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| 1 |
ID:
148448
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| Summary/Abstract |
Over the past century peak oil forecasts have had a profound influence on US foreign policy. Unquestioned acceptance of these forecasts, all of which proved wrong, repeatedly led policymakers to assume that rival powers sought to seize dwindling supplies or that disaffected exporter states would decline to sell. Perennial expectation of impending scarcity elevated the perceived importance of foreign oil, especially from the Middle East (ME). In response, increasingly aggressive US policies were adopted to secure ME oil. I call belief in an oil scarcity imperative for aggressive policy oil scarcity ideology. Policymakers’ concerns over oil's availability were repeatedly challenged by market information, which was always ignored. Recurring pessimism over future supply during times of high price was always followed by oversupply and low price, yet aggressive polices to secure supply were never reassessed after scarcity failed to materialize. Scarcity ideology's exemption from scrutiny drove a policy ratchet: US–ME policy could become more aggressive, but not less.
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| 2 |
ID:
096104
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper presents the first estimate of United States military cost for Persian Gulf force (CPGfp) derived entirely by a quantitative method. An activity-based cost (ABC) model uses geographic distribution of aircraft carriers as a proxy allocator of Department of Defense (DoD) baseline cost to regional operations. Allocation follows simply from DoD data that since 1990 no less than one aircraft carrier has been continuously on-station in the Persian Gulf; that eight are required to keep one on-station there; that the Navy has had eleven-fifteen carriers since 1990; and that Army and Air Force units are virtually never deployed to combat operations without Navy units. For 1976-2007 CPGfp is estimated to be $6.8×1012 and for 2007 $0.5×1012 (2008$). This substantial military investment is not a remedy for the market failure at the heart of regional security problem, which is oil market power. When CPGfp is added to economic losses attributed to market power in another recent study (Greene, 2010), the severity of this market failure becomes more apparent.
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