Bush’s legacy at the gas pump

With little time left in office, President Bush needs a big foreign-policy success. Iraq may not be it. Rather, his legacy may lie in a new strategy for stable oil supplies. A superpower can’t afford to be superdependent on fickle oil sources.

A near tripling of oil prices in three years, caused in part by political uncertainties in both troubled and troubling oil nations, has the US scrambling for such a strategy.

“Nothing has really taken me aback more, as secretary of State, than the way the politics of energy is … warping diplomacy around the world,” Condoleezza Rice told a Senate panel recently.

That diplomatic scramble was on full display last week during a trip to oil-rich Central Asia by Dick Cheney. Not only did the American vice president use his travels to criticize Russia for using its energy exports as “tools of intimidation and blackmail,” he embraced the authoritarian ruler of Kazakhstan. Mr. Cheney was seeking ways for the oil of that Central Asian giant to bypass the clutches of the Kremlin. His trip comes just months after a similar tour to the region by Ms. Rice.

Christian Science Monitor