Michael Rowan
Special for El Universal
The CNN documentary of last week presents a scenario of global
disaster that appears probable in the next few years. It goes
like this: Al Queda terrorists destroy much of Saudi Arabian
oil production during a vicious hurricane that strikes Texas.
In days, a large piece of global oil production and refining
is crippled for months to come, instantly tripling the global
oil price. Venezuela and Iran use the disaster to worsen the
crisis. The US economy crashes, taking world stability with
it. In the panic for oil, smoldering conflicts break into
warfare among competing producing and consuming oil states.
A massive global depression begins, with no end in sight,
as "just in time" logistical supply lines collapse everywhere.
This is no nightmare doom scenario dreamed up by sensationalist
TV producers. It is a reasonable conclusion based upon science
and evidentiary facts. The global economy is held together
by a delicate web of inter-dependent variables. The key variable
is oil that fuels the global machine, which is already sputtering
insecurely. The fine line between order and chaos can be erased
by an oil crisis that spawns and spreads a million times faster
than a global health epidemic like the bird flu.
The US, as the driver of the global economy via its consumers,
is especially vulnerable. It has not reduced its "addiction
to oil," as President Bush called it in his State of the Union
address, by conservation or alternative energy technology.
Rather than concentrating on spurring global commerce and
energy alternatives, the US has been using its military power
to transform Middle East autocracies into democracies, failing
at that task, while creating more enemies that can use a global
disaster to their own ends.
One of those enemies is Iran, which might use nuclear weapons
during the crisis "to wipe Israel off the face of the earth,"
as its president intends. Another is Venezuela, which could
worsen the global oil crisis by shunting its oil to markets
other than the US, while extending its military hegemony to
Colombia in aid of the FARC narco-terrorists. The weatherman
is not alone studying the hurricane map these days.
mrowan@cantv.net
Michael Rowan's column is published every Tuesday
