Introduction
This paper aims at finding out or establishing the reasons as to why the U.S. energy policy, security policy and foreign policy have merged into one. Concerns have been raised over the years that the main reason as to why the U.S. attacks the Middle East and Arab countries, is to get access to massive oil deposits found in that region. The U.S. has come up with various policies regarding its foreign relations with various countries around the world in order to enable it ensure peace and stability in the whole world.
Terrorism is taking root around the world; the Arab states and Muslims at large are, according to America, to blame for the global terrorist activities. Terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda are blamed for the bombing that took place in America back in September 2009; Osama bin Laden who was the leader of this group was attacked and killed by the American air force as he was hiding in Pakistan. America, being a superpower, has engaged a lot of resources and man power in the fight against terrorism; it has come up with extremely tight policies that aim at discouraging terrorist or militia groups from taking the lives of innocent people. The November 2001 attack by the group led by Osama bin Laden, is a critical act that is motivating Americans to fight terrorism without despair; this bombing is one of the worst occurrences in the history of the United States, bearing in minds that this is a country that boosts of advanced security set up.
The main concern of this study is to look in the matters surrounding the excessive involvement of America in anti-terrorism activities and try to link it to the situation of oil requirements in Arab countries. The paper wants to examine how the United States is using the pretense of war against terrorism to gain from vast oil deposits found in the Islamic world. It shall analyze the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Sadam Hussein and Osama bin Laden among other key figures believed to have taken part in terrorism activities. The link between American foreign policies with regard to the situation in countries like Korea, where it has constantly differed with them about the nuclear technology, has to be established by this research paper.
The U.S. foreign policy stipulates how it relates and interacts with foreign countries; the policy sets standards of interaction for its individual citizens, corporations and organizations. The main aim of these policies is to create a more secure, prosperous and democratic world for the benefit of the global population. America aims at safeguarding its business interests, international commodity, and protects the Americans who reside in other countries around the world. There is a need for America as a superpower to safeguard its foreign interests so that it may increase its superiority around the world.
The United States of America has a well stipulated energy policy, which is a product of the federal, state and local entities in the United States of America. The policy addresses issues to do with the energy production, distribution and consumption by building codes and gas mileage standards; this policy includes international treaties, legislation, taxation among other public policy techniques, and guidelines for energy conservation. The government has put in place various laws to see at it that energy issues remain to be well handled to enable a steady supply and demand for energy among numerous users spread across the United States. These laws aim at ensuring that there is energy independence and steady supply so as to enable all users to access it at affordable rate without many delays.
The United States of America has devised strict security policy that is to ensure that the world remains a secure place for each and everybody; this policy is a key reason as to why America is engaging in conflicts and warlike activities so that at the end of the day security of the world population is restored. America has a federal government which is known for constantly violating the sovereignty of various states and countries by interfering with their domestic issues once it feels that such activities pose a threat to the international peace and security. The U.S. is a G7 member and has veto powers in the United Nations Security Council; it uses its powers to influence close associates like Britain and France to accord it the necessary support required to attack terrorist militia groups.
This paper aims at analyzing how the three policies named the foreign policy, energy policy and security policy can be merged into one with regard to the oil situation involving America and Arab or Islamic countries.
Use of fuel and other sources of energy dates back to many years ago; the sun is the oldest of all sources of energy that has been in use since the time immemorial due its availability and distinguished reliability. The sun's energy is used in extremely many ways and is responsible for sustaining all the living things on the Earth today. Man wanted to have better forms of energy because it is beyond the control of man; this reasoning led to the need for other alternative sources of energy that could be easily controlled by either the manufacturers or users.
Human beings discovered a new way of generating energy, and that was the use of wood energy, this was between 500,000 to 700,000 years ago according to reports put forward by most scientists. This energy source was used to make abundantly many objects like changing clay into bricks or pots among many other uses; the use of wood spread around the world and became an extremely popular mean of producing energy. The idea of using wood to generate energy led to depletion of trees, and, as a result, people had to think about alternative sources of energy as they had few trees left while the demand for energy was increasing; thus, a lot of innovations and discoveries had taken place in the field of energy.
Industrial revolution set in and was an eye opener to most of the people, especially around Europe and America as they had to devise alternative methods of generating energy to be used to run various machines in the industries. The revolution marked a substantial change for people of the world as most of them abandoned agricultural activities in order to take part in industrial activities. The discovery of the coal was a step forward since it was used to burn steam engines in the factories.
The use of coal led to innovations of various machines and equipment that made industrial activities easier and faster than before; the revolution went on until now that there is a need for implementing a source of energy that is more effective and reliable. The need for a reliable source of energy can be said to have resulted from the invention of automobiles which were modified to use oil and gas instead of steam since the two are more efficient and are associated with minimum levels of pollution. The need for a more efficient and environmentally friendly source of energy led to the use of fossil fuels; this use can be supported by the fact that most sources of energy are being depleted, and fossil oils are among the few remaining alternative sources of energy that can be relied on.
Technology is advancing hence there is a need for electricity which enables almost everything to run smoothly; things like refrigerators and even street illumination require this kind of energy in order to run smoothly. The United States as a country that was embracing technological change and the industrial revolution had to come up with a new source of energy that was to accelerate the rate of industrial growth. It started using electricity which required large quantities of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are created through a natural process of the Earth’s systems; it comes from the remains of animals and plants that had died millions of years ago and which are buried under the sediment from the Earth and compressed by the weight of the sediment. The pressure of the sediment turns the dead plants and animals into oil, coal, gas and even natural gas; scientists argue that the Earth can take up to 500 million years to produce these kinds of fuels.
The main types of fossils in use today are oil, coal, and natural gas; in the U.S., there are over 200 mines from which more than 800000 tons of coals are mined every year; this coal supplies around 1566 coal-fired electric power stations. Coal is credited for supplying much of energy for producing electricity. At present, there are more than one hundred new coal-fired power plants that have been put in place; these would supply with electricity nearly 62 million homes in the United States of America. Oil as a source of energy can be said to be a liquid version of coal and is usually black but also can be in various colors. It is usually mined from dome-shaped spaces underground, which are located directly above coal deposits.
Different fuel types, which are also referred to as petroleum products, are produced from oil which comes in varying thickness. Most oil extracted yearly in the United States is used in the engines of various transportation machines and equipment which include cars, boats, planes, and trains. According to a report prepared and published by the Department of Energy of the federal government of America, the citizens use more than 20 million barrels of petroleum annually. Natural gas as a form of fossil fuel is made up of methane which is highly flammable; scientists argue that natural gas must have been formed from big amounts of plant materials that did not decompose well enough to result into coal.
The Americans use more than 20 trillion cubic feet of gas each and every year; it is used mostly for domestic use and for industrial production in the manufacturing sectors. In 1998, only 6 manufacturing industries accounted for 84% of natural gas use; fossil fuels are used for almost 82% of the power produced in the U.S. It is clear that fossil fuels are extremely valuable both in the social and economic setups as they account for larger proportions of energy supply in all 52 states.
The demand for energy is exceptionally high in this economy since a lot of industrial transformations are taking place, and this has to be backed by a big amount of energy supply. Many scholars always attack the American quest for energy as an excuse to disguise as an anti-terror activist while directing all efforts towards getting access to crude oil and other forms of energy that are abundantly found in Arab and the Middle East countries.
The peak oil term applies to a certain period of time when the oil supply will reach the highest rate of global petroleum being attainable and will, as a result; signalize the beggining of a continuous decline where the demand for oil will exceed the actual supply. This theory is a product of King Hubbert who put it forward so as to scientifically devise a method to determine the peak oil manufacture between 1965 and 1970.
This theory does not refer to oil depletion as many people interpret it, rather it solely focus on the point of total or maximum production ability of oil field or a particular oil well through some sort of complicated mathematics and deductive logic. The observed production rates of individual wells and fields of oil wells are the foundation of this theory; it argues that as technology grows, the capability to drill quicker is enhanced. This leads to increased use of oil from every well in an exponential way until the rate ultimately peaks and then progressively declines till the well is fully depleted.
The decline leads to supply shortfall which naturally leads to price inflation due to increased demand thus leads to the lack of global energy. This, in turn, results to the establishment of extreme conservation measures and the need to come up with alternative energy sources. This may further lead to a change in lifestyles and technology in an attempt to minimize the possibility of a global crisis. This theory does remarkably little to prove substantial standardization and consistency in that as the number of users of this theory increases, the greater the variances observed in the observed outcomes, Due to the fact that the world changes day by day, this theory becomes complicated in its predictions.
This theory is of significant help to the Americans who wants actually to predict the energy situation both in the short-run and the long-run; it helps the government to analyze the energy situation in the country and to put alternative ways of addressing the shortages before it is too late to do so.
This paper aims at coming up with the relationship between peak oil theory and the war on terror by taking as an example the November 9th bombing of the United Sates by al-Qaeda under supreme leadership of Osama bin Laden who was killed by the American soldiers back in 2011. The peak theory sounds as a warning to the American government that unless an alternative source of energy is obtained, the Americans are going to face it rough in the future since they will not have reliable sources of energy to enable them to carry on their industrialization and modernization processes effectively.
America, due to respect to sovereignty and the United Nations Security Charter, could not move to any country to take advantage of its natural resources. So, it had to wait for a substantial reason to be used as a scape goat to attack Arab countries so as it may access the oil deposits. The November 9th 2001 bombing was coincidental to the American desire to access energy resources in the Arab countries with a lot of ease due to its veto powers and close relationship with other G7 members. America was able to launch its military attack in the Middle East to try and combat the terrorist activities which are perceived to have been done by the militia groups from the Islamic world.
America sort the help of its close allies like Britain to help it attack the Islamic countries where the al-Qaeda members are believed to be found. This activity had cost a lot of funds, and many soldiers have lost their lives in trying to curb terrorism in the world. America was criticizing the leadership of the then president of Iraq Sadam Hussein and attacked Iraq in order to bring the leadership of Sadam to an end since they termed him as an obstacle to democracy and that he constantly violated the human rights of his citizens. Word spread that during this war, America had staged its ships somewhere in the sea to take crude oil from Iraq and transport it back to their own country; other observers stated that as the war was going on, due to that state of confusion and chaos, Americans took advantage of the situation to drill and transport oil out of Iraq back to their own country.
The bombing of America played a crucial role of allowing the Americans to get enough reasons to convince the entire anti-terror leaders to back it in its quest to ensure a terror free world. They came up with tight foreign and security laws that aimed at putting economic sanctions on those countries that were viewed to support the Islamic world. The constant involvement of America in the Islamic and Arab issues has seen most of the prominent government officials visiting the Islamic world constantly, mainly to try and bond the broken relationships so as to allow them access the oil in a diplomatic manner as they always put it.
There is a need for the United States to come up with other strategies that will ensure continuous and steady supply of energy to carter for increased industrialization activities that are taking place in all states. The main aim of these plans and recommendations is to come up with alternative sources of energy which will take care of the increase in demand for energy by various sectors of American economy. The purpose of this section in this research paper is to identify new and better energy sources that shall supplement the fossil fuels.
According to the peak theory put forward by Hubbert to explain the energy situation between 1965 and 1970, there will reach a time when all the oil wells found in the United States will be depleted. In order to avoid the negative consequences associated with depletion, America should be in a position to device alternative sources of energy. This paper establishes that the United States of America has put in place various alternative sources of energy which it wishes to put into use in order to prevent the possibilities of crucial shortages of energy or worse still to face the world-wide energy crisis.
The government has over the years invested in alternative sources of energy like wind energy, solar energy, and nuclear energy among other vital alternative sources of energy. This can be supported by the fact that America imported less than 50% of the energy consumed domestically in 2010; this is the first time that America has experienced such an occurrence in a period of 13 years. The Department of Energy has initiated a program known as the sun shot incubator whose investments have helped in the production of electricity along the coastal regions; this provides a significant amount of electricity.
The aim of the federal government is to provide energy that is considerably cleaner, cheaper, and one that generates new jobs to the American citizens. Places like Tennessee have solar harnessing firms which are put in place in order to tap a lot of solar energy for the use by Americans. The government has prioritized production of energy using solar means because it is supremely easy to tap and covert sunlight to solar energy, which is used in both the domestic and the industrial settings respectively.
Wind energy is also a key alternative source of energy and, therefore, the government has responded by putting various wind energy equipment and machines in place to see at it that enough energy is taped to allow the country to move away from overdependence on fossil oils.
Geothermal energy is also one of the alternatives; the government has identified various places where it feels it can be suitable for harnessing this kind of energy to ensure that it supplements the available sources of energy.
American economy is extremely diversified in such a way that most industries are excessively reliant on energy due to the presence of heavy machines whose energy consumptions are high. This has been one of the propelling factors that have led to increased energy requirements across the country. The above sources of energy are enough to keep American demand at per bearing in minds that the peak theory predicts a shortage which has to be addressed by the federal government of America.
It can be argued that the government is already aware of the looming energy shortages; that's why it has come up with rapid response measures that will enable it to avoid energy crisis in the near future.
Conclusion
This article aims at analyzing the energy situation in the United States of America and link it to the energy policy, security policy and foreign policy undertaken by America to help it to continue developing and advancing technology-wise. It is evident from this paper that America requires a lot of energy due to increasing demand that is caused by the desire to fully industrialize and modernize. The country has of late come up with various policies that are supposed to help it to safeguard its energy requirements in order to help it to avoid world-wide energy crisis forecasted by the peak theory.
Most of the premises of the energy laws and policies seem to conform to the peak theory; it has to see at it that there is a lot of energy in the long-run so as to enable the industrialization process and enable it to compete favorably with other countries. America has of late engaged in a lot of controversial issues with other countries; it has engaged in warlike activities where it has been trying to curb terrorism around the globe. It has attacked most of the Islamic countries where it has fought terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Prominent people like Sadam Hussein and Osama bin laden have been laid to rest due to the perception that they were a threat to global peace and security. American army have invaded the Arabian countries to try and control the activities of terrorist groups.
This paper establishes that one of the main reason as to why America has been in the forefront of attacking the Islamic world has something to do with oil; it has to be understood that these Islamic countries have a lot of oil deposits, and since America has realized the danger ahead which is posed by the possibility of lack of oil, it has been a reason that has motivated America to attack these groups of people. It is established by this paper that renewable energy is nearing depletion across the world since the governments are aware of the danger ahead. That is why many nations in the whole world have been conducting researches to come up with other energy sources that could be used to cover up the gap left by fossil fuels if the predictions of the peak theory turns out to be true.
This study recommends that as the world is aware of the danger ahead, measures and strategies should be put in place in order to facilitate increased supply of energy; the energy departments or ministries should strive to ensure that there are environmentally friendly and affordable alternative sources of energy. The sources of energy that this paper proposes include wind energy, where the concerned nations should acquire the necessary equipment and techniques to enable their respective countries in the harnessing of wind energy.
Solar energy is also a better alternative in the sense that the sun is readily available in the tropics and also during the summer in the Caribbean; this form of energy can be a better and cheaper option if the necessary equipment and machinery are installed. It can, therefore, be concluded that research establishes strong correlation between energy requirements of the United States of America and the attacks it is conducting in the Islamic world; the need for oil has propelled America to disguise itself as a country which does not tolerate terrorist activities, but in the real sense, it has been looking for proper avenues of executing its mission of getting the Arab oil.
The peak oil theory is an eye opener to the American authorities by urging them to look for alternative sources of energy by predicting that it will reach a time when the oil deposits will be depleted, and America has responded by coming up with various measures that can also be said to include tactical invasion of Arab world so as to benefit from the vast endowment of fossil fuels found in that part of the world.
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