I actually did something rare for me last week: I finished a book! The one is At The Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War by Thomas C. Reed and published in 2004. It’s a book filled with Cold War incidents, many of which brought little attention when they occurred but looking back on them seem rather frightening. One of the incidents Reed recalled was the brilliant sabotage of a Soviet gas pipeline in the early 80s that I’d read about before (see: The Farewell Dossier).
Reed helped design nuclear weapons earlier in his career and a narrative runs through his book about the dangers of nuclear weapons. The most frightening parts detail the shocking lack of security that surrounded these ominous weapons during some of mankind’s biggest crises. We are all very, very, lucky to be here now.
One thing I found of particular interest is in the epilogue of the book. Here Reed discusses the problem America has with oil:
Iraq is one of the oil-rich states of the Middle East. That fact draws American attention, not because Western oil companies covet the production – which they do. Our global concern is that petrodollars, flowing to dictators with more money than sense, can fuel mischief on a scale unreachable by other third world despots. Fifty to sixty million dollars a day, flowing to Iraq when it restores full production, could have supported a lot of nuclear research, industrial development, and terrorist field work.
Why have we granted the petrodollar despots this control over our lives? That is a central question for this new century, and it is the reason I joined James Schlesinger in 1977 in organizing a new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). We envisioned an energy policy that would wean the United States, if not the Western world, from its dependence on Middle Eastern crude. That has not happened because oil is not a commodity – it is a narcotic. Americans are neither willing to make rational choices nor to accept energy-conservation tax policies if any of those strictures interfere with their daily low-cost energy fix. Every one cent of an expanded federal gasoline tax would add a billion dollars to the annual federal revenue stream. Gasoline taxes at the European level could solve the Social Security and Medicare deficits in one stoke while encouraging energy independence within our lifetime. But Congress has no stomach for such action. The DOE has spun off into irrelevance; “pump more oil” seems to be our only energy policy. And so, in time, our children will pay the terrible price. The continuing imbalance of payments to pay for this oil will one day burn through the dollar’s thick skin. The buildup of cash in the hands of nuclear wannabes could one day vaporize a major city.
This is exactly what the group Operation Free has been telling Congress and the public. I’ve been very proud to be working with Operation Free to help folks see that America’s oil addiction gets paid not just in money but in lives. Reed is a Republican who served not only as Reagan’s Secretary of the Air Force but also as a political consultant to other Republican presidents. To have him make this case says a lot, I think.
I enjoyed Reed’s insights into the Cold War, especially knowing how lucky we are to have come out of it relatively unscathed. I only hope we manage the battle to reduce or eliminate nuclear weapons as successfully.