Sen. Joseph
Lieberman (D-CT). "It is time to set America free,"
says Lieberman, "Cutting our dependence on oil will strengthen
our security, preserve our independence, and energize our economy
We must diversify the fuels that power our nation, or risk ceding
our nation's power to rulers separated from us by a world in
geography and by centuries in values."
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