A letter to columnist Colbert I. King in response to his Saturday February 2, 2002 column on the editorial page in the Washington Post newspaper.
Colbert,
Your column "When in Saudi Arabia . . . Do as Americans Do" is a masterful exposure of the hypocrisy that masquerades in Washington as "respecting cultural differences." At the end, you ask of the State Department the penetrating question, "why aren't we acting like Americans?"
The answer of course is "OIL!"
Oil is the energy source that drives the world economy. Without Saudi oil, productivity of the world's industrial base would fall catastrophically. Resulting energy shortages would be disastrous. Prices of gasoline, fuel oil, electricity, and gas would rise dramatically. The cost of industrial manufacturing would shoot up. Lost wages, lower profits, reduced dividends, falling stock prices, and a general decline in the production of goods and services would result. World-wide there would be a precipitous loss of jobs, a rapid fall in the production of wealth, and a widespread decline in personal income.
Oil is important. Oil companies and oil producers have the economy "by the balls." The president and vice president of the United States are big oil men. They both owe their careers to the oil business. They are deeply beholden to companies such as Exxon and Enron for their razor-thin election victory.
The reason that the cause of human rights in South Africa could become popular enough for the U.S government to publicly oppose apartheid is because South Africa does not sit on 40% of the world's known oil reserves. The reason that the State Department doesn't try to spread U.S. morality around in the Persian Gulf, or demand that Saudi human rights standards match ours is because the State Department takes its instructions from a White House that fully appreciates the importance of oil.
Dick Cheney was president of one of the biggest oil producing companies in the world before he became Vice President. Before that he was the Secretary of Defense who formulated the U.S. response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He was appointed head of DOD by another Bush who was also a big oil man. Bush I owes both his presidency and his family fortune to the oil industry. (Does anyone pick up a pattern here?)
As a practical matter, human rights can never factor into serious policy decision-making at the Middle East Desk of the State Department until the vise-grip of oil on the economy is broken. Alternative sources of energy must be developed. But there is no easy way for this to be achieved. Surely the answer is not with wind-mills or solar-cell farms.
In the short term (5 to 10 years), our only hope is a combination of nuclear power, conservation, and stiff taxes on energy consumption. But that would require a major shift in public opinion that would be vigorously opposed by the entrenched oil interests.
In the mid term (10 to 30 years), if the above mentioned taxes on energy consumption were invested in alternative energy supplies, clean burning coal bi-products, alcohol fuels from bio-mass production, solar energy, and hydrogen fuel from electrolysis of water could solve our energy problems.
In the very long term(beyond 30 years), exotic sources such as nuclear fusion could supply the world energy needs. But this will require active government involvement in research and development over a very long time period, and it will not be cheap.
Face it. So long as big oil rules the roost, U.S. policy on human rights will take a back-seat to the larger issue of world economic well-being. A few gays loosing their heads via public executions in Riyadh are small potatoes weighed against the health of the global economy.
James S. Albus
Senior NIST Fellow
Author of
Peoples' Capitalism (1976 New World Books, Kensington, MD)
Brains, Behavioe, and Robotics (1981 BYTE/McGraw-Hill)
Engineering of Mind: An Introduction to the Science of Intelligent Systems (2001 Wiley)
e-mail:
james.albus@gmail.com
or
james.albus@nist.com
web site:
http://peoplescapitalism.org