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2003-02-24

Western wealth without western values--that's what half a century of
American demand for Mideast oil has bestowed upon the region. We've paid for
all that oil once in cash, and once now in American lives--3,033 of them
last September 11th. Unless we go on the offensive to fight geology with
democracy, petroleum deposits indicate that we will live in fear of
Saudi-funded Islamic terror for the century to come.

The Saudi princes use their oil bounty not to enrich their society, but to
build intricate networks of walled harems that keep the lesser-borns on the
outside looking in. The Saudi royals pay fundamentalist nuts, under the
guise of funding mosques and Islam-centred schools, to use Islam as a false
front of national unity and to direct their society's fermenting
revolutionary tendencies toward us rather than toward them. The 15 Saudi
Arabian hijackers took the bait on 9/11.

The Saudi royals and their Middle Eastern neighbors don't need to create a
productive multi-class economy, because the money just keeps coming from
abroad. 65.3% of the world's one trillion billion barrels of proven crude
reserves remain locked beneath Mideast territory. Saudi Arabia alone owns
25% of the world's crude. Mideast states produced 30% of last year's crude
output.

Those in favor of American inaction in the Middle East might point to the
30% figure as proof that we can diversify our oil supply. But a glance at
reserves-to-production ratios (which give an idea of how many years of oil
production a nation has left in the ground) shows that the opposite is the
true.

Saudi Arabia can produce at last year's rate for another 85 years. Iran can
produce for another 67.4 years. The Middle East region can produce at the
2001 rate for 86.8 years. If we think we can solve our problems in the
Middle East by developing reserves in Russia, Alaska, South America and West
Africa, we should think again. The Mideast will wait us out. Saudi Arabia
has proven its versatility as, in the words of one petroleum analyst, ""the
world's central banker of oil."" Last year, new production from the west was
almost exactly offset by a 2.7% decrease in OPEC production.

The US has only 10.7 years left on its proven reserves (including those in
Alaska), while Mexico has 21.7 years left. The Russian federation, even with
recent discoveries, has just 19.1 years left. The whole of Africa, plagued
with above-ground risks that scare off even the most well-traveled
executives, has 27.4 years left on its reserves, while the Asia-Pacific
region (including Australia) has 15.6 years left. The more we depend on
non-Mideast sources of oil, the faster they will be depleted.

So we have a clear choice. We can resign ourselves to our current
geopolitical neverland, which means another 86.8 years of calling our enemy
our friend. Or we can go to war to destabilize despotism with what should be
our chief export: democracy.

We can start with Iraq. A war with Iraq, no matter what the nominal
justification, will prove one thing to our allies: that we Americans will
not forsake our own long-term interests for a short-term political
gratification: low oil prices. If we go to war with Iraq, oil prices will go
up--so let's quit worrying about it. But even if oil prices hit $70/barrel,
we must work to set up a real postwar democratic oasis in Iraq.

Democracy in Iraq will infect her neighbor to the east (Iran) and to the
south (Saudi Arabia). Iran's mullahs can barely keep that country's 66
million subjects from breaking out into western-style democracy now. Once
the Saudi royals see American troops conquer Iraq, they will trade in one
form of self-preservation for another and will implement democratic reforms
for their own 23 million people.

And while we do all of this? We can buy less oil, and we can develop
alternative sources of power. If the French government were using money from
cheese exports to fund radical anti American groups, you can bet there'd be
a full-scale boycott against French cheese.

But oil is considered different, as if its status as a commodity erases its
source. It doesn't. American consumers who must participate in today's
dysfunctional US-Saudi relationship are only two degrees of separation away
from Osama bin Laden. Money from us goes directly to the Saudi royals, who,
evidence shows, pay Bin Laden to attack us instead of them.

Until we can get the Saudis to stop funding anti-American terror (one way or
another), we should tighten our own cash spigot or suffer more near-term
consequences.