Lugar warns of energy's use as weapon
By MARTIN SCHRAM
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
The attack -- a tightly-coordinated launch of a weapon of mass impact -- struck its targets with devastating accuracy and effect.
It was triggered not by pushing a button to launch a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon -- but by turning a spigot, from "on" to "off." The attackers used the one powerful weapon in their arsenal -- energy -- as they halted the flow of oil and natural gas they had been piping, even in the most contentious decades, to the industrially rich but energy dependent nations of the West.
The nations of the West were caught flatfooted, unprepared and shockingly unable to defend themselves. Yet they had seen it coming. Indeed, they had been warned a number of times. Back in 2006, in fact, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who is respected by Democrats as well as Republicans in Washington and by leaders around the world, had sounded a clarion warning -- a Nov. 27 address in Riga, Latvia, that was delivered to the German Marshall Fund conference on the eve of the NATO summit:
"The use of energy as an overt weapon is not a theoretical threat of the future; it is happening now," Lugar had warned. Iran has threatened to shut off oil if sanctions are imposed because of its pursuit of a nuclear weapons program, Lugar noted, and Russia actually did halt energy deliveries to Ukraine in a short-term strong-arm attempt to achieve political goals. "NATO must determine what steps it is willing to take if ... another member state is threatened as Ukraine was," Lugar said. And he listed a number of steps he said required urgent action.
But what with so many real-time wars to cover, the major U.S. and international news media all but ignored Lugar's call for urgent action to prevent a future war. And absent the political imperative generated by the global media spotlight, the West virtually ignored Lugar's and sadly prescient warning. Now, so many months later, the West is paying a tragic price.
Ethnically disparate
The attackers were geographically, culturally, ethnically disparate, led by demagogic and power-centric leaders who were bonded mainly by their common distrust (and for some, downright hatred) of the industrialized West. Among them: Islamic militants who'd recently come to power in much of the Middle East, plus Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and other leaders in Nigeria and Central Asia. It is believed but not yet confirmed that Russia's Vladimir Putin has bonded in support; after all, he showed them how to use energy as a weapon.
Perhaps the real lesson for the oil powers in Putin's Ukraine misadventure was that a successful energy shutoff cannot be the act of a lone renegade, but must be a coordinated act backed by all the major oil power players. In his speech, Lugar asked a question for all NATO members to consider: "Russia retreated from the (Ukraine) standoff after a strong Western reaction, but how would NATO have responded if Russia had maintained the embargo? The Ukrainian economy and military could have been crippled without a shot being fired, and the dangers and losses to several NATO member nations would have mounted significantly."
Lugar followed with his own answer: NATO must decide and declare now that it will apply Article Five of the NATO Charter -- which defines an attack against one NATO member as an attack against all NATO members -- to conflicts in which energy is the weapon of attack. Along with proposing a number of specific internal reforms for NATO, Lugar emphasized the need for financial and political support for developing alternative energy sources.
Renewed effort
Lugar's Foreign Relations Committee senior staff member, Mark Helmke, says that as the senator relinquishes his chairmanship in the newly Democratic-controlled Senate, Lugar will make energy security his top priority (along with his continuing efforts to expand the successful Nunn-Lugar program he co-sponsored with former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., to secure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that remain vulnerable to terrorists. The good news is that incoming Democratic chairman, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, shares Lugar's sense of urgency concerning energy security and their staffs are developing bipartisan proposals.
This summer, Lugar issued a warning that could just as easily have been voiced by Biden: "... Advancements in American energy security have been painfully slow during 2006, and political leadership has been defensive, rather than pro-active ... The federal government is not treating energy vulnerability as a crisis."
Together, perhaps this re-energized Democrat-Republican duo can succeed where the Bush administration and the Congress have so far failed.
Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard.