our "global oil-protection service"
Michael (Blood and Oil) Klare’s piece at AlterNet discusses our military’s use of petroleum, and how this has led to its transformation into:
a "global oil-protection service" for the benefit of U.S. corporations and consumers, fighting overseas battles and establishing its bases to ensure that we get our daily fuel fix. It would be both sad and ironic, if the military now began fighting wars mainly so that it could be guaranteed the fuel to run its own planes, ships, and tanks -- consuming hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could instead be spent on the development of petroleum alternatives.
Klare suggests a possible “sinister approach” to the DoD’s response to the “unexpected challenge” to peak oil:
To ensure itself a "reliable" source of oil in perpetuity, the Pentagon will increase its efforts to maintain control over foreign sources of supply, notably oil fields and refineries in the Persian Gulf region, especially in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This would help explain the recent talk of U.S. plans to retain "enduring" bases in Iraq, along with its already impressive and elaborate basing infrastructure in these other countries.
The potential circularity of necessities—needing a powerful military to secure access to oil, which is needed to fuel that very same military might—should be lost on no one.