PrintMarch 23, 2011
Can Europe Stabilize Libya?
The European Union is trying to become a unified state. But at the same time the EU is claiming to represent a new model of statehood, one that means peace and love (and massive vote buying by importing 50 million Muslims) forever and ever. No such nation has ever been seen in history. It's a pipe dream, and it is suicidal.
In Libya today, Europe's absurd self-image is being challenged. The United States should get out of the way and let Europe take responsibility for its own fate in its own neighborhood. If the Europeans fail to stabilize Libya, they should be held responsible. If they succeed, they will taken a step toward a responsible foreign policy. At some point Uncle Sam has to get out of the way and let Huey and Dewey either sink or swim.
The United States has a much more important strategy task, which is to ensure stability in the Gulf. The emerging Shiite-Sunni conflict in that region is a greater threat to worldwide peace than Libya. Iran has been stirring up trouble in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis have sent troops to Bahrain to keep the pro-Iranian rebels down. Iran has pursued a fanatical anti-Western ideology for thirty years, and they will not stop until somebody makes them. The United States is the only power that can. That is our strategic priority.
China and Russia have played spoiler roles in the Gulf, but they are themselves threatened by Islamic radicalism armed with nuclear weapons. They are playing with strategic suicide to weaken the West.
We now know that China is supplying North Korea with uranium centrifuges, knowing full well that the Norks are supplying nuclear technology to Iran and Syria. In effect, China has been secretly supporting the biggest threat to the free flow of oil from the Gulf. Russia and China are both helping to build the Bushehr nuclear power plant, just 50 miles from Saudi Arabia.
The Gulf is therefore becoming a flashpoint for superpower conflict. Libya is a distraction, a secondary theater that is important only on the southern flank of NATO.
With the Japanese nuclear disaster it seems clear that Western nations will not resuscitate nuclear power in the near future. Solar and wind are ecological fantasies. Shale deposits are now by far the most promising sources of vast supplies of oil and natural gas, the latter being the cleanest large-scale fuel we have today. Shale deposits can be found in Canada and the United States, with other sources opening up in Israel and many other regions.
If shale can be developed in environmentally practical ways we do not need resource wars between developing nations, China, India, Russia and all the rest. In ten years the Middle East oil cartel can be cut down to just another supplier among many others.
The most important strategic role for the United States is therefore to maintain stability in the Gulf until shale fuel can come on line around the world. Saudi Arabia and Libya have used their near-monopoly on oil to buy huge influence in the West -- which is why all the media are so worried about phony "Islamophobia." The only way to cut down the Saudis and other fanatical anti-Western regimes is to break their oil monopoly.
It is well within American power to control the Gulf for a decade until shale deposits start producing natural gas and oil. Strategic monopolies are inherently dangerous, especially when they are controlled by a fanatical and aggressive ideology like Wahhabism and Khomeinist Islam.
It should therefore be American policy to undermine the energy monopolies in the world. If our own eco-fanatics sabotage that eminently sensible goal, they should be called what they are, a suicidal fifth column against the West and against world peace.
If Obama doesn't understand that common sense approach to world safety and security, he should be defeated in 2012.
As Governor, Sarah Palin was responsible for developing an enlightened energy policy for Alaska, one that gave citizens a personal stake in safe and sensible energy development. To avoid a worldwide conflict about artificially choked energy supplies under the control of medieval fanatics, the election of 2012 should be about energy and common sense.
