PRESIDENT OBAMA’S pivot to East Asia is well-timed. The geostrategic importance of the Middle East is vastly overblown. The region matters to the United States chiefly because of its influence in the world oil market, but that influence has been in terminal decline for a generation, a fact almost wholly unnoticed by outside observers. A confluence of developments—including rising prices and production costs, declining reserves, and the availability of alternate fuels and unconventional sources of oil—will decisively undermine the defining role of the Middle East in the global energy market. Meanwhile, the United States has vital interests at stake elsewhere in the world at least as pressing, if not more so, than its interests in the Middle East. These include thwarting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, fighting transnational terrorism and maintaining stability in key strategic locations of the world.
Decreased oil importance of the Middle East doesn't mean the value of that region goes away.
Nor does the decline of oil power in general, if that happens, mean the region is less important. Shoot, if jihadis try to work up a good hate on us for "stealing" their oil for the price we pay without adding an Infidel child's finger for every barrel purchased, how will the jihadis react when we don't need their oil as much and if prices decline? Remember, jihadis are born, raised, trained, and supported from this region. If they become poorer they'll be less likely to try to kill us ... how exactly?
And nutball rulers with nukes will be less worrisome because they don't also sell us high-price oil ... how exactly?
Further, I keep hearing that the most important thing to Arabs is the fate of Palestinians. We can walk away from the region because we'll be inclined to defend our democratic ally Israel less when Arab oil states have less leverage over us?
Oh, please. The decline in the Arab Middle East's importance in the global oil market won't make the region less important for our national security. Too much bad stuff still festers in the region and threatens to come out even if oil is a smaller portion of their exports.
What a decline in the region's importance to the global oil market will do is make it easier for us to intervene with force if necessary to kill whackjob jihadis, knock back thugs who'd try to dominate the shrunken but still important energy resources of the region, destroy regimes that host and support terrorism, destroy hostile states' nuclear weapons capabilities, and quite possibly even crush brutal dictators begging for another application of Responsibility to Protect (R2P).
These things will all be easier because our worry about our use of force jacking up the price of oil by rattling oil markets will be much lower.
