High-priced oil also warps the entire world's limited attention span. We hear daily about Israeli "occupation" in the Middle East because the oil-rich patrons of the Palestinians have sent their terrorists ample subsidies and in the past leveled oil embargoes to punish those sympathetic to Israel. Yet millions more people the world over have also lost land. We don't televise daily refugees from, say, Tibet or Cyprus, since their patrons have no ability to shut down global commerce.
The distortions caused by abrupt influxes of oil wealth have nearly turned upside down the once traditional and tribal Middle East. Sudden oil revenues prop up inefficient state-run economies, while ensuring that profits go to the few. Without democracy and free markets, the majority of impoverished Arabs lack access to their nation's treasure — and blame foreigners for dealing only with their own elite who control the oil spigots and purse strings.
What money that does trickle down has been used for conspicuous consumption, not national investment — as monarchs and dictators import consumer toys to pacify the disenchanted. In other societies, modernity came at a measured pace, but in the Middle East nomads and peasants have skipped the telegraph and headed straight to the camera cell phone. Of course, the poor "Arab street," tuned into satellite TV, blames the postmodern West for titillating its newfound appetites.
To remedy this mess, a good start would be to lower our own oil consumption, expand American production and diversify our energy sources with solar, nuclear and ethanol power and coal gasification. Only by taking these steps can America — the most desperate of all oilaholics — collapse the world price and thus erode the assets of our adversaries.
With a divided U.S. government and a slight dip in world prices, there is a window of opportunity. Democrats can ask for more mandated conservation and alternate energy; in exchange, Republicans can bargain for more drilling and nuclear power.
In World War II, an energy-independent United States bombed the oil fields of the Third Reich to stop Hitler's killing. Today a wartime but energy-hungry America is daily enriching our worst enemies.