Just a few questions. Nothing too taxing, I promise you.
1. Why is the New York Times giving valuable Op-Ed space to two individuals who claim we (the world in general) have more than enough crude oil in reserve to survive any supply disruptions caused by less oil flowing from the Middle East (say from some event involving — Iran)?
[C]ontrary to common understanding, there are robust stockpiles of oil around the globe that could see us through any foreseeable calamities on the world market. […]
… A coordinated release of reserve crude by the United States and its European and Asian allies could replace missing Iranian barrels for a year and a half. Iran is vulnerable; the West is not. […]
Today, Iran has more advanced anti-ship weapons, and it could surely harass commercial tanker traffic. But it would be hard pressed to sustain an anti-shipping campaign sufficient to reduce oil flows drastically for weeks on end, especially in the face of an intense military response. Even if Iran were able to reduce oil flow though the strait by, say, 30 percent, global reserves could replace losses of that magnitude for more than nine months — plenty of time for the Navy to counter Iranian military operations.
Such a nice rosy scenario. Another war in the Middle East wouldn’t be so bad, folks. We’d survive just fine. Trust us. Lot’s of oil to tide us over until the calvary US Navy comes to our rescue. But if that’s true . . .
2. Why is the nation with the second most vulnerable economy to any energy supply disruptions (some might argue the most vulnerable in light of their dependence on exports into the American market) so very intent on not seeing the Iranian nuclear crisis end up staring down the barrel of the military option?
President Hu Jintao of China urged other nations on Saturday to negotiate a resolution to Iran’s nuclear issue during a meeting with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, making clear again that China disapproves of any move by Western countries to attack Iran with military force.
Mr. Hu met with Mr. Ahmadinejad on Saturday in the Great Hall of the People here after Mr. Ahmadinejad flew into Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, which began in the evening.
“At present, the Iran nuclear issue is faced with a rare opportunity for the resumption of talks, and we hope all parties concerned could seize the opportunity and show flexibility to push for a peaceful settlement of the issue,” Mr. Hu said in the meeting, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported.
3. Why, oh why doesn’t President Hu trust the brilliant scholars and intellectuals who write in the New York Times that any oil disruption, caused by a war with Iran, for example, isn’t that big a deal? I mean one has a Ph.D from MIT and the other is an assistant professor at Dartmouth who knows all about how to fight the evil doers. Just because they are both former national security fellows at The Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, an organization/think tank with well known links to the neoconservative and neoliberal (i.e., neoconservatives with Democratic Party affiliations) foreign policy establishments, including folks like Kimberly Kagan of the famous Kagan family really shouldn’t give anyone pause that their analysis is not completely unbiased and on the up and up, should it?
Bonus Questions:
A. Why is the New York Communist Times so willing to give space year after year to people who believe in a forever war in the Middle East in order to insure American hegemony in the region? The same sort of people who helped get us into our current mess in Iraq and who believe we live in an era of US nuclear primacy which we should use to our advantage to expand US global dominance?
B. Didn’t the New York Times learn anything from the debacle of its reporting on the run-up to the Iraq War when it relied on many of these same experts in and out of the government to promote the absolute necessity for taking out Saddam?
I can’t wait to see your answers.
