March 15, 2013
Ambassador John Bolton
Can”t we just cut Israel off anyway? They”ve got a good GDP and the amount of money we give them isn”t what’s keeping them afloat. Let’s leave them be and if they get seriously attacked, we”ll jump in.
The economic assistance we give them is much less than the military assistance, but most of that money is spent in the United States. We helped create Israel because we thought it was justifiable for historical reasons and because of the Holocaust. Having created it implies a need to defend it. It’s a democratic society and a difficult territory and is often a surrogate for attacks on the United States, hence “Little Satan.”
I heard you once make an argument that it would be bad for the American dollar to pull out of everywhere because it would make us look weak and the dollar is a brand just like any other. Like Coke, people say they don”t need to advertise anymore because they”ve already established themselves but if they didn”t, their shares would plummet and Pepsi would move in. If that’s true, even a president that was against foreign intervention would have to continue because America would go bankrupt without it.
I don”t think I made that particular analogy. It’s not so much the American dollar as it is the economy as a whole. We are in a globalized economy and if you don”t have security and some degree of stability internationally, you”re going to have less international trade and investment, less international travel, and less finance overall. Free trade and open markets lead to prosperity for everybody. If you reverse that, those kinds of economic interchanges can”t take place and we can”t sustain our economic way of life at home.
But you don”t blow up Walmart when you want to buy a shirt. We get [much] of our oil from Canada and we haven”t fought with them since 1812.
I”d be delighted to have more access to North American fuel for all kinds of reasons, but the Obama Administration is standing in the way of that. We”ve got environmental policies preventing us from exploiting our resources, so we”re thrown to the international markets. If we became an energy exporting country again, it would have huge geopolitical ramifications and we would be safer.
Wait, that’s what I”m saying. I think the world is more anarchic since we invaded Iraq post-9/11. Isn”t it easier to buy from someone you”re not invading?
If a Saddam Hussein takes over Kuwait and then invades Saudi Arabia (as he likely planned to do in 1991), he’s got control of the oil and like any monopolist, up goes the price. It’s like the OPEC cartel, only worse. That’s why Jim Baker said, “Jobs, jobs, jobs” when he was asked what that war was about. You want to keep open markets in petroleum and a Hussein or the Iranians today have something very different in mind. They want control and they want to raise the price.
OK, but outside of oil, you have to admit it’s a waste of time trying to impose democracy on people who don”t want it. We can”t even fight them because their values are so different. As Buchanan pointed out, our soldiers see death as a loss and theirs see it as a victory.
Democracy isn”t the objective per se. The objective is pursuing ascending American interests. That’s the difference between traditional conservatives and neocons. I”m a Cold War conservative. I”m not a neocon. I”ve never been a liberal.
So the neocons are in it for Israel and the paleocons are in it for the oil?
The war is for American interests. Until we”re able to get oil and natural gas from sources other than the Middle East, it’s important in world markets whether we”re buying from them or not. Our dependence on foreign oil began back in the 1930s when the British were in Iran and Iraq and Franklin Roosevelt met with Ibn Saud during WWII. You have to deal with the hand you”re dealt, and it would be a much easier hand to play if we could get oil and natural gas here. If we had more oil and natural gas, countries such as Japan would prefer to buy from us. China would rather buy from Canada than an unstable Middle East. Reducing our dependence might even contribute to more stability in the Middle East. I think it has less to do with American military forces than the fact that we”re so dependent on them; it gives them all this extra leverage.
The war is about oil. It’s that simple?
I don”t mind saying America has a vital national interest in a large, growing, ever more prosperous economy, and to have that you need energy sources. So you can buy it from the Middle East or you can buy it from us. The problem with the Obama strategy and the way they”ve approached the Keystone Pipeline and fracking and the whole EPA war on coal, etc., is it makes us more dependent on foreign energy. That’s bad economics and it’s bad security policy.
It sounds like we”re about to strike a deal here. If I get the pipeline through and lift fracking bans and encourage coal, you”ll agree to bring the troops home.
Not quite. We would be better off using our own resources. No doubt about it. But an America that turns away from the world is less able to provide stability and security, which means one of two things: Either the world becomes more anarchic and financial interchange decreases (this lowers our standard of living and hurts our way of life), or other powers enter the vacuum. It’s likely these other powers will not have a view of the world that is benign toward us. A strong America helps preserve a strong economy. A strong international position helps preserve a strong domestic way of life.
