The Middle East & Russia

A decade after Reagan won the Cold War and sponsored supply side economics, a new voice threatened the free world. Environmentalists attacked dependence on carbon based energy. Saudi Arabia, with Aramco in the lead, created a defacto pro-western alliance. But when Iraq and Iran renewed their age old conflict, Sadaam Hussain ignited a Shia/Shiite conflict that had existed for centuries. Sadaam’s success against Iran caused the United States to suspend support. Saddam then turned on Kuwait with eyes on Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile the Soviet attack on Afghanistan re-ignited a modern version of the Crusades, Moslems against Christians, funded by the Saudi Arabian Wahabis. To make matters worse, the environmentalists’ ban on drilling forced the United States to choose Iraq as the killing field for access to the world’s carbon.
Other factors emerged. China rejected Mao’s agrarianism in favor of western industrialization. India rejected Ghandi’s pacifism for western industrialism. Both rejected environmentalism for low cost carbon.
Putin realized that with the greening of the democracies, gas and oil revenues from the “stans” could rebuild the Russian economy. Not ideological but the raw power of czarist Russia. For Putin, Georgia, the Ukraine, the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslavakia, Yugoslavia and the middle east became his objective.
Believing environmentalist claims that it will take ten years for American-based carbons to meet the soaring influence of Russian based energy, Putin tested the waters in Georgia.
Will Europe choose Russian oil and gas or the blood, sweat and tears of war? Is NATO a paper tiger? Will Brazil dominate the Americas as the United States currency collapses? The stakes have never been higher. Our allies never more unreliable. Our political will must choose between the sternness of federalism or the excess of liberalism.
The next few years will tell the story. The outlook is not bright. There are nuclear states capable of igniting World War III.
If we reverse political direction and strive to be the largest producer of carbon-based oil, coal and gas at the lowest cost and determined to compete with the middle east and Russia on a cost basis, we will supply Europe and the rest of the world with American carbon—cleaner, safer and cheaper. The middle east will tremble. Russian influence may abate and NATO could find its backbone. India and China will welcome cheap carbon and the United States will re-emerge to our former position as world leader. Realization of Ronald Reagan’s vision of a shining city on a hill.