The New York Times reports this morning that an inmate on Arizona’s death row has died. He was under sentence of execution for a murder he committed in 1982. That’s 28 years ago. Viva Leroy Nash was 68 when he committed his last murder. He was 94 when he died of natural causes.
If ever there was an illustration that something is profoundly wrong with how capital punishment is handled in this country, this is it. Convicted in 1983, the Supreme Court of Arizona upheld his conviction in 1985. But appeal after appeal after appeal to state and federal courts kept the case — and Viva Leroy Nash — alive for a quarter of a century.
The point of capital punishment, of course, is not only to punish the offender but also to deter others from committing the same crime with a force that a jail sentence, however long, cannot match. But if execution is not to come until a point well after the criminal’s normal life expectancy, how does it deter?
It wasn’t always this way. On February 15, 1933, a man named Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate president-elect Franklin Roosevelt in Miami. He missed Roosevelt but hit Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, who was shaking hands with Roosevelt at the time. Zangara pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to 80 years. But when Cermak died of his wounds two weeks later, Zangara was tried for murder, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed on March 20, 33 days — not years — after the crime.
If we are to have the death penalty in this country, the system needs to be thoroughly reformed to prevent the gaming of it that has rendered the system absurd. A big part of the problem here, of course, is the duel sovereignty of the states and the federal government. Appeals bounce back and forth between the two justice systems with agonizing slowness. Perhaps there should be special courts to handle only death-penalty cases and appeals, with both the federal and state appeals being pursued simultaneously, and strict time limits for all but evidentiary reasons. A requirement that first-rate lawyers be assigned the defendant, not the usual courthouse hangers-on, and a standard of beyond any doubt instead of mere reasonable doubt would go a long way to ensure that only the truly guilty were executed.
I’m not an eye-for-an-eye-tooth-for-a-tooth sort of guy, but I think that it is possible for a person in possession of his faculties to commit a crime of such enormity as to justify the forfeit of his life. Hitler, after all, was not crazy. Would anyone have objected to his being hanged with the other Nazis at Nuremberg? Norway abolished the death penalty in the early 1920s, but the Norwegian government in exile re-established it in 1942, and after the war the government tried and executed 37 collaborators for treason and war crimes, including Vidkun Quisling, whose name entered many languages as a synonym for traitor. Quisling became a word that, in Churchill’s phrase, ”will carry the scorn of mankind down the centuries.” Having seen justice done, the Norwegian parliament then once again abolished the death penalty.
It seems to me this country should either abolish the death penalty or reform the system to make it effective.
Gas prices,pending home heating costs the decline in home real estate values —THESE will be the primary concern of most voters in November. McCain’s weakness on oil and gas offshore(and onshore) drilling is really bad.
He’s playing pin the tail on the Obama to wean away those Hillarycrats & Independents. Might as well give Liebs that Vee Pee spot, too, Mav: First married couple ticket.
no one really has a complete workable solution to this. the right and left are both agitating for stuff they usually agitate for anyway.
the problem as i see it is the government has too many …what I am looking for here…pans on the burner as it is. most of the problems we “solve” with subisidies and programs and, yees, military interventions and aid, are not actually things that affect most of our lives. now that we have something that IS affecting most of our lives we are too involved in all this other stuff to do anything about it.
some of the gas price stuff about specualtion and the dollar especially are true, but there is more demand from china and the prices were bound to go up. we are ill prepared be cause we are spread way too thin. 3.1 trilllion dollar budget sees to that
Lester,
“no one really has a complete workable solution to this”
you’re right about that. And I wonder if there will be even “a” solution for this. Nonetheless, the majority of the solutions proposed by the left side are either wrong or inconsequential or both (see the corn ethanol disaster).
you can’t have a 3.1 trillion dollar budget, for ANYTHING regardless of it’s alleged utility to the masses, AND have 4 dollar a gallon gasoline.
you know those cartoons where one character is hungry and he starts imagining the other one is a big turkey or ham or something? that’s how people are going to start looking at that federal budget. well, that’s how our politicians already look at it, but it’s not just going to be libertarians second guessing how much we really need this or that.
here in massachusetts, the bluest state, we have a ballot measure on whether to eliminate the state income tax. this is, again, the most liberal state in the union. if we are putting forth ideas like this it shows that even those not ordinarily interested in smaller government are simply weighing their priorities differently in light of inflation.
ron pauls campaign got swallowed up in foreign policy stuff, but his idea of eliminating the income tax is more relevent now than ever. federal and state.
to me it’s like AOL. alot of people had AOL when they first got a computer, then gradually they realized they didn’t need it. that’s the income tax in 2008. sorry statists
“But isn’t the current price spike the greatest non-regulatory impetus to developing alternative energy sources we’ve seen so far? Sure beats carbon taxes and complicated cap and trade systems. ”
On the other hand, carbon taxes would be better for our trade imbalances, and wouldn’t funnel money to the Middle East.
I keep hearing that we need to drill new wells, but that suggests a delivery date a full presidential term (4 years) away, more if we are talking about Alaska. New nuclear facilities can come online before we see any benefits from ANWR. The most immediate solution is increased production from retired domestic wells…those wells that became cost prohibitive when oil was $20 a barrel. According to drillers I know, you can safely figure that 15% of every domestic well ever tapped in Texas, Oklahoma, Lousianna, California, etc., is still waiting to be extracted. Environmental hurdles already cleared, holes already drilled, pipelines operational…and hugely profitable at anything over $100 a barrel. Energy dollars stay in America and don’t fund Islamic jihadists. Heck, even oil shale technology makes sense at these prices, but no one seems to be jumping. Why?
Maxed out refining capacity? Projected drop in demand due to changed consumer practices/efficiencies? Fear of an oil commodity speculation bubble popping? Or, maybe the pain threshhold is being tested by energy conglomerates seeking to maximze profits per share, waiting for nuclear plant to be fast tracked.
When oil prices went up $10/barrel on one day last week, that added 25 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas. The federal tax is 18 cents per gallon, and as a percentage of the cost of gas has gone down significantly over the last year.
Also, gas taxes go right back into the communities where they are generated in several forms. First as improved roads, leading to savings in gas, auto repairs, less accidents, less injuries and deaths, etc. And second into wages which stimulate the regular economy.
Jon #6,
“carbon taxes would be better for our trade imbalances, and wouldn’t funnel money to the Middle East.”
this seems to be a typical Lou Dobbs kind of argument.
I don’t see how carbon taxes would help our trade imbalances (for one thing it would raise even more the oil price). The only way to stop funneling money to the Middle East is to drill in the US.
And I agree with Jennifer that the good old supply and demand did more to change the way Americans behave than any authoritarian, top-down, society-controlling measure. People are starting to think about the mpg of their cars, how they can save fuel, mass transportation, etc…
Now, there’s the question of how it will affect companies (Air, trucks). I’ve heard one of these days someone saying that “planes were not projected to fly with oil prices this high”, to which I instinctively replied: but were planes designed to have the same fuel efficiency forever?
The “good old supply and demand” equation doesn’t work when OPEC can manipulate the supply.
Sure, high oil prices make alternative fuels more competitive and spur their development. But once the oil producers see alternatives gaining market share they will ease the supply. Then the cheaper gas which will take the business away from alternative fuels and destroy those investments.
That is why, once the oil bubble bursts, at a certain point a 5 cent tax for every dime the cost of a gallon falls makes sense, I think. Otherwise OPEC will have us on a yo-yo and investments in an alternative fuel infrastructure will be endlessly delayed.
nacl,
OPEC has always had the power to manipulate the supply, and I am not sure that this is what is happening now (the more I would love to blame some Iranian sheik for that). But the demand for oil has definitely increased .
Also, by suggesting a tax raise one believes that the government would do a better thing with your 5 cents per dime than you would…
If we start exploring and drilling for domestic oil, reintroducing nuclear power and developing other technologies, economies of scale will eventually contain or reduce costs to producers and prices to consumers. This will help shepherd ventures over the long run. As against this, I doubt OPEC has a satanic strategy to keep us oil dependent — there is no consensus for robber baron-style, predatory price-cutting. Different OPEC members have different priorities. Indeed, the otherwise lamentable global resurgence of statist-nationalist economics may actually retard the growth of foreign production while global consumer demand continues to rise. Even factoring out speculation, it’s hard to believe an entrepreneurial American energy policy has no future.
Yay! A conservative who admits that high gas prices are in part due to “the chokehold by OPEC.” You even wrote that “When the market functions as it should and gas gets too expensive, consumers will conserve and producers will develop alternative sources that become cost effective in relative terms.”
Awesome. No B.S. about China and India disrupting supply and demand, and no silliness about alternative sources of combustable fuel being unviable. You even managed to point out that Obama is on the wrong side of this issue. (Like pretty much every other issue.)
I would rather Washington DC than Riyadh get the difference between $2 and $4 dollar a gallon gasoline.
Moreover, your shibboleth suggests you did not get my point.
Whether or not the current bubble is a manipulation of OPEC, with Saudi Arabia’s two million barrel per day unused capacity, OPEC can bring the price down. Once oil returns to the $60 to $70 per barrel level which experts seem to consider the real price, interest in alternative fuels would again wane and that would discourage the sustained investment which an infrastructure for wind, solar and hydrogen requires.
The point is to deny the oil producers the power to kill off alternative fuels the moment they become successful competitors.
Incidentally, gasoline today is cheap. If we compare median wages 50 years ago and today, and what gasoline and cars cost 50 years ago and today, and the 11 mpg average back then with today’s 24 mpg average, $4 gas makes a smaller hole in the consumers wallet than did 35 cent gasoline in the 1950s.
nacl,
“I would rather Washington DC than Riyadh get the difference between $2 and $4 dollar a gallon gasoline.”
well, something similar is happening in the case of corn ethanol and the result is a disaster (The US could import cheaper sugar cane ethanol from Brazil instead of protecting inefficient corn farmers).
What you are proposing seems to be something similar to what is current in Europe, where gas prices are much higher because of taxes. I am not sure if the US should follow their path…
“The point is to deny the oil producers the power to kill off alternative fuels the moment they become successful competitors.”
If alternative fuels can not compete with market oil prices it would be a bit of a stretch to say that they became “successful competitors”, isn’t it?
Coming back to the cartel history, the Federal Trade Commission is constantly watching the oil companies (particularly when prices soar) and it has found no evidence of price manipulation.
“Incidentally, gasoline today is cheap”
Agreed. I like your comparison, even though I am not sure if you weigh the number of cars it would still hold. Even if it does, the weakest advance in the particular factors you chose were in the mpg. While wages, GDP and number of cars are nowadays many times bigger than in the 50′s, mpg of our modern cars is merely double of what it was in the 50′s… wouldn’t it be time for the car industry to work in more efficient engines?
PS- Yes, it is shibboleth, but it is an undeniable truth…
By the way,
a quick google search took me to these amusing Time’s article: 168 Miles per gallon.
And guess what, the article is from 1952!
The old record (124 mpg) had been, at the time, set in 1924…
Of course, as the article pointed out, “a car so altered can not be driven far”. But that really makes me wonder what the heck mechanical engineers have been doing for the last 60 years…
“But that really makes me wonder what the heck mechanical engineers have been doing for the last 60 years…”
Meeting emissions and other regulatory standards, you ungrateful dolt.
Complaints about gas prices are anti-Semitic. It’s obvious.
p.s.: Solar energy is anti-Semitic, and so are windmills.
Just a note: on average, only a small amount of the increase in the price of gas at a US pump is going to Saudi Arabia. About 55% of the pump price of gas is accounted for by the cost of the crude oil; the rest is refining, distribution, and taxes.
The US imports about 65% of its crude oil and produces the other 35% domestically. Of the imported amount, we get about 14% from Saudi Arabia. So for unleaded at a southern California pump this week, with a nominal price of $4.40 a gallon, about $2.42 went to the crude oil seller, and on average, the foreign “take” from that is $1.85 or so, of which the Saudis’ crude oil sales to us represent 28 cents. The difference between that and the Saudis’ take when gas was $2.50 is a matter of pennies — not “$2.”
Uncle Sam, the State of California, and Riverside County get a whopping 58 cents out of that $4.40.
I understand that gas taxes are anti-Semitic.
J.E. Dyer:
In 2005, Saudi oil income was $157 billion. Now it is around a billion a day. Can you explain that doubling via pennies (or centimes)?
We must escape the power of the oil producers to raise the cost of gasoline and then lower the cost whenever they see alternatives becoming competitive.
I may be wrong, but when this bubble breaks, I would replace the falling price of crude with a rising tax at the pump. Those revenues could be dedicated to supporting alternatives or individuals hit particularly hard by fuel costs.
We would escape the seesaw of oil producers and refineries periodically reaping enormous bonanzas when the price goes up, and destroying their competition from alternatives when it goes down.
Paul:
Yes, the law of unintended consequences is an ever lurking danger, but why don’t you consider the unintended consequnce of falling gasoline prices on alternative fuels? They destroy those investments and prevent that industry from sinking roots.
Moreover, it was known in advance that it takes almost as many BTU of fossil fuel to produce the BTU in a gallon of of ethanol and that farm prices would rise. That was indeed why the farm state senators pushed for ethanol. Not faulty economics but selfish politics made that mistake.
Furthermore, it is the oil business that depends on subsidies. Income from Arabian oil operations are tax exempt. Our military is structured to insure access to the Middle East oil fields. Without that obligation our defense budget could be a third to half smaller. The gasoline pumps are receiving a $250 billion subsidy. And what we are paying for illness due to fuel pollutants is another hidden subsidy.
As to the real cost of driving, I was saying, filling up the tank makes the same size hole in the average family’s income today as it did in the 1950s, except the car can now travel twice as far on that tank of gas.
nacl — yes, of course, the doubling is consonant with pennies per gallon for Saudi Arabia, from American pump sales.
I’m sure you understand that the revenues of Saudi producers come from the sale of crude oil. So do the revenues of all producers, including US producers.
In the aggregate, producers were getting an average of less than $60 (2008 $) a barrel in 2005. In the last couple of months they have been getting double that. That accounts for the spike in Saudi revenues.
However, Saudi producers get revenues from only 14% of the 65% of our oil the US imports. The gas YOU buy is sending a whole lot more revenue to Mexico, Canada, and American producers than to Saudi Arabia. It’s in the price of the gas that India, Japan, Europe, etc buy that you will find a greater percentage of the per-gallon producer revenue going to Riyadh.
There IS a $2 difference in what you pay for gas today, but if you want to break out which nations’ producers you, literally, as an American consumer, are sending revenue to, the top three are Canada, Mexico, and the US. Venezuela is next, then the Saudis.
I do think you’re 100% wrong about putting an even higher gas tax on consumption. We (the US) can’t starve the Saudis, or terrorism, by buying less oil in absolute terms. Other nations’ consumers will just buy it. Moreover, terrorism is cheap. You can wage economic war on a centralized, industrial economy like that of the Soviet Union. You can’t wage it against terrorists.
The price we would pay in economic sclerosis would be tremendous. Europe has imposed huge gas taxes for decades, and has nothing to show for it in terms of alternative energy sources. She has, instead, sluggish or no economic growth, and unemployment levels that we Americans would consider a pretext for revolution.
There are too many non-OPEC producers today for OPEC to have the market power it had in the early 1970s. The Saudis are constrained, as all producers are, by physics and what the market will bear; and they are not a monolithic player in the oil game today. The vast majority of the rise in oil prices is attributable to the policies of other governments (like ours), which restrict supply; to the physical realities of extracting oil from aging fields, which for one key thing requires not pumping too fast, if you want to recover the max possible; and to the increases in demand in Asia over the past decade. I saw someone here laugh those off earlier. Wrong answer. That increased demand is real, and is not a plot against us. It comes from dramatically increased affluence in much of Asia, a well-documented phenomenon from the 1980s to today.
Government taxation has never, even once, produced liberating invention in the economy. It won’t in this case either.
J.E. Dyer
It is tosh to downplay the enormous inclrease in oil income, and transfer of wealth, not just to the Saudis but to the other oil producers, by reducing it to pennies per gallon. Of course I know that our principal suppliers are in our own hemisphere (and Nigeria), but that is also beside the point.
I said nothing of starving Arabian terrorism. Sure, oil is fungible and what matters is that it is bought, not who buys it. But that too is extraneous.
By my preference for our treasury rather than Riyadh receiving the money we pay at the pump. I meant any of the foreign oil producers of whom the Saudis are of course the largest.
Now it may be unwise to have a US govt tax, rather than the oil producers and refiners, push the price up again (after the bubble bursts) to the threshold where consumption declines, but if so, you have not explained why it is “100% wrong”.
As to Europe having nothing to show for its high gas taxes, that is untrue. It has created an excellent light and heavy rail system which has limited its needs for cars and gasoline. Which economist faults those gasoline taxies or blames them for Europe’s eco woes. (Did even Milton Friedman?)
That there are many gas fields outside the M/E is true, but OPEC yet pumps 65% of the whole and boasts the largest reserves. Moreover, the Saudis are the only ones with significant unused capacity, as I said, 2 million barrels per day, and that puts them, not physics, at the fulcrum of the price seesaw.
The enormous thirst of the Pacific Rim and India and the finite availability of oil is ultimately behind the rising cost. We need, for various reasons, to get away from fossil fuels. Your claim that govt ” has never once proved liberating invention in the economy” is not true. Ever since the New Deal government intervention has been used to regulate the economy. Not least today under Ben Bernanke . A govt gas tax created our interstate highway system. And yes, inventions spurred and even created by govt, have transformed our economy, the Web is an example.
One more thing, J.E. Dyer.
When you declared, we can’t “wage it [economic war] against terrorists” because “terrorism is cheap” you opened a new topic, but one where you are again, in my opinion, mistaken.
Their oil reserves and the world’s thirst have put the Arabs at center stage for now. To Islamists this is a world historical moment. Their strategic position is a sign from above. Allah has given the Arabs an inimitable weapon, control over the West’s life blood. This has inspired them to make their play and go for broke. OBL constantly speaks of the oil and deplores how the Saudis, instead of using it to bring the West to its knees, give it away cheaply.
Oil brought them to center stage, and when it leaves, will remove them. The Arabs will then lose their political and financial muscle, and their fanatics, their motivation. They will no longer see themselves at the center of world affairs and feel favored by destiny. Gone will be the dream of bringing the West to its knees and controlling the world by controlling its fuel faucets. No longer dramatically favored by Allah they will no longer feel spurred to fulfill the Koran’s promise. They will return to the oblivion from which they emerged just half a century ago.
“As to Europe having nothing to show for its high gas taxes, that is untrue. It has created an excellent light and heavy rail system which has limited its needs for cars and gasoline.”
The rail system in Europe is not, originally, a consequence of high taxes. By the end of the 19th century, when automobiles were practically non-existent, there was a well developed rail system in Europe. Moreover, European cities are not “car-friendly” and the small distances (many European countries are smaller than California), compared to American standards, may favor such a system.
But it is a very expensive system, maintained with taxes other than the gas taxes. Only very recently the rail system of France became profitable – and this because they are going to open their system to private companies in a few years.
So Europeans pay high gas prices, which makes car and gas expensive, pay high taxes to maintain the rail system and pay expensive tickets for those as well (it is a pleasant journey to take the TGV from Paris to Marseille (~ 3hours), but it is hell to go from Turin to Rome (almost 8 hours) – so one must be careful when saying that “Europe” has an “excellent” rail system ) .
By the way, I’m all for commuting, mass transportation, alternative energy, etc. , but we need to do the math very carefully.
nacl — with respect, you’re the one who first tried to use gas-price math to prove something against the Saudis, expressing concern that the difference between $2 and $4 a gallon for you was going to them. It’s not. I recommend ceasing to use that line of argument.
Paulo has made the valid point about the European rail system, which is most definitely not a product of gas taxes. The Europeans have always had a much more extensive mass transit infrastructure than the US, from well before the explosion in private auto ownership in America, in the 1940s and ’50s. Europe is historically much more extensively urbanized than North America, which accounts for about 99% of that phenomenon. In America’s most intensively urbanized areas, our mass transit is about the same as Europe’s. In more rural and exurban areas, the French and Italians and Spanish can’t ride a train or bus to go to the Pryca — either conveniently or at all — any more than Americans from rural and exurban areas can ride such transportation to the WalMart. Europeans in the exurbs and small villages drive cars and trucks for such expeditions. They earn and keep less than we do, and gas and vehicular ownership costs them more, so they don’t make such trips as often.
Yet still they are in thrall to Middle Eastern oil, in the terms you want to use. But more than that, the stability of Europe is under threat from the instability of the Middle East. So is American trade. Your supposition that if we could just wean ourselves off of oil, the Middle East would cease to have geopolitical significance is, at the very least, outdated — and that by several centuries. The Middle East is a chokepoint of trade, and for some time now has been one of two major global chokepoints where the politics will not cease to matter, any time in the foreseeable future. The other one is the southeast Asian area surrounding the Strait of Malacca. (The only reason the Panama Canal is not in the same category is that there is only one hegemon in the Western hemisphere. No one from our own hemisphere is competing with the US to control access to it. China, on the other hand, bears great watching in this regard, as she does in the approaches to the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Check the proprietorship of warehouses and freight handling enterprises in these areas, and you are guaranteed to find the Chinese in them somewhere.)
Europe is not safe, and American trade is not safe — meaning world trade is not safe — if any regional power from Asia or the Middle East acquires the hegemonic sway to set up an exclusionary regime in the Middle Eastern transit lanes, which stretch from the eastern Mediterranean through the Indian Ocean. It is ironic that Westerners have become so blind to that, when the Europeans operated on that principle for so many centuries. The geopolitical pretext for the Crusades was to secure the Middle East against a hostile hegemony, as the collapsed Roman Empire gradually transformed into something else; and the eventual resolution for Europe’s colonizing nations was to try to outmaneuver each other in the Middle East. Both Napoleon and the British saw the Middle East as a key means of outflanking the other; Truman and Churchill saw it as key territory that could not be yielded to Soviet Russia.
Today the Middle East is key territory that cannot be yielded to either Russia or China — both of which are making plays for it, in their signature ways — without evil consequences for Europe and the US, as well as for India, and for Far Eastern allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Certainly either Russia or China would hold oil hostage, if they could; but more generally, either one would hold trade hostage.
We forget, when we have lived under a maritime “Pax” for a long time, that free trade on the world’s oceans has not historically been the natural state of play. Trade is relatively free and safe today not because everyone is well disposed, but because of the US Navy, and because of the US policy of seeking regional partnerships — and applying force if such partnerships aren’t getting the job done — around the world’s trading chokepoints. We did not accidentally choose Thailand and the Philippines to have defense agreements with, or Singapore to negotiate basing rights with. Nor is it some unaccountable accident that our Middle Eastern and NATO policies have been founded on keeping regional frictions under control in the interest of trade safety in the Eastern Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, and Persian Gulf (a truly awesome series of vulnerable chokepoints). The first overseas expedition we ever mounted was against the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean, under Thomas Jefferson. The focus of our national interests on freedom of maritime trade long predated the use of oil and gas in energy production.
I’m afraid the argument that we could forget the Middle East, not care what happens there, and that that would make Islamists happy, if only we could stop using oil — that argument is invalid. As long as we are a global trading nation, the Middle East will have strategic significance. As long as our national security is predicated, even in part, on the security and stability of other democracies, in Europe and Asia, the Middle East will have strategic significance. It had such significance long before the era of the steamship and intercontinental flight; the significance of the Middle East from pure geography, even setting oil and gas aside, has only increased with modern technology.
Moreover, there is no example from history of ignoring the problem of raiders from less prosperous societies, and having that method result in peace and stability. The only answer to radical Islamism is to confront it and change the minds of its adherents. We can’t somehow leave the Middle East alone. It will come to find us, no matter what we do.
J.E. Dyer
As already noted, I only cited the Saudis because they are the largest oil producers and are best positioned to affect the price, not because it is necessarily their crudel that fills my gas tank. My argument, and it is not just mine, remains, I think, unbreached. If gasoline is able to fluctuate between $2 and $4, as per the manipulations of the market, a US tax which eliminates that gap to the benefit of our treasury is preferable to the oil producers and refiners sucking it up.
You write:
I confess, I did not know that, indeed, I question it.
The Straits of Hormuz are a chockpoint, but only for the region’s oil. Should that commodity cease to be precious those straits will be forgotten. True, the Suez Canal has been a trade chockpoint since 1870 but that was well before the Arab’s modern ascendency. It gave them no significance in the 19th century or before WWII. That only changed when their oil became critical, specifically, after US production peaked and we ceased being self sufficient in energy. Moreover, the canal is less important today than in the past since the largest tankers no longer fit through the canal. Furthermore, the canal route is preferred and container ships are not built that don’t fit the canal, because that shorter route means burning less expensive fuel. But if fuel cost ceased to be a factor, so would the canal which charges hefty transit tolls.
There remains the fact that 300 million Arabs and 70 million Iranians represent an important market which in itself is a geopolitical factor. But that market matters because its oil income has made it a good customer. What will happen once the oil faucets dry up and it loses its purchasing power? It will have income from its western investments. Fine, but that will make it dependent on the West’s economic health. Unless it develops vital products of its own it won’t be a geopolitical factor in its own right.
You charge I ignore the threat from raiders from poorer societies. Of that I am guilty. Nuclear proliferation aside, I don’t think that a serious factor. We have the military and technological ability to cope with pirates and raiders. And finally, America’s whole bent and with enormous success has been the enrichment of the third world and hooking everyone into the global economy. That certainly should not exclude the Middle East. But it need not make the Middle East any more important than sub-Saharan Africa, less so since, apart from oil, Africa is far richer in mineral wealth, far more fertile and habitable.
Paulo,
I wrote you a reply yesterday, but for some reason it was not received or accepted by the server. I then wrote you a precis of my missive, and that too did not register.
Today, after successfully addressing Dryer I tried again, and again my post to you failed to appear on the board. Some filter may be hooking these posts.
Paulo,
So far so good this time.
The gist of my post to you was that, though you rightly note, that Europe began with private railroads, you must acknowledge, they have all, including the French, come to require heavy govt subsidies.
We might also say, the US had roads, including privately built toll roads, before Ike’s presidency. But his interstate highway system is today central and depends on gas tax collections for its maintenance and expansion.
Yes, it is true that Europe’s tightness makes railroads a better mass transportation solution there than here. I had in my earlier posts included a link to a site that proposes a different kind of US railroad system. I won’t offer it again because I think that was what kept my earlier posts from registering.
“hough you rightly note, that Europe began with private railroads, you must acknowledge, they have all, including the French, come to require heavy govt subsidies.”
my problem with your argument resides in the word “require”. I don’t think they required any participation of the state. But I understand why the state would want to participate, since it would be controlling a “strategic” part of the society. Taxes are only a small part of the story.
Not to mention the gigantic strikes imposed on the citizens by the “organized society” (i.e. union leaders) . Summer is coming, and with it the strike season in France. It is a most enjoyable experience to see Paris (and the whole of France) stalled on a hot summer day… (as long as you’re not there for business).
And the rail system is not the only sector controlled by the state…
nacl — I recommend reading some history on the Middle East, to get a picture of its longstanding significance to Western trade and European security and stability. The reason you don’t recall “the Arabs” being significant in the early years of the Suez Canal is that England, France, and Italy administered the areas surrounding it as colonial or mandate territories. What they did not administer was controlled by the Ottoman Empire from Istanbul — whose seat of government and political leadership was a mix of modern Turkish ethnicities. Even before the Canal was built, the Strait of Suez was the gateway to the Middle East and Far East. Napoleon tried to wrest Egypt from British influence in an expedition in the late 1790s, hoping to cut England off from her colonies and trading partners in India and China.
Looking at a map is also helpful. The Strait of Hormuz is the least important chokepoint in the region. A lot of oil goes through it — but that fact pales in comparison with the enduring trade significance of the sea lane through the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, and Suez Canal. Look at a map and observe how close to the coast a ship must pass to get through these restricted waters. Consider the ease of mining the narrowest points, or using antiship missiles in such an area.
Remember also that, within my lifetime (and probably yours), Egypt has closed the Suez Canal to injure Western trade (during the ’67 war), and Libya’s Qaddhafi has mined the Red Sea and succeeded in sinking cargo ships there (1984). Iran, which mined the Persian Gulf during its war with Iraq, and threatened commercial shipping in other ways there, has a longstanding effort underway to acquire coastal missile bases on Yemeni islands of the southern Red Sea. Iran’s relations with Eritrea, which has well-situated Red Sea frontage (including the Dahlak Island archipelago), have been warming up recently, offering a second such venue. With Hizballah having achieved leverage in the government of Lebanon, in the recent Doha accord, Iran will soon have the opportunity to present a threat to commercial shipping from north of the Suez Canal as well.
A key drawback of the maritime Pax Americana has been that Americans and other Westerners have become sanguine about the security of maritime commerce. But that security is a direct function of US engagement and naval diligence around the world’s chokepoints. There has been a great deal of focus on the Strait of Hormuz over the last 20 years, because of Saddam and revolutionary Iran, but that should not obscure for us the enduring importance of stability and quiesence around the other key chokepoints in the region. That importance is perceived not only by Iran — which as ancient Persia once laid claim to much of the region — but by Russia, which has sought to wield influence over the chokepoints flanking her southern neighbors since the days of Peter the Great. China is competing for her own influence in the region, not only building refineries, warehouses, and infrastructure in the Horn of Africa, but selling arms to Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.
History has not ended yet. All vacuums of influence left by an end to US engagement will be filled by others. In the Middle East, the primary contenders are Iran, Russia, and China, none of which would cavil at exacting tribute from the West for passage through the maritime chokepoints. Nor should we expect any hegemon of the Middle East to content itself with setting up toll booths: extending its influence further is more likely.
We always have to remember that we — the US — do nothing in a vacuum. Cultivating the Middle East has never been a one-sided, or one-dimensional (i.e., oil-related) venture for either us or our European predecessors. Europe, Persia, and Russia have been in competition for the Middle East for centuries — millennia — not because of oil, but because it’s the Middle East, and affects everyone’s security and economic welfare.
Dryer,
Suggesting that basic Middle Eastern history and geography is unknown to me won’t help you establish that sans oil the region and its people won’t return to the obscurity from which oil released them, Napoleon’s efforts against England’s land route to India, notwithstanding. Moreover, that history shows Ottomans and Mamelukes, not Arabs, as “significant”. Incidentally, the 1967 closing of the Suez canal spurred the building of giant tankers that didn’t use the canal.
You don’t want to consider that the shipping which your chockepoints now threaten is mainly the oil traffic. However in a time when that traffic would no longer be vital to the West, the Middle East countries will become the ones anxious to keep those sea lanes open.
As to China do you suggest any of her activities in the region, from building infrastructure to selling guns, would be happening if there were no oil?
Finally, the only bigger piffle than your last paragraph, is that the 6th Fleet is sweating a threat by Hezbullah in Lebanon to ships egressing the canal.
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Well, nacl, obviously we won’t come to an agreement on this one. Let me just say that your argument that Ottomans and Mamelukes were “the problem,” not Arabs, borders on silly. No one would have given a flip about Ottomans and Mamelukes if they had been situated in North America. It’s the geography, and the significance of the territory to European security and trade, that drove the strategic interest in the area, long before oil became important, and before the modern phenomenon of Arabism was a gleam in anyone’s eye. That geopolitical significance still obtains. (And Napoleon wasn’t seeking to rout Ottomans and Mamelukes, he was seeking to oust the Brits. He would have loved to form a league with the Ottomans to block the Brits in the Middle East.)
It is also not true that the shipping that relies on the Middle Eastern transit routes is mainly oil traffic. More than half of the Canal’s traffic is non-oil container traffic between Europe, North America, and Asia.
And yes, China would seek to converge on the Middle East if there weren’t oil there. She just wouldn’t use the oil industry to do it. It’s a strategic chokepoint that affects both Asia and Europe. China is pursuing the same methods there that she is pursuing in Central America: investing in infrastructure and buying up the maritime service industry.
This string caught my attention, but still a little surprised there isn’t as many comments as I expected. I’ll keep checking back since this is a hot topic for me personally.
Dryer,
I’m not interested in arguing for the sake of argument, or in having the sense of my words twisted.
For example, when I said the threatened oil traffic is crucial to us, I did not suggest there was no other shipping, merely that any opponent would seek to stop primarily the tankers. Because their oil is critical to the West’s economies and tankers must use those waters since their cargo originates there. General cargo vessels on the other hand could, if necessary, give Middle East countries and the canal, a wide berth. Attacking those ships would in any event be most of all the region’s loss as it would be locked out of int’l trade and denied access to the world’s goods. In a post oil world the Middle East countries will be the ones primarily interested in protecting shipping there.
I am going to leave this matter alone now, since our two positions are clear. I think when oil leaves center stage, so will the Arabs, including, incidentally, the weight of their communities in Europe, and that the geopolitical importance of the M/E will be vastly diminished. You don’t, fine.