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A Century of War
A California electricity crisis, soaring natural gas and oil prices, and a chaotic U.S. electricity grid were the publicly stated reasons for the president’s asking Cheney to make proposals on a national energy strategy. The Cheney National Energy Policy Report gave a clear signal of what the new administration was about. Its message was buried in partisan debate and ignored. It should have been studied more carefully as a clue to the Bush agenda. ‘WHERE THE PRIZE ULTIMATELY LIES’ The Baker Institute’s energy strategy report formed the basis of the official Cheney task force recommendations to the president, the National Energy Policy Report of April 2001. Both the Baker and Cheney reports projected a dramatic increase in U.S. dependency on imported oil over the coming two decades. Baker’s group identified growing shortages of world oil, and singled out Iraq for attention: ‘Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to … the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East,’ the Baker study declared. They didn’t explain why. They simply called on Washington to ‘restate goals with respect to Iraq policy.’ The Baker Institute study also recommended that Cheney’s Energy Policy Group include ‘representation from the Department of Defense.’ The U.S. military and energy strategy were in effect to be one. The Baker report concluded, as a portent of what was to come, ‘Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game, U.S. firms, U.S. consumers and the U.S. government [will be left] in a weaker position.’ Cheney and the new administration did not hesitate to assume the leadership role, though few could imagine at that point just how the new rules would be formed. Cheney’s report emphasized a growing dependency of the United States economy on oil imports, and looked well into the future. After a passing mention of domestic energy alternatives, the core of the recommendations dealt with how the United States might secure new foreign oil sources. In this regard, the report noted a problem. Many of the areas in the world holding the largest oil resources were in the hands of national governments whose interests were not necessarily to help the U.S. energy agenda. Cheney’s report noted that these ‘foreign powers do not always have America’s interests at heart.’ What he meant was that a nationalist government with control of its own energy resources and with its own ideas of national development
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