Monthly Archive for March, 2011

President Obama unveiled an energy policy yesterday, and the reviews have been unkind. Ezra Klein lamented that the president’s plan “says less about how we’ll solve our energy problems than how we’ve resigned ourselves to not solving them.” David Roberts called it “weak-ass,” consisting of “a shapeless blob of supply and demand, old and new, trivial and meaningful, sure to satisfy none of his opponents and activate none of his supporters.”

The centerpiece of the plan involves a one-third cut in oil imports by 2025. This Obama labels as “energy security,” which Klein says is shorthand for “‘oil we drill here’ as opposed to ‘oil that gets shipped here.’” Indeed, expanding domestic production is the first item listed.

I am a dilettante on energy policy, but the fetishization of “energy independence” and “freedom from foreign oil” always struck me as odd. We import about nine million barrels of crude oil a day, which is about half of our total oil consumption. Here’s where we get that imported crude from:

U.S. Crude Oil Imports (top 15 countries)(thousand barrels per day)

As Daniel Griswald notes at Cato, there is absolutely nothing wrong with imported oil. We have money, other countries have extra oil, the swap works out great. Saying we need “independence from foreign oil” makes about as much sense as saying we need independence from foreign clothing or foreign electronics.

As you can see on the chart, over a third of our oil imports comes from our close allies and NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico, with Canada by far the largest source. Almost all of Canada’s oil goes to the U.S. In fact, 75% of all Canadian exports go to the U.S. Not only are we addicted to Canadian oil, but also Canadian forestry and agricultural products, and motor vehicle spare parts. But of course no one is talking about forestry security. If we happened to find a way to make cheaper abundant forestry products in America, well presumably we wouldn’t import them from Canada anymore. But there’s no major strategic imperative or benefit to doing this. We just buy the stuff. Likewise, being “dependent” on Canadian or Mexican oil is not a problem.

But of course people don’t worry about the third of our oil imports that comes from Canada or Mexico. They worry about the third that comes from unfriendly places in the Arab Middle East and Venezuela. (Though a democratizing Algeria and Iraq are perhaps more amenable trade partners than they used to be.) The argument is familiar: shipping money to these countries helps prop up dictators, and our reliance on their wares keeps us ever-vulnerable to price and supply instability. But as David Roberts forced a senior White House official to concede, replacing these problematic barrels with newly-drilled U.S. barrels does essentially nothing to lower gasoline prices or make us less vulnerable to price volatility. And it does nothing to stave off climate change or environmental degredation. All we would be doing is forcing Hugo Chavez to take his 950,000 barrels elsewhere every day, and with exploding demand in China and the developing world that shouldn’t be too hard.

So Obama messed up twice in the first two lines of his energy security fact sheet. Decreasing U.S. oil imports for its own sake makes no sense as a policy objective. And doing so by ramping up domestic production doesn’t solve any of the problems we imagine it might: petro-dictators will still be strong and gas prices will still be high and volatile, and the environment would still be screwed.

I find myself far more interested in a clean energy future than an independent energy future. In this framing, reducing oil consumption is a very necessary and worthy goal. On this score the president offers several ideas, most of them rehashed from previous speeches and previous administrations: Investments and subsidies for renewables, higher auto efficiency standards, weatherizing homes and buildings.

It’s important to note that 72% of our oil consumption is for transportation (don’t forget airplanes). So things like home weatherization and the Clean Energy Standard are great for efficiency but don’t do much to lower oil consumption. We need a transportation-centric oil policy. Though the president supports several necessary components to this, as David Roberts notes, his new energy plan remains virtually silent on a whole range of highly impactful items: public transit, smart growth, congestion pricing, a gas tax, carbon tax. Even from the slim menu the president is working from, there is one deep, fatal flaw. E.M. at DiA explains:

[T]hose parts of the president’s plan that need congressional approval—the clean energy standard, more subsidies, extra funding for research on whizz-bang energy technology—will never receive it. The Republicans who control the House are dead-set against anything that smacks of greenery, not to mention anything that would add to spending at a time when they’re trying to take an axe to it.

Remember also that Congress has already killed cap-and-trade, and Republican enmity toward the EPA will circumscribe its ability to add forceful regulations. So we’re stuck with things that already have funding, including some very problematic high-speed rail projects, in addition to some tepid moves that comport with current Republican theology, like more drilling. The President is surely disappointed by this—during the 2008 campaign he said energy was his top legislative priority—but the political infeasibility does not excuse him from publically getting behind some of these more dynamic ideas. Though clearly Republicans are the impediment here, the president will be partly to blame if by 2012 both he and Sarah Palin have “drill baby drill” as the centerpiece of their energy policies.

Notwithstanding my ultimate support for this intervention in Libya, I have plenty of concerns, the thrust of which are outlined in this post. They mostly deal with the difficulty of envisioning the endgame, and the threat of protracted stalemate.

To recap, this week I have seen many people point to the no-fly zone in Kurdistan as an example of a successful "limited" intervention leading to an unequivocal humanitarian triumph. This is certainly true as far as it goes, but our Kurdistan policy suffered from the same strategic pitfalls as the current Libyan one, and lead to an uncomfortable conclusion: No-fly zones only end definitively with regime change. The Kurdistan NFZ only ended, twelve years later, when we invaded Iraq with 100,000 ground troops and deposed Saddam Hussein by force. Absent our invasion, we’d still be enforcing the NFZ over Kurdistan, twenty years after it began. Perhaps by now Saddam would have passed power to his two sadistic and cretinous sons. As they went on terrorizing the population under their control, and we went on flying protective sorties over Kurdistan, would we now be citing this rather equivocal stalemate as an example of successful strategic intervention that we should seek to emulate elsewhere?

So how does regime change come about in Libya? U.S. policymakers have stressed the "limited scope" of this operation, with the sole aim of protecting vulnerable populations. President Obama has already foresworn the use of ground troops, and the UNSC resolution forbids occupation of Libyan territory. This presumably means forcible regime change in Libya is completely off the table. Ok, fine. Then it further means that we’ve potentially just committed to policing the skies over Libya for a long, long time. That might truly be a humanitarian triumph for those we are protecting, but it is a strategic dead end.

Secretary Clinton said in a news conference on Saturday that she expects this action to alter the political landscape in Libya so as to change the calculus of those around Gaddafi; basically begging his close associates to organize a swift putsch. This would be an okay outcome, but I think a man who has been in power for forty-two years probably knows a thing or two about avoiding high-level betrayal. Maybe I’m wrong.

The Kurdistan example seems to be a likely outcome here: A UN-sanctioned protectorate over vulnerable opposition territory, with the dictator retaining enough support elsewhere—whether through bribe or coercion or fear or nostalgia—to remain in power. And just as in Iraq, where those under the no-fly umbrella thrived and prospered while Saddam continued with his rape rooms and torture chambers everywhere else; if we allow Qaddafi to hang on, what becomes of the "responsibility to protect" those Libyans still within his psychotic reach? It seems an odd outcome for a putative humanitarian mission.

Maybe I am overestimating Qaddafi’s ability to hold on to power, and maybe the coalition has plans to alter the scope of its mission if a stalemate and de facto partition of the country appears likely (and the coalition will certainly fray in unpredicable ways if this is the case). Nobody seems to have signed on to this intervention with the aim of toppling the Qaddafi regime; but history shows that a successful no-fly zone, rather than forestalling the need for regime change, instead acts as a precursor to it. And whether regime change comes soon or tarries, what of the very real prospect of a drawn-out insurgency, either on the part of Qaddafi loyalists following an opposition victory, or on the part of anti-Qaddafi forces in the event of a status-quo stalemate? Will the U.S. help referee another Middle East insurgency?

The argument that "it’s hard to do much worse than Qaddafi" in Libya has some merit, but of course a better maxim for the Middle East is "things can always get worse." Hopefully somebody is thinking about what happens next. 

I’ve visited the fascinating case of Rep. Peter T. King before. Irish-American terror-fighting congressman from New York who writes crime novels starring a fictional intrepid Irish-American terror-fighting congressman from New York. But as I noted at the time, the most salient thing about Peter King is that he is terror-fighting only to the extent that the terror is not perpetrated by the IRA, whose campaign of political violence King supported unequivocally for thirty years.

The New York Times does the service of reminding us of this salient background as King prepares to begin his congressional hearings on the putative terrorist sympathies of American Muslims. Here is what King’s own terrorist sympathies look like:

“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it."

And from an older report:

He forged links with leaders of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Ireland, and in America he hooked up with Irish Northern Aid, known as Noraid, a New York based group that the American, British, and Irish governments often accused of funneling guns and money to the IRA. At a time when the IRA’s murder of Lord Mountbatten and its fierce bombing campaign in Britain and Ireland persuaded most American politicians to shun IRA-support groups, Mr. King displayed no such inhibitions….

King is a savvy guy and is no doubt used to being asked to explain this curious portion of his resume, which makes his most recent rationalizations and apologetics all the more bizarre:

Of comparisons between the terrorism of the I.R.A. and that of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, Mr. King said: “I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.” […]

“Al Qaeda is recruiting from the Muslim community,” he said. “If they were recruiting from the Irish community, I’d say we should look at that.”

A few problems with this logic. First, since attacking the United States is the prerequisite for King’s involvement, does this mean that if al-Qaeda only murdered civilians in Britain or Spain or Ireland, King would find it somehow less odious and less worthy of his opprobrium? And is he therefore unbothered by Hamas, who, like the IRA, focuses its murderous ire on one faraway sectarian enemy?

A bigger problem: If your "loyalty is to the United States," and if the IRA "never attacked the United States," why inject yourself into the middle of an overseas sectarian terror conflict in the first place? If you don’t concern yourself with non-U.S. security matters, why did you spend thirty years fundraising and apologizing for a parochial violent organization that operates thousands of miles away? Why not stay out of it and just revel in your isolationist loyalty to America?

The answer is that while King’s loyalty is with the United States, it is also with the members of a particular European ethno-sectarian group with which he personally identifies. Ethnic/tribal affiliation is a very powerful thing, as Congressman King knows first-hand. It’s also a very natural thing, and a very dangerous thing, as it tends to ignite and exacerbate geopolitical conflict and countenance behavior one would otherwise deplore.

In fact, the topic would make for a fascinating Congressional hearing; the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee would be in a unique position to offer insights on the matter. But instead he chooses to collectively demonize a group of people who have "loyalty to the United States" but who also happen to be members of a currently-disfavored ethno-religious minority. In all seriousness it’s a real shame.

The title actually makes no sense but it was sort of irresistible.

At Foreign Policy Tom Ricks has an essential list of considerations for anyone trying to think through the implications of establishing a no-fly zone in Libya. The first few:

1. Imposing a no-fly zone is an act of war. For example, it would require attacking Qaddafi’s air defense systems-not just anti-aircraft guns and missile batteries, but also radar and communications systems. We may also need some places out in the desert to base helicopters to pick up downed fliers. So, first question: Do we want to go to war with Qaddafi?

2. Hmmm, another American war in an Arab state -- what’s not to like?

3. How long are we willing to continue this state of war? What if we engage in an act of war, and he prevails against the rebels? Do we continue to fight him, escalate — or just slink away? And what do we do about aircrews taken prisoner?

He also notes that the proper historical analogy is not America’s relatively quiesent experience protecting northern Iraq after the Gulf War, but in Serbia in 1999 with a hostile Slobodan Milosevic genuinely intent on fighting back. Any intervention in Libya would certainly seem to fit the latter model.

It’s also important to note that our experience in Iraq perfectly illustrates the relevance of Ricks’ #3. The no-fly zones did realize their immediate objectives—keeping in check Saddam’s addiction to slaughtering Kurds, and preventing him from strafing rebellious Shiites in the South. But it was a strategic dead end. The NFZs only ended with our full-scale invasion in 2003. Absent forcible regime change, we’d still be there with 20,000 troops and hundreds of military planes and dozens of naval ships, at a significant financial cost. In other words we would now be coming up on twenty years of no-fly zone stalemate, unable to disengage and wary of the consequences of escalation. It’s precisely what Ricks is worried about with Libya.

I really don’t think this will happen, or if it did it would have to be so internationalized that the U.S footprint would be all but invisible (which is another way of saying it probably won’t happen). But if Libya really explodes, those advocating intervention better have excellent answers to all of Ricks’ questions.