Could the U.S. walk away from the Persian Gulf?

It seems as if American society has finally reached a political consensus on the urgency of energy security. December’s energy bill that President Bush signed into law contained a government mandate to sharply increase the fuel mileage requirement for new cars and light trucks sold in the country. Today, this new mandate seems uncontroversial. Yet for several decades previously its adoption was prevented by free-market arguments from the political right and opposition from Michigan-based labor unions and supporting politicians on the left. All such objections have now been swept away.

The point of the new mileage mandate is to reduce America’s dependence on oil imports, a national security issue. Naturally, it remains to be seen whether the new mandates will accomplish their intended purpose. In the meantime, the presumed political consensus to do more to achieve energy security will continue, bringing about more ideas for government action to achieve this goal.

At Instapundit, Glenn and Helen Reynolds interviewed Mr. Bob Zubrin, author of Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil. Mr. Zubrin advocates for a government mandate requiring all new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be “flex fuel” capable, permitting a vast expansion in the production and substitution of a wide variety of alcohols in place of gasoline.

According to the U.S. Energy Department, as of July 2007 the U.S. relied on imports for 59.9% of its net crude oil and petroleum product consumption. Yet just 17% of those imports came from the Persian Gulf. One could foresee a scenario by which U.S. reliance on Persian Gulf oil could decline toward zero. Increasing crude oil production from Angola and political stabilization in Nigeria could result in an increase in oil exports from west Africa to the U.S. Reform of Pemex in Mexico could revive production there (see this article from the Economist for caveats). The collapse of the Chavez regime in Venezuela would see an increase in exploration and production there. And the boom in exploration and production in Alberta and the Canadian Rockies should continue.

Thus, a combination of mileage mandates, mandates to expand the alcohol fuel industry, the arrival of plug-in hybrid vehicles, and the expansion of crude oil production in the Western hemisphere could turn the Persian Gulf into an economic and strategic irrelevancy for the United States.

Or would it? Even if the U.S. managed to reduce its crude oil imports from the Persian Gulf to zero, historian Walter Russell Mead argues that it would be dangerous for the U.S. to walk away from the region. While we can imagine America’s reliance on Persian Gulf oil dropping away, the dependence of China, India, Japan, Europe, and others to the Persian Gulf will remain high and rising. If the U.S. walks away from the Persian Gulf leaving a security vacuum, other powers will have step in, as Mr. Mead describes:

The end of America's ability to safeguard the Gulf and the trade routes around it would be enormously damaging--and not just to us. Defense budgets would grow dramatically in every major power center, and Middle Eastern politics would be further destabilized, as every country sought political influence in Middle Eastern countries to ensure access to oil in the resulting free for all.

The potential for conflict and chaos is real. A world of insecure and suspicious great powers engaged in military competition over vital interests would not be a safe or happy place. Every ship that China builds to protect the increasing numbers of supertankers needed to bring oil from the Middle East to China in years ahead would also be a threat to Japan's oil security--as well as to the oil security of India and Taiwan. European cooperation would likely be undermined as well, as countries sought to make their best deals with Russia, the Gulf states and other oil rich neighbors like Algeria.

Is Mr. Mead’s argument convincing? If America’s potential peer competitors had to waste resources on military budgets and even wars for Persian Gulf oil, while the U.S. stood aside and looked on, might that actually prolong America’s position as the leading power in the world? Or would the U.S. economy suffer as its international trading partners beat each other up? If the other powers spent vastly more money on military muscle and gained experience in combat (while the U.S. peacefully looked on), would that not prepare these future peer competitors to later challenge the U.S. itself?

Finally, a concerted American campaign to eliminate its dependence on Persian Gulf energy supplies might spark a global arms race, even if the U.S. pledged to keep the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain forever. From China’s or India’s or Europe’s perspective, if the U.S. actually did achieve economic independence from the Persian Gulf, the U.S. would then have the option of walking away from the region at any time. It is that option that the other powers would have to prepare for.

Of course that doesn’t mean that the U.S. shouldn’t vigorously pursue that option. But merely pursuing it will likely result in interesting geo-strategic changes.