National security and energy: setting the right priorities.

• Author: Frodl, Michael G.
• Position: ANALYSIS

The latest Center for Naval Analyses report, "Powering America's Defenses: Energy and the Risks to National Security," makes a case that national security interests are consistent with concerns about climate change.

The study says that the United States is overly dependent on foreign sources of oil and that the nation needs to rely more on domestic sources of oil as well as oil substitutes. It says that the electrical grid needs to diversify its inputs to include not just dean coal but also more hydro, nuclear, solar, wind and other sources. CNA also suggests that the military become less "energy vulnerable" by being less dependent on oil and other traditional fuels.

Some of the assumptions of the study, however, are questionable.

The rhetorical device about the United States having only 4.5 percent of the world's population but consuming 25 percent of the world's current oil should be laid to rest. It's meant to convey the message that the nation is using more than its "fair share" of energy and perhaps invoke the specter of an "addiction" to oil.

This ignores a couple of major facts. First, U.S. energy consumption is a reflection, a measure, and a consequence of being the largest economy on the planet. Different economies will specialize in producing certain items and consuming others. Finding therefore that a particular energy source--in this case oil--may be consumed more by some countries than others should come as no surprise.

For example, the world produces and consumes less than 15 percent of its electricity from nuclear sources but France in particular generates almost 80 percent of its electrical power from nuclear plants. Uranium is a finite resource, and the argument could be made that France has a critical dependence problem because it has no domestic uranium sources and so it must buy uranium from other countries such as Russia and Canada. Yet nobody worries that France has an energy dependence issue because most of its electricity is produced with a fuel that has to be bought from abroad.

The argument against dependence on Middle East oil also has to be viewed in proper context. The United States has been involved actively in the Middle East and Southwest Asia since at least the Carter administration. Whatever oil comes from the Persian Gulf is not just for the United States but also for U.S. allies in Europe.

Before the Cold War ended, Iran was the major oil producer in OPEC and its output kept U.S. allies ready to defend...