The demand for energy is only growing, and there is no feasible recourse except fossil fuels to meet that demand.  We can either be serious about finding environmental mitigation for fossil fuel use, or we can freeze in the dark.  You know we aren’t going to choose the latter, so let’s drop the ideological stances (on both sides) and finally get serious about energy.

The leading nation has always been challenged by a land based power operating in system that is relatively more closed both politically and economically.  If the US allows its naval power to decay or otherwise declines to maintain leadership, then the world system will undergo substantial change.  Either a continental power (China) will assume leadership and assert a new set of rules, or the system will devolve into relative anarchy.  Therefore, if the US wishes to ensure that its primary interests of liberty and prosperity are maintained, it must maintain its strategic power.  To me, that means both naval and air power, even at the expense of a large army and standing forces deployed around the globe.  Gordon England, former Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense, made the case for the linkage of naval power and national economic success from a less theoretical but more grounded perspective in last month’s edition of Proceedings, the journal of the Naval Institute.

From the perspective of Long Cycle Theory, the conflicts of the modern world system have always been between a sea power and a land power – and the dominant power has always been the nation that can rule the waves.

Nor is this dichotomy is not limited to Anglo American perspectives on geopolitics and hegemonic power.   Russian geopolitical theorist Aleksander Dugin argues that it is the core of international conflict (he uses the terms “thalassocracy” for sea power and “telluocracy” for land power) and, in a geographically deterministic conclusion, contends that the two different positions create profound cultural differences that will always be in conflict.

In the original dispute between Mahan and MacKinder, the latter feared that the connecting of the Eurasion Heartland via a network of railroads would give the land power a mobility equal to or surpassing that of the naval powers; that a land power would be able to project power as efficiently as formerly only sea power could, and that would allow a nation to dominate all of Asia and bring its vast resources to bear in creating an inexorable global empire.

Today, the Eurasian Heartland and its vast resources are once again the field of contest among great powers.  The technology brought to bear has changed, however.  Whereas a century ago, it was railroads pitted against battleships, today it is pipelines vs. super tankers.  The resource of primary interest in Central Asia is energy – oil and natural gas resources that the energy-dependent economies of the world hunger and thirst for.  The pipelines would seem to have the upper hand, as described in the purple prose of Pepe Escobar, who foresees a MacKinderian nightmare of an Asia integrated on energy trading that he dubs “Pipelineistan.”

Escobar’s vision would be a nightmare development for the West.  Europe would be dependent on Russia for energy and the United States would be marginalized.  It is through this lens that Escobar understands US military and foreign policy, and he may be correct.  But, the shale revolution may completely reshuffle the deck.  The gas bonanza that hydraulic fracturing promises would collapse the price structure on which the intricate network of pipelines depends; it is conceivable that, within 25 years, the United States could at once become the world’s greatest consumer, producer and exporter of energy.  The Pipelineistan behemoth would be stillborne, and the US would remain the world’s greatest power.  All that such an outcome requires are the proper policy decisions in Washington, DC over the next decade.

The data on groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing are clear and overwhelming:  over 20,000 wells have been drilled in the past 10 years, and there have been just 20 cases of groundwater contamination.  That is less than a 1/10 of one percent occurrence rate.

The article that the EER ran was originally published at TomDispatch.org.  On the TopDispatch version of the article, they are hawking a book by their founder titled The United States of Fear, which argues that forces in the nation are using fear (of terrorism, national decline, etc) to boost profits and erode rights.  It is ironic that such a fear-based piece is being used to sell a book warning people about those who would profiteer from fear.

Although I agree with Kazianis on some of his points (in particular, on the Obama administration’s mostly deft geostrategic pivoting toward the Indian and Western Pacific oceans), I have to disagree with his conclusion that US security needs are too complex for a grand strategy (and, also, that previous editions of grand strategy were ever as simplistic as the bumper sticker slogans to which he reduces them).

In my opinion, there is no question that the US needs a grand strategy.  I believe that US grand strategy has always been in the service of two American ideals:  Liberty and Prosperity, which mutually reinforce one another.  I also believe that the levels of Liberty and Prosperity which the US has enjoyed for the past 2 centuries are a direct result of the cyclical 500 year old, Western dominated World Economic System.  That system requires a powerful leader (hegemon) in order to maintain its stability.  For most of the past five centuries, those hegemons have been (in succession) the Dutch, the British and the Americans.  Each, in turn, has maintained internally the wold’s most open political and economic systems as well as the world’s predominant naval power.    And, each has been challenged by large, powerful land-based powers that presented relatively more closed political and economic orders.  In order for the World System to keep operating – to keep providing Prosperity and protecting Liberty – the US must either remain hegemon or work to enable a similarly open successor.    I do not see a successor on the near horizon (although I do believe that India can assume that role in the future), so the US must commit to maintaining global hegemony in the face of the challenge presented by China.

That, in my opinion, should be the foundation of US grand strategy.  To “put it on a post it note,” as Kazianis dismissively requests, it is this:  Recognize and maintain the existence and the essential qualities  of the World System.  Everything in support of that are just questions of operations and tactics.

However, there is a glaring omission in BP’s projections:  there is little attention paid to the impact of growing (even if decelerating)  fossil fuel use on global warming.   However, it is my belief that growing supply could very well outstrip growing demand over this time frame, which would cause prices to fall.  That would leave room for carbon taxes, the revenues from which should be diverted to mitigation efforts.   The latter will be a hard sell – there are entrenched interests on both sides that will fight it (from the right, carbon taxes are anathema while forces on the green left are hostile to a  geo-engineering approach), but as water seeks its own level, so, too, do obvious policy choices.