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The New Red, White and Blue
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times
January 6, 2006
As we enter 2006, we find ourselves in trouble,
at home and abroad. We are in trouble because we
are led by defeatists - wimps, actually.
What's so disturbing about President Bush and Dick
Cheney is that they talk tough about the necessity
of invading Iraq, torturing terror suspects and
engaging in domestic spying - all to defend our
way of life and promote democracy around the globe.
But when it comes to what is actually the most important
issue in U.S. foreign and domestic policy today
- making ourselves energy efficient and independent,
and environmentally green - they ridicule it as
something only liberals, tree-huggers and sissies
believe is possible or necessary.
Sorry, but being green, focusing the nation on greater
energy efficiency and conservation, is not some
girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded,
geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we
can do. Living green is not for sissies. Sticking
with oil, and basically saying that a country that
can double the speed of microchips every 18 months
is somehow incapable of innovating its way to energy
independence - that is for sissies, defeatists and
people who are ready to see American values eroded
at home and abroad.
Living green is not just a "personal virtue,"
as Mr. Cheney says. It's a national security imperative.
The biggest threat to America and its values today
is not communism, authoritarianism or Islamism.
It's petrolism. Petrolism is my term for the corrupting,
antidemocratic governing practices - in oil states
from Russia to Nigeria and Iran - that result from
a long run of $60-a-barrel oil. Petrolism is the
politics of using oil income to buy off one's citizens
with subsidies and government jobs, using oil and
gas exports to intimidate or buy off one's enemies,
and using oil profits to build up one's internal
security forces and army to keep oneself ensconced
in power, without any transparency or checks and
balances.
When a nation's leaders can practice petrolism,
they never have to tap their people's energy and
creativity; they simply have to tap an oil well.
And therefore politics in a petrolist state is not
about building a society or an educational system
that maximizes its people's ability to innovate,
export and compete. It is simply about who controls
the oil tap.
In petrolist states like Russia, Iran, Venezuela
and Sudan, people get rich by being in government
and sucking the treasury dry - so they never want
to cede power. In non-petrolist states, like Taiwan,
Singapore and Korea, people get rich by staying
outside government and building real businesses.
Our energy gluttony fosters and strengthens various
kinds of petrolist regimes. It emboldens authoritarian
petrolism in Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Sudan and
Central Asia. It empowers Islamist petrolism in
Sudan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. It even helps sustain
communism in Castro's Cuba, which survives today
in part thanks to cheap oil from Venezuela. Most
of these petrolist regimes would have collapsed
long ago, having proved utterly incapable of delivering
a modern future for their people, but they have
been saved by our energy excesses.
No matter what happens in Iraq, we cannot dry up
the swamps of authoritarianism and violent Islamism
in the Middle East without also drying up our consumption
of oil - thereby bringing down the price of crude.
A democratization policy in the Middle East without
a different energy policy at home is a waste of
time, money and, most important, the lives of our
young people.
That's because there is a huge difference in what
these bad regimes can do with $20-a-barrel oil compared
with the current $60-a-barrel oil. It is no accident
that the reform era in Russia under Boris Yeltsin,
and in Iran under Mohammad Khatami, coincided with
low oil prices. When prices soared again, petrolist
authoritarians in both societies reasserted themselves.
We need a president and a Congress with the guts
not just to invade Iraq, but to also impose a gasoline
tax and inspire conservation at home. That takes
a real energy policy with long-term incentives for
renewable energy - wind, solar, biofuels - rather
than the welfare-for-oil-companies-and-special-interests
that masqueraded last year as an energy bill.
Enough of this Bush-Cheney nonsense that conservation,
energy efficiency and environmentalism are some
hobby we can't afford. I can't think of anything
more cowardly or un-American. Real patriots, real
advocates of spreading democracy around the world,
live green.
Green is the new red, white and blue.
Paul Krugman is on vacation.
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