AmbassadorBlog

Taps for UN Peacekeeping?

The Security Council members, led by the British, French and Americans, have stretched the meaning of peacekeeping to the point that the concept today is unrecognizable and increasingly unrealistic. In the late forties and fifties the idea was to station military officers to observe the actions of waring parties to make certain that they stuck to the agreements that they had negotiated. Peacekeepers were not supposed to come into harms way because their presence was at the request of the conflicting parties and they were seen as neutral observers.  A blue helmet bought the wearer immunity.  Thus, it was a cheap way to keep everyone honest and to assure each side in a dispute that the other was not taking advantage of a ceasefire to improve its military position for another round of fighting.  It made sense and it worked.

Peacekeepers who were interposed between two disputants, with the disputants full agreement, gave each side an excuse for not breaking the truce or ceasefire.  It was only when Nassar demanded the withdrawal of UNEF I, for example, that the '67 war between Israel and Egypt became inevitable. Up to that point Nassar had been able to tell the Arab and non-aligned world that he could not break through the UN positions by force in order to go to war against Israel.  Once the international force was gone, Nassar had no choice if he wanted to retain his credentials as the leader of the Arab and non-aligned worlds.  

A similar consideration has led up to now to stabilization of the post 1967 lines between Syria and Israel. It was not convenient for either side to upend a UN arrangement that was seen as keeping the parties from war and gave each the cover for not escalating occasional flareups.  These were all cases where stable countries were involved, staring at each other across an abyss, but commanding disciplined forces and speaking with one voice. 

Increasingly, those conditions do not exist in peacekeeping operations today.  When peacekeeping is proposed, the clarity of two contending parties has often been absent. Sides are fragmented into factions with different agendas and forming at best a loose confederation subject to breakup at any moment.  Countries are divided along historic fault lines such that there is no reliable central authority. Differences are deeply engrained in race, sect, tribe, religion and history.  Alliances are formed and reformed and your friend today may be your enemy tomorrow.  Under these circumstances it is virtually impossible to stay neutral or at least to be seen by all contesting parties as neutral.  Blue helmets are not nearly as imposing as guns if the guns are seen to be supporting the enemy. 

For many years the UN was immunized from being embroiled in messy conflicts by virtue of the US - Soviet confrontation and consequent inability of the Security Council to act except in rare circumstances. The Security Council was saved by its own immobility and thus was only called on for clear and agreed tasks. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been no natural set of brakes, no excuse for the Security Council not to act when hostilities erupt.  

So peacekeeping has had to evolve along with the nature and complexity of the conflicts involved. It is no longer enough to put a thin blue line between combatants.  Now there have to be lawyers, accountants, economists, police, and politicians to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  And the question has come to be whether or not all the king's horses and all the king's men can put Humpty Dumpty together again.   We have moved from peacekeeping to social engineering and nation building and it is not at all clear that the UN is the right vehicle to undertake these roles and, if it is, whether it is organized and financed to do the job.  

The price tag for missions has skyrocketed.  The original mission in the Middle East of an observer force, UNTSO, is still operational and costs $70 million a year.  The Observers along the India-Pakistan border only cost $21 million.  But new missions, the so called "robust" missions like the hybrid Darfur mission has a price tag of $1.7 billion a year, the Congo is $1.5 billion and in Sudan with two missions the UN is spending a billion dollars a year.  And those prices only cover the peacekeepers, not the associated costs of security, aid, consultants and in-country support costs. 

In 1990 there were less than 14,000 uniformed peacekeepers, today there are 98,639 from 114 countries.  How long will governments agree to provide soldiers and how long will parliaments agree to pay for them as budgets are tightened around the world?

Peacekeeping has been a valuable tool for diplomacy, but if Rwanda, Somalia, Darfur, and Bosnia are any indication the tool has lost its edge and now risks undercutting other critical UN operations as belt tightening takes its toll across the UN board.  It is time to reduce the UN profile in peacekeeping and to turn to ad hoc groups of countries to police their own problems.  It is time to rely on regional organizations or combinations thereof to do the heavy lifting. And if agreement and cost sharing cannot be reached on a regional or ad hoc basis, so be it.  If Rwanda did not stimulate the African Union to act to avoid genocide, then the blood is on their hands.  If the OAS cannot police Haiti then why should the UN be asked to do so? Countries will not take on the responsibility for these problems so long as someone else is there to pick up the heavy burden. Have we fallen into the trap of the international community being the first responder when it should be the last resort?          

 

 

A Green Future - Cash or Climate?

As we enter the season of Presidential politics, we can expect the discourse to become more partisan, less objective and at times downright silly.  There are very serious and far reaching issues that the country must come to grips with and there are arguments that should be heard on both sides. It is not productive, therefore, to hide the issues in an avalanche of rhetoric, misinformation and ignorance. One particularly important and divisive element of the debate is one of the oldest in our country, the role of the States and the role of the Federal Government.  It is a legitimate question.  Certainly, there are grounds to be concerned about the intrusion of the Federal Government into our daily lives and to worry about excessive regulation and its impact on economic growth.  But, to carry on this debate, as if we were still living in the 18th century, is not very productive for dealing with today's global problems. 

Some of the problems we will have to deal with over the next fifty years will not stop at our borders, either those of our home states or of our nation.  States acting on their own or even in coordination with one another are not sufficient to the task.  Similarly, the United States cannot hope to meet some potential and actual foreseeable threats to the well being of our people without international cooperation that involves US leadership.  It is a pipe dream to think we can go it alone, and it is a nightmare to contemplate the results if we try to do so.  Not only does it not make sense in these circumstances to speak of “states rights,” it also makes no sense to speak of “fortress America.”

Governor Perry of Texas questioned whether human activity is causing global warming even though up to 98% of climate scientists believe that the linkage is clear.  But, for the sake of argument, let’s say he is right: human activity is not causing global warming.  However, even he cannot deny that ice caps are melting and temperature measurements over time seem to indicate a warming trend.  Whatever the cause of this trend, whether it is human activity or cyclical patterns, the effect of warming on us will be the same.  If the world is getting warmer, that will have an impact on growing seasons, food supply, disease transmission, flooding, weather patterns, and so on.  Furthermore, the impact will be unevenly distributed within our country and globally. 

There are at least three ways to deal with this: 1. Kick the can down the road, ignore it, stick our heads in the sand - the Perry solution - and hope it all turns out OK; 2. try to slow the process down by adjusting human behavior so that we are not adding to the problem by speeding up and intensifying the cyclical process of warming – the EPA solution of curtailing CO2 among other steps (Now taken off the table by President Obama in the face of industry opposition.); or 3. Start planning and acting now to prepare ourselves to live with a warmer world and begin to take steps toward environmental remediation.

Steps to adjust current behavior was the direction the EPA and the President were taking, but it was blocked by well funded business and political interests who beat the drums of jobs and recession leading Obama to cave in.   Realistically, so long as adjustment will lead to reduced profitability, nothing will happen, at least until after the 2012 election and only with difficulty thereafter given the composition of our Congress, the Supreme Court, and our campaign financing laws (or lack thereof).

Steps toward remediation will also incur costs now, and while it might well actually create jobs in the short term, it would be pilloried by the Tea Party as yet another government hand out and expansion of Federal encroachment on our American way of life.  Thus, the temptation at all levels of government and certainly among the bulk of conservative voters, will be to put off today what can be done tomorrow.  It is easier to question the science and to blame the scientists for feathering their own nest than the wealthy who have feathers in abundance.  The easy path is the Perry path. 

Given our annual budget process based on annual expenditures, and in the absence of a separate national investment budget for the long term, it does not appear that our two party system will be able to embrace short term sacrifice to gain long term benefits.  Look at how wrenching and inconclusive our recent debt debate was.  There was a plethora of rhetoric about saddling future generations with our present debt.  But, God forbid we should equalize the current burden to solve the longer term problem.  Tax the wealthy, cut farm subsidies, extend the age of social security? Or none of the above.  The effects of the debt burden on future generations seems to be a concept that people can understand only in terms of placing the burden of sacrifice on others. So we do nothing and hope for the best.  The Perry solution is the easiest. And, guess who will have to pay the ultimate price?

Unintelligent Intelligence

For ten years at least and more likely 15, and most certainly since March 6. 2010 when President Mubarak of Egypt underwent gall bladder surgery, we have known that the 82 year old President of Egypt could die or be incapacitated at any moment.  We have also known that there was no clear path for succession.  Structurally, Mubarak had fixed the system so that his son Gamal could take over.  But there were serious doubts that the Egyptian military would accept a civilian like Gamal or accept the ignominy of copying Syria by passing the torch down the family line. Egyptian pride is a characteristic we know very well.  So we knew that the actuarial tables suggested an end in sight and that the process for succession was uncertain.  

So why was it a surprise when demonstrations peaked in Cairo and Mubarak was forced out by his military? Why was there no contingency plan on the shelf for an event that was unpredictable only in its timing? And why were we caught flat footed when two-thirds of the population, those who are under 30, said, Enough, "Kifayya."  And yet the Administration lurched from "Mubarak is not a dictator" to "Egypt is stable" even while the TV cameras were documenting a massive protest. Where was our intelligence community and who was advising our President, Vice President and Secretary of State? 

Prediction and sooth saying are very much the same thing - brilliant when proven correct and forgotten when proven wrong.  The signs were there - unemployment of the under 30's, an educated youth population without jobs and prospects, cultural barriers to the unemployed for marriage and family, an underpaid and undereducated police force, a judicial system that depends on confessions rather than forensics and investigation for convictions, a conscript military with the officers running a parallel state, a system of crony capitalism that enriched the connected and ignored the rest, the palliative of reasonable economic growth by the IMF's numbers that somehow never reached the people. 

But Mubarak had survived for 30 years. Our predisposition was to assume that he would survive for the next thirty.  What was the tipping point that would suggest that what had worked in the past would no longer work today? And who was paying attention to the 20 somethings who were about to lead a revolution?

Now we have another example of the failure of our intelligence.  We have just learned from Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, also known by the codename "Curveball," that he made up the reports of Saddam Hussein's mobile biological labs in Iraq.  And with those reports Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the world at the UN and accused Saddam Hussein of accumulating weapons of mass destruction - weapons that only existed in al-Janabi's mind and in his desperation to push the United State into war.  This despite the fact that the CIA's European chief had already raised doubts about the report and about al-Janabi.  Yet the Administration, through the CIA Director and others, pressed Powell hard with the absolute certainty that comes from true believers. 

In the case of Mubarak, we had a strong predisposition to accept his likely survival and so we were not prepared.  With curveball we had a key portion of our political establishment that wanted to believe in him so that we could justify the invasion of Iraq.  

We need to do better.  We need to break the chains of assumptions and expectations and predispositions and agendas.  We need to put analysis and critical thinking before ideology,political party, and the lessons of the past.  (We may have learned those past lessons too well.) And we need an analytical capability in our intelligence community that is immune from politics and changing administrations.  We have the talent.  But even if we had such an institution, would we listen to it? 

 

 

 

 

Netanyahu 2, Abbas 1, & Obama 0

If we were keeping score on the question of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel based on the New York meeting on Tuesday, we would have to award Prime Minister Netanyahu two points, the Palestinian President Abbas one point, and President Obama no points.  Obama certainly did not get much joy from Netanyahu in New York.  In the peace process, as an American negotiator, you can gauge how well you are doing by the number of right wing Israeli settlers protesting outside the Prime Minister's residence after a round of talks. The streets were empty today.  Of course, you can always count on the Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman to tell it like it is without the diplomatic coating that Netanyahu is so careful to preserve.  According to the Israeli press, Lieberman said on Wednesday that Netanyahu's summit with Obama was a victory because it took place even though Israel rebuffed Obama's demand on settlements. Member of Knesset Danny Danon, from Likud's right flank was obviously jubilant and, at the same time insulting to President Obama when saying that he hopes "the summit stops the Hollywood movie in which Obama lives."

We do not know what went on in private between Obama and Netanyahu.  We don't know if there were promises made.  But Dennis Ross, who was in on the meetings, went down this road with me before in negotiations with Netanyahu the last time he was Prime Minister.  So Dennis knows that what is said in private does not always occur in fact. And, to be honest, how could the Prime Minister of Israel accommodate a full settlement freeze or a serious lockdown on expansion given the government he has cobbled together.  No Israeli Prime Minister has been able to do this in a sustained way in the past, and Netanyahu is a most unlikely candidate to be the exception. Look at the numbers and tell me how Netanyahu could sustain his government if he compromises on the settlements issue.  He can't even count on the right wing of his Likud party, let alone Yisrael Beitenu, Jewish Home, or the United Torah Judaism party.  George Mitchell knows better.  He made it clear after the meeting that a settlement showdown is not a precondition for resuming negotiations.   And Netanyahu made clear that the settlements issue can only be considered in the context of the final status negotiations.  "But we have to talk in order to talk about it," Netanyahu said. 

But what will they talk about?  That is the question Obama has to face.  If the Israeli coalition government would fall over the settlements issue, would it not be more likely to fall over any compromise or even any gesture on Jerusalem?  Or on refugees?  And how are we going to negotiate borders without impinging on settlements? This is déjà vu for me.  We seem to be fighting our way back to Menahem Begin's formula for Palestinian autonomy - a Palestinian government in the mind but not on the ground.  That no doubt would satisfy Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition. 

But what about the Palestinians?  The pressure was not on them in this round.  They have just as many internal political problems as the Israelis do.  Only in Abu Mazen's case the costs of compromise are likely to be renewed civil war and violence and possibly even his life.  So the Palestinians probably sighed a sigh of relief that they got out of New York without having to challenge Hamas and without undercutting their relationship with President Obama while leaving Israel to take the blame. 

Perhaps President Obama will have to stop thinking about this problem in the short term and stop looking for a quick fix.  It seems clear that no progress is possible on the critical issues so long as the Israeli government continues in its current configuration.  And in all probability no progress can really be expected so long as the Palestinians are a hair's breadth away from committing mutual suicide.  So perhaps the Palestinian Prime Minister Salem Fayyed has it right.  This may be the time for the Palestinians to get their act together and form a credible government in the service of the Palestinian people.  And it may be time for Israelis to consider their future and decide whether or not they want peace to be held hostage by a rigid minority of the settler movement.  Or we can just mark time until Palestinians living on land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean outnumber their Jewish neighbors.  Then what?

The Thirteenth Palestinian Government

From the earliest days, once the Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat forced the United States back in 1978 to take an active role in resolving the Palestinian problem, we have largely focused our efforts on security and the key final status issues like borders and Jerusalem.  President Bush embraced the  policy of a two state solution, but aside from some discussions in the context of the Autonomy negotiations and in the Oslo process years ago, there has been very little focus on what the Palestinian State will look like, how it will be organized and what are the premises on which it will be based. Presumably, these are questions that the Palestinians will have to answer in due course.  But, it is very hard for me to imagine that Israel, or for that matter the United States, is a disinterested party.  Will the Palestinian state look like Gaza under Hamas?  If that is the expectation then it is not very likely that negotiations on the final status, even if started, would ever result in an agreement.  

What we have all known for a long time is that Israel will not accept a hostile, independent state in the West Bank and Gaza and nor should it.  If there was ever any doubt of this, all we need to do is to examine the Israeli and US reaction to Hamas' rule over Gaza.  The Israelis will have to know who their neighbors are and will have to have a high degree of confidence that once a Palestinian state is established, it will not become a launching pad for attacks on Israel.  Without a substantial degree of mutual confidence, issues like security, settlements, borders, Jerusalem and refugees cannot be resolved.  This is not only a question of lines on a map.  It is also a question of intentions.

Certainly, the Palestinian record thus far does not fill one with confidence.  The divided polity, the clinging to rhetoric instead of reality, the record of corruption in the Palestinian National Authority,  and failure to govern effectively even in areas where the Authority has sway, creates the expectation of failure, instability, and continued hostility toward Israel as the path of least resistance.  Palestinians have been reluctant to take on the hard issues of coming to grips with their internal differences using the excuse that with the Israelis hovering over every decision and intervening at will, the Palestinians cannot determine their own vision or begin the construction of their own state.  They have been unwilling to take the difficult steps of forging a common Palestinian vision and policy in the absence of the concrete governmental structure of a State in being - until now.  

Now the Palestinian National Authority is advancing a new approach in its program of the thirteenth government entitled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State" published in August 2009.  This is a document that has received little notice in the media, but which lays out a picture of a Palestinian state that could, if implemented, enable a constructive process of peace making.  The document includes a forward by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister that sets out the objectives of the Government for the next two years as a "full commitment to this state-building endeavor" and emphasizes that such a program is "critical" to the "creation of the independent state of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital."  Fayyad's formulation in his cover letter is interesting since it is not found in the document itself.  He refers to "East" Jerualem - the document consistently refers to "Jerusalem" without any modifier.  The document itself has problems such as repeated references to UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which established the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to their homes based on their free choice.  However, the document assigns responsibility of dealing with the refugees to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and not to the Palestinian Authority or its government.  

The agenda that the program of the 13th government has set out is surprisingly detailed, which is unusual for political documents that have to appeal to a broad constituency.  What is even more surprising is the level of self-criticism that is implied by the document. Repeated references to the need for auditing government functions would appear to be in response to the heavy criticism of the Authority as being corrupt.  It would also tend to indicate that over the 17 years that the Palestinian Authority has been in existence, virtually no reforms have taken place, no strategic plan has been developed, no consensus on goals and vision has been reached, and that there has been little or no effort to establish the foundation for a viable Palestinian state.  A lot of the credit for this dysfunctional history has to be laid at the feet of Yasser Arafat whose style of governing was divide, conquer and never decide. 

While one could nit-pick the program. Certainly there are aspects that will cause heartburn particularly within the Palestinian community, but also among some Israelis.  Furthermore, there is a long distance between statements of intention and facts on the ground.  It remains to be seen if Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad can deliver on the vision and reform.   But it is virtually certain, in my view, that without such an effort on the part of the Palestinians, there will be no peace agreement, no Palestinian state, and no respite from terrorism.  The program's success is, as Prime Minister Fayyad says, essential if a peace agreement is to be reached. The program is predicated on and designed to help achieve the unification of the Palestinian polity, without which I do not give the peace process a snowball's chance of succeeding.  This is the very first time that we have seen a concrete, rational, official Palestinian projection of what a Palestinian state might look like and how it could sustain peace as a democracy based on the rule of law. That has been an important missing ingredient in all the past efforts to concoct a peace between Israelis and the Palestinians. We should give Salam Fayyad our full support and help him make his vision real.  

245- "A Time for Every Season"

President Obama said on April 11, in his weekly radio and Internet address that major obstacles such as climate change, the global financial crisis, terrorism and nuclear proliferation demand coordinated action to overcome.  He said. "These are challenges that no single nation, no matter how powerful, can confront alone,"  "The United States must lead the way. But our best chance to solve these unprecedented problems comes from acting in concert with other nations."

It is a nice sentiment, and on the face of it, it seems logical and persuasive.  But can the world act in concert? And on what? The one overriding truth of the nation state system as we know it is that states will act in their own perceived self-interest even if that comes at the expense of other states and long term goals. And the perception of self-interest is almost inevitably short term. It would certainly seem to be in the broad interest of mankind to curtail carbon emissions and at least slow global warming.  But polar bears are not as important as the  survival and competitive advantage of your business community and the jobs and profits they produce.  And the lobbyists and shareholders of those businesses are not likely to let up the pressure on their members of Congress to reach global agreements that give competitive advantage to China or India. 

Recent history has not been kind to global efforts to solve problems.  The Doha round is dead - the victim of conflicting North-South interests and the inability of nation states to compromise when faced with political pressure at home.  The  Fifth World Conference on Women was deferred in 2005 due to fear that the gains of the 1995 conference would be lost in the face of positions on abortion and the human rights of women adopted by the Bush administration.  United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, is set for 7-18 December 2009, but success is far from certain.  The Obama administration is currently in the process of back tracking from early statements on climate change and a cap and trade system for carbon emissions.

The United Nations Security Council has been blocked from effective action in Darfur to save lives and has been unable to confront Sudan’s president Bashir to restore humanitarian aid to its former level. The International Criminal Court issued an indictment of Bashir, which the African Union and Arab League ignored.  The Security Council cannot even act effectively to enforce its own resolution against North Korean missile testing and had to settle for a watered down Presidential statement, which everyone knows who has worked at the UN is a toothless face saver for an embarrassed Council.  Afghanistan is going backwards as NATO countries argue over policy and participation.  The President is rebuffed by the Iranians in his effort to open a door.  And he was far short of his goals at the G20.  Where is the leadership that President Obama is talking about?

In the early 90’s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world came together and marked major progress on trade, intellectual property, population problems, women’s rights, and a plethora of Security Council, NATO, and AU interventions in global hot spots.  Education about global health and international systems to deal with pandemics were instituted. Growth pulled millions of people out of poverty.  Most of the world, except for the United States came together on climate change at Kyoto. 

The difference between then and now was that then wealth was expanding and more people and states could share in the pie.  Today, contraction means that states and individuals are trying to hold on to those larger slices at the expense of others.  The industrialized country leadership has pledged to avoid protectionism, but protectionism is insidious and does not have to mean new openly restrictive measures.  It can mean the failure to correct existing imbalances that favor the few at the expense of the many.  For example, it can mean the collapse of negotiations over agriculture in the Doha round.  Protectionism can mean the failure to reach agreement on a new climate agreement at the UN Conference in December.  It can mean buy America provisions in legislation and failure to compete for massive new expenditures under the stimulus package.

Perhaps this is not a time for bold new international initiatives.  Perhaps we should take a page out of the book of the organizers of the Fifth World Conference on Women and be satisfied to protect that which has already been gained and defer that which exceeds our capacity right now while we work to restore growth and wealth.  President Obama is correct that our future depends on our ability to act in concert with others.  But in that process, we have to be realistic about the nature of that concert.  Let us focus on what can be done now and leave for later global initiatives that will inevitably divide us today and create a downward spiral of beggar thy neighbor.

The 65% Energy Gap

A discussion by energy experts at the Middle East Institute during its annual conference in Washington, November 9th, emphasized some disturbing facts about our energy future.  According to the experts, the world consumes about 75 million barrels of oil a day.  If demand growth continues at projected levels over the next 25 years, by 2030 we are going to need 128 million barrels of oil a day. That is a shortfall from today’s production of 53 million barrels a day. To make it up we would have to increase global production by 65% while at the same time that existing fields are suffering declining production at an increasing rate. If it sounds impossible, it probably is. 

William Ramsey, the deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency says that Saudi Arabia, which currently produces 10.5 million barrels a day, can reasonably expand production to 18.2 million barrels per day by 2030, if they choose to do so. That would leave a shortfall of some 45 million barrels.  I was no great whiz at math, but even I can tell that something is not adding up here. 

Of course Saudi Arabia is not the only country that can add to the total production.  Iraq could produce more if it had substantial foreign investment to do so.  But foreign investors are not going to get into the Iraqi market given the current security situation.  And if anyone thinks we went into Iraq for the oil, they should be aware that there has been a 40% decline in Iraqi production since we engaged militarily. 

Iran used to produce 6 million barrels a day under the Shah, but the combination of revolution and our sanctions have reduced Iranian production over the last decade to 50% of what it was in the Shah’s day.  In both Iraq and Iran there are questions about damage that may have been done to existing fields due to poor policies and inadequate maintenance.

Kuwait could produce more but it is saddled with a democratic parliament which has stalled for the past seven years the ruler’s plans for development of Kuwait's northern fields.  Certainly, democracy, with its emphasis on national rather than global needs, does not appear to be a solution to our problem. 

The United Arab Emirates could increase production but why should it?  It is awash in oil profits and cannot reasonably invest its current surplus given is small population base. Countries like the UAE tend to husband their oil resources for the future.

Libya is a hope for the future but our sanctions are still a burden on Libyan development which needs substantial investment to produce meaningful results.  Meanwhile, North Sea field production has already peaked and the Caspian basin and the Gulf of Guinea are both due to peak in 2015.

On the demand side, the two major emerging economies, China and India, consume 2 barrels per person per year.  We consume 26 barrels per person.  For China to arrive at the level of Taiwan's oil consumption, China would need to consume 49 million barrels a day.  That is compared with the world’s total of 75 million barrels consumed today.  And just think if China continues its growth spurt and people have more disposable income.  The Chinese people are most likely going to want to have cars.  Today, the Chinese have one of the lowest numbers of vehicles per thousand people in the world with only 20 million vehicles total.  Imagine the gasoline consumption and the demand on oil that will be required by 120 million Chinese vehicles, a not unlikely situation by 2030.

Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana sees the solution in coal and talks about energy independence through the development of a clean burning synthetic fuel from coal.  But even the Governor does not expect any substantial potential for production for at least 10 years.  He envisions a $7 billion plant ten years from now that would turn out 150,000 barrels a day for an estimated cost of production of $35 per barrel.  The cost of production of a barrel of oil in the United States runs about $10.  In Norway that cost is $2.70 and in the Middle East, depending on the field, it can be as low as $1.00 a barrel.  That does not make coal oil production very competitive unless the price of a barrel of oil remains well over $35 a barrel. We would need 7 similar coal gasification plants of the type Governor Schweitzer envisions to provide one million barrels a day and seven times that many plants just to meet the additional oil that Saudi Arabia can bring into production over the next 25 years.

All of the talk by our politicians about energy independence is just that – talk.  They are appealing to our ignorance and wishful thinking.  The fact is that we are dependent today on the 60% of the world’s oil reserves and 40% of the world’s gas reserves that currently exist in the Middle East and we will be even more dependent in the future.  We are particularly dependent on Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Algeria and may become dependent on Iraq and, yes, Iran in the future. So we had better make plans to safeguard and build our relations with these countries and ensure their security and stability for many years to come.  Our politicians might want to start thinking in hard- headed realistic terms about the price and availability of energy if we are to do anything useful about it in the coming years. The hyperbole and political grandstanding that some politicians seem to enjoy may come back to haunt all of us in the future.