Is energy destiny?

Long ago, columnist and international affairs observer Thomas Friedman argued that the best way to deal with the unending difficulties in the Middle East was to make the region irrelevant. The best way to do that was to kick our addiction to oil. Once that was accomplished, the Middle East could go back to being a desiccated, backward wasteland that warranted hardly any notice. But as long as we needed its oil, it would demand our unwavering geopolitical attention, including that of our armies. Its turmoil would be our turmoil. Its grievances, including cultural and religious, which were incited and amplified by our attention, would be our constant problem. Its bin Ladens would be our terrorist threats.

Lesson not learned.

With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the geopolitical situation has become ominous. But the problem of energy—oil and gas—once again thrusts itself into our responses and options. According to Friedman's formulation, the best way to deal with Putin is to make him irrelevant. And, just as with the Middle East, the best way to do that is to not need the only thing he has that we really want: fossil fuels.

Making Putin irrelevant doesn't mean we should ignore Russia's wars of aggression against its neighbors. But isolating Russia from the commerce and various other routine affairs of free nations would render it increasingly impotent and extraneous, with ever less ability to cause trouble, and with ever more options for us to respond when it does. But that is not where we now find ourselves. In this present moment of peril, the West's response to Putin's aggression is severely hampered by its dependence on Russian oil and gas. It's a problem of our own making.

Part of why the Soviet Union collapsed is that its geopolitical isolation from the West resulted in an untenable economic and technological isolation, leading (in part) to a severely diminished standard of living compared to the economically vibrant, thriving, and technologically advanced western world. That diminished standard of living went hand-in-hand with a diminished capability to conduct its national affairs, both internally and externally.

I'm old enough to remember how the Soviet Union, which was blocked by our export controls from acquiring basic computer technology, sought by hook or by crook to acquire on the black market the kind of DEC VAX computers that were utterly commonplace on any moderate-sized university campus in the U.S. The Soviet Union had no capability to manufacture such technology, and we would not allow it to obtain it as long as it stood in opposition to our standards of freedom and liberty, and subjugated a good chunk of Europe.

Back then, the Soviet Union had hardly anything anybody wanted, and we had much that it needed. I'm old enough to remember, too, when we agreed to sell it wheat—a staple it could never manage back then to produce in adequate quantities on its own—from our own abundant breadbasket. 

But Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy's and Canada's and, indeed, Texas's, now has something the world very much craves: energy. Thus it retains the ability to engage in international commerce despite its thuggish and disruptive actions against its neighbors—now including a massive invasion—and even against democratic institutions around the world. Were it not for oil and gas, Russia would be far more isolated and economically hapless than it is even now, because except for energy and military armaments, and (now!) wheat, Russia doesn't produce much that anybody wants. Even with its massive stores of energy, Russia is little more than a corrupt, repressive, kleptocratic state that ranks 85th in the world in per-capita GDP, and 113th in life expectancy.

The best way, then, to neuter Putin's capacity for aggression would be to declare him unfit to participate in the community of nations; for all the free world to refuse to have any dealings with him. Let him build his economic relationships with the likes of Syria and other rogue, backward states, and see how far that gets him and his people.

But alas, Putin has oil and gas, which changes everything. The West will have a very hard time doing without that energy—a reality that will be tested very soon, with prices soaring and supplies short. Even so, Germany has suspended certification of the almost complete Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. How long will Germany maintain its resolve? The grim reality is that Europe presently gets 40 percent of its gas from Russia. (I began writing this piece shortly after the start of the invasion, and so far Germany's resolve is holding up fairly well. But Germany gets well over half its gas from Russia, plus half its coal and a third of its oil.)

Thus is energy the tail that wags Europe's (and our) dog in the same way that it demanded, as Tom Friedman reminded us, our incessant and destructive attention on the Middle East. It's time to be done once and for all with this enormous nagging burden. Unfortunately, there's an immense amount of work ahead to pull it off, and we've not nearly shown that we have the will or even recognition to decisively do it. Only a massive and rapid restructuring of our energy economy around renewables will get us where we need to be. Russia's invasion might be the impetus that accelerates the transition where mere global warming somehow hasn't.

Making the problem harder by several multiples is that Russia isn't our only problem. China, like Russia, is deeply authoritarian, has the world's second largest economy, and definitely does make things we want. China is likely to blunt western sanctions by buying Russia's oil and coal, and selling it goods.

Disentangling ourselves from both Russia and China might be the only hypothetical long term solution to our biggest problems. I say hypothetical because one can contemplate—but probably not effect—a more or less permanently bifurcated world where economic association and ideological compatibility go together. Good guys refusing to associate with bad guys, as it were. But that's not how modern economies are structured or how modern cravings are satisfied. Our standard of living—something we're probably unwilling to concede—depends on dealing with the bad guys. That standard in the here-and-now inevitably takes precedence over whatever we claim are our higher ideals and principles. And anyway, the line between good guys and bad guys isn't nearly as clear as an idealized vision would have it. Think of our own unprovoked invasion of Iraq.

Suppose China does opt to backstop Russia. What then? By rights, a deliberate unwinding of our economic relationship should commence. (But how?) China would not like that very much, which could potentially affect how strongly it chooses to support Russia in the first place. Except that the calculations are wickedly complicated on all sides, with both short and long term considerations, and pain, that run in every direction. An economically backward partner like Russia isn't going to replace the lucrative market China has long had in the West. On the other hand, China might judge, with good reason, that the U.S. and the West is incapable of significantly altering the status quo relationship. Or maybe China will judge that the relationship is doomed to change over the long term anyway; that the paradigm was already in the early stages of revision thanks to growing geo-strategic considerations, plus a maturing of China's economy that inclines it more toward internal consumption and nudges it away from exports. Maybe now is the time to choose the friends you'll be hanging out with for a good while, and authoritarians seem to prefer each other's company as much as democracies do.

Unwinding such economic relationships would require a resolve, unity of purpose, and tolerance for sacrifice that we Americans and westerners, and our Asian allies, probably aren't capable of mustering. It would require a common vision founded on the very highest civic, moral, and intellectual ideals that right now seem badly lacking as guiding principles. All the disunity and turmoil at home in the U.S. underscores how dismal our own situation is. Americans can't even come together on a unified response to a pandemic that's killed almost a million of us. Heck, we can't even agree that our president was legitimately elected. We ourselves have been backsliding away from democracy and toward authoritarianism, while descending into a mad world of conspiracy theories and alternative realities. Putin and Xi surely take immense satisfaction in all of that, which might in part even explain why Putin chose this moment to act.

So I admit to being deeply pessimistic about America's, and the world's, long term prospects. We're just not committed, as individuals and nations, as communities and national polities, to rise above narrow and rather short term self-interest, above mutual prejudices and animosities, to do what's right, abhor what's wrong (even if only in theory, as the not insignificant pro-Putin sentiment on the right demonstrates), and accomplish great things for the common good. We're not fundamentally resolved to pursue deeply held common principles. I often wonder if we have any principles at all. Will the idea of America prove, in the end, to have been just a dream?

In light of that dismal outlook, I clearly don't have a satisfying answer to our maddeningly complex and disturbing existential conundrum. But I will at least say this. Maybe we should bring our focus back to energy, while hoping for but not yet achieving deeper wisdom and purpose on the larger organizing problems ahead. Despite all our difficulties, despite our downward slide, there does seem to be a conceivable way forward to at least break free of the fossil fuels to which we've been so long and destructively yoked. The technology, if not the will, is well within reach.

I don't want to overstate the probability of that happening, especially in the time frame that's required to both respond to the devastation of climate change, and sustainably restructure our economies. But it could happen. And if it did happen, it might make an enormous world (pun intended) of difference in how we come to see our affairs and our prospects. It would certainly expand our options in positive directions. As a practical matter in this particular moment, but for our reliance on Putin's energy, we could readily deal with his aggression. Maybe it would have been preempted in the first place. Perhaps there's a sense in which energy really is destiny. I've long thought so.

Copyright (C) 2022 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.