Fantasy land time (hence the GD forum): let’s assume that some garage inventor comes up with an amazingly viable and renewable energy source that works for cars, power plants, etc. I dunno, cold fusion or something of the like that lets us drop our dependence on oil for everything other than the occasional squirt of WD40 on squeaky hinges.
To me, this would pretty much relegate the Middle East’s importance to the West to close to zero. I’m sure we’d continue to support democracies there, but I also figure we’d stop, in simple terms, taking any shit from the extremist regimes that want to take over the world with a global Islamic government.
I mean, it seems to me that the only reason we deal with some of the Middle East governments at all – that is, we’re treating repressive third-world dictatorships with false respect because they’ve got a gun pointed at our favorite dog at the dinner table – is because they were lucky enough to be sitting on huge oil deposits, and that if their only trump card were suddenly thrown in the shredder we’d be able to cut off relations if they refused to behave.
By “behaving” I’m referring to the US/world’s turning blind eyes to terrorist training camps throughout the Middle East, Sauid involvement in the 9/11 attacks, etc. We basically have to play nice to ensure a constant oil supply.
What kind of leverage and policy changes would we realistically expect to see in a suddenly non-oil dependent world? What would really change, specifically relating to Middle East policies. And how would this affect terrorism? (I think it’d have a very negative effect on terrorist groups who would be even less tolerated by some than they are now. And yes, there are far too many governments out there currently tolerating – if not all out supporting – terrorist groups.)