Criticism of the Bush administration policy in Iraq is easy to find across the political spectrum. TomPaine.com senior editor Doherty says it's time for a candid conversation about the strategic interests that keep America shackled to the Persian Gulf. Now is the time for brave Democrats to open a debate on the national security strategy that's responsible for the Iraq train wreck—the Carter Doctrine.
Patrick C. Doherty is senior editor at TomPaine.com. Previously, he spent a decade working on conflict and economic development in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus. His column, Quo Vadis, focuses on America's big picture: where we are, where we're going, and how to get there.
The failure in Iraq offers Democrats a chance to challenge the central tenets of Bush’s failed national security strategy. The Bush doctrine and the mess in Iraq rest upon a powerful, bi-partisan consensus: the Carter Doctrine. Only if Democrats withdraw their support for that dysfunctional doctrine can America hope for prosperity at home and peace abroad.
The Carter doctrine has guided U.S. foreign policy for 25 years. In 1980, President Carter laid out his doctrine in his State of the Union address . He explained that our strategic interest in the Persian Gulf is based on “the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East.” Since then, our dependence has grown. Over the last 20 years, the percentage of global oil reserves held in the Persian Gulf has risen from 54 percent to 65 percent.
Because of this dependence, the Carter Doctrine asserted that “any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America and…will be repelled by any means necessary including the use of force.”
Since Carter announced his doctrine, Reagan dutifully armed Iraq, Bush the elder liberated Kuwait, and Clinton contained Iraq with sanctions, inspections and no-fly zones. After 9/11, Bush and the neocons used the banner of the war on terror to massively expand American control of global oil reserves, as Michael Klare has shown .
Yet as Dick Cheney now admits, the Bush administration’s calculations were flawed. Iraq now sits on a precipice and can go one of two ways: years of volatile, bloody instability or outright civil war. Former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft is on record saying he’s seeing signs of incipient civil war. This weekend’s flawed elections will only exacerbate the situation.
Either scenario represents failure. Failure in Iraq threatens to destabilize the region that contains 65 percent of the world’s oil reserves. A threat to those reserves is a threat to the global economy. America is now out of military options—the Carter doctrine is obsolete.
Ironically, the Carter Doctrine was outdated before the neocons used 9/11 to justify its expansion. Unlike in 1980, today all nations buy and sell their oil in a unified, global market. Throughout the 1990s, global oil prices were low because of excess capacity, but rising Chinese demand would eventually increase prices and erode U.S. influence in the Gulf. Neocons, worried about unchecked Chinese power, believed the Persian Gulf was the key.
By 2003, however, the Asian economies—led by China—started to take off at unanticipated rates. This surge in demand doubled the price of oil, spiking the U.S. trade deficit and forcing a rise in interest rates that now threatens to burst our housing bubble. Where the neoconservative plan assumed new private investment in Iraq would drive oil prices down and help the U.S. economy, the opposite is taking place. Richard Clarke, in his forward-looking article in the recent Atlantic Monthly , looks at the current situation and sees $85/barrel oil possible in 2007. That’s more than double today’s price.
Yet there is no reason why this must come to pass. Ultimately, securing the global supply of oil only makes economic sense if the price of oil combined with the human and financial costs of intervention is less than alternatives to oil. Without putting a price on the 1,300 American lives already lost, the new $80 billion war supplemental requested by President Bush effectively adds an $87 surcharge on every barrel of Persian Gulf oil we will consume in 2005.
There is another choice available to America—today. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute , America can eliminate up to half of its oil consumption with off-the-shelf efficiency technologies like hybrid engines and ultra-light automotive materials. In addition, investing in efficiency at home—not military occupation abroad—means high-tech, high-wage jobs for U.S. workers.
And that should be a no-brainer to a majority of Americans. Our workers get good jobs, our soldiers do not die for a needless addiction. Freed of the need to import and protect oil, our trade and federal deficits will shrink.
Yet the Democratic leadership has failed to question President Bush’s national security strategy, a strategy predicated on transforming the Middle East and securing oil supplies around the world. Instead, they cling to John Kerry’s campaign position: accept President Bush’s national security strategy but challenge his implementation.
The political opportunity to talk about more than the tactical failures in Iraq won’t last forever. Democrats should paint the bigger historical picture now and admit that oil drives our policy—before global events limit our options even more.
Such a departure will not be an easy step to take. Democrats will have to break a solemn rule of American politics: that partisanship stops at the water’s edge. It will be especially difficult at a time when our soldiers are in harm’s way.
