New York Times

January 6, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist


The New Red, White and Blue
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


As we enter 2006, we find ourselves in trouble, at home and abroad.
We are in trouble because we are led by defeatists - wimps, actually.

What's so disturbing about President Bush and Dick Cheney is that
they talk tough about the necessity of invading Iraq, torturing
terror suspects and engaging in domestic spying - all to defend our
way of life and promote democracy around the globe.

But when it comes to what is actually the most important issue in
U.S. foreign and domestic policy today - making ourselves energy
efficient and independent, and environmentally green - they ridicule
it as something only liberals, tree-huggers and sissies believe is
possible or necessary.

Sorry, but being green, focusing the nation on greater energy
efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is
actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and
patriotic thing we can do. Living green is not for sissies. Sticking
with oil, and basically saying that a country that can double the
speed of microchips every 18 months is somehow incapable of
innovating its way to energy independence - that is for sissies,
defeatists and people who are ready to see American values eroded at
home and abroad.

Living green is not just a "personal virtue," as Mr. Cheney says.
It's a national security imperative.

The biggest threat to America and its values today is not communism,
authoritarianism or Islamism. It's petrolism. Petrolism is my term
for the corrupting, antidemocratic governing practices - in oil
states from Russia to Nigeria and Iran - that result from a long run
of $60-a-barrel oil. Petrolism is the politics of using oil income to
buy off one's citizens with subsidies and government jobs, using oil
and gas exports to intimidate or buy off one's enemies, and using oil
profits to build up one's internal security forces and army to keep
oneself ensconced in power, without any transparency or checks and
balances.

When a nation's leaders can practice petrolism, they never have to
tap their people's energy and creativity; they simply have to tap an
oil well. And therefore politics in a petrolist state is not about
building a society or an educational system that maximizes its
people's ability to innovate, export and compete. It is simply about
who controls the oil tap.

In petrolist states like Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Sudan, people
get rich by being in government and sucking the treasury dry - so
they never want to cede power. In non-petrolist states, like Taiwan,
Singapore and Korea, people get rich by staying outside government
and building real businesses.

Our energy gluttony fosters and strengthens various kinds of
petrolist regimes. It emboldens authoritarian petrolism in Russia,
Venezuela, Nigeria, Sudan and Central Asia. It empowers Islamist
petrolism in Sudan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Most of these petrolist
regimes would have collapsed long ago, having proved utterly
incapable of delivering a modern future for their people, but they
have been saved by our energy excesses.

No matter what happens in Iraq, we cannot dry up the swamps of
authoritarianism and violent Islamism in the Middle East without also
drying up our consumption of oil - thereby bringing down the price of
crude. A democratization policy in the Middle East without a
different energy policy at home is a waste of time, money and, most
important, the lives of our young people.

That's because there is a huge difference in what these regimes
can do with $20-a-barrel oil compared with the current $60-a-barrel
oil. It is no accident that the reform era in Russia under Boris
Yeltsin, and in Iran under Mohammad Khatami, coincided with low oil
prices. When prices soared again, petrolist authoritarians in both
societies reasserted themselves.

We need a president and a Congress with the guts not just to invade
Iraq, but to also impose a gasoline tax and inspire conservation at
home. That takes a real energy policy with long-term incentives for
renewable energy - wind, solar, biofuels - rather than the
welfare-for-oil-companies-and-special-interests that masqueraded
last year as an energy bill.

Enough of this Bush-Cheney nonsense that conservation, energy
efficiency and environmentalism are some hobby we can't afford. I
can't think of anything more cowardly or un-American. Real patriots,
real advocates of spreading democracy around the world, live green.

Green is the new red, white and blue.


Copyright 2006, The New York Times Company