The Oil Drum

Dave Roberts at Gristmill has an entry today that's kind of related to this post. In his entry, he juxtaposes two articles that he read in the same issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The first article makes a case for Nigeria possibly being further along the path to failed statehood than Iraq, and most of it has to do with the oil situation in Nigeria. In the second article, "experts" are asked which countries they think are the biggest threat to the US, and every country listed is there because they may have the capacity to threaten the US with nuclear weapons. Roberts comments:

But nobody mentioned Nigeria. Indeed, none of the authorities saw fit to mention the coming end of cheap oil and the concomitant spread of failed states.

People are, by biological design I think, geared toward finding and fighting human enemies, human aggressors. But it's not open aggression that most threatens us. It's the loss of easy oil, and the horrific political and social situations we're going to have to meddle in to maintain what supply is left. It seems pretty clear based on this poll that the U.S. security establishment has not come around to that way of thinking.

Geopolitical threats appear to be the new black.