If I could change one thing about American foreign policy, what would it be? The answer is easy, but it's not something most of us think of as foreign policy. I would adopt a serious national program geared toward energy efficiency and independence. Reducing our dependence on oil would be the single greatest multiplier of American power in the world. I leave it to economists to sort out what expensive oil does to America's growth and inflation prospects. What is less often noticed is how crippling this situation is for American foreign policy. "Everything we're trying to do in the world is made much more difficult in the current environment of rising oil prices," says Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World."

But will we see progress or a whole bunch of navel gazing?  All it takes, with supply and demand balanced on the knife's edge as they are, is one belligerent autocrat, one large-scale terrorist attack and we're at the famous Goldman-Sachs $105/bbl (~$4.50/gal, if not more) superspike.  I personally hope that day never comes...but, knowing what we know, I'm not nearly pollyanna enough to think that it won't happen.
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