Trouble at The Pump

The Pentagon foresees a two-front threat to national security: global instability spurred by climate change and a crippling dependence on oil.

America’s economic dependence on foreign oil isn’t exactly news. Nor is the idea that such dependence undermines our national security. President Dwight D. Eisenhower worried in the 1950s that if the nation imported more than 20 percent of its oil, it would face an untenable risk. Five decades and three oil price-induced recessions later, with oil imports now at more than 60 percent, the risk is greater than ever. But it’s being viewed with a new level of urgency at the Pentagon – not because military planners are worried about the price of oil (in planning and acquisition, the Defense Department treats oil as if it were a free commodity), nor because of any high-minded concerns about the environmental consequences of fossil-fuel consumption.

The Pentagon is pursuing alternative fuels for the same reason it pioneered racial integration and developed the Internet – mission effectiveness is on the line. And just as the Defense Department led transformation of the racial and technological landscape of the United States in the last century, the decisions it makes regarding petroleum use unquestionably will shape the way other federal agencies and ultimately the country operate in this century.

It’s impossible to overstate the challenge facing Defense. It is the single-largest consumer of petroleum in the world. Oil fuels the world economy; specifically, it fuels every weapons system operated by the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. If the Pentagon is serious about addressing oil dependency, virtually everything about Defense operations is at stake: from the way the services buy and use materiel and weapons to the way they evaluate and promote the personnel who make those decisions. All will have to change. But the imperative for change has become so compelling that Defense ultimately must succeed, says Terry J. Pudas, director of the Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation.

“If we’re not at the tipping point, we’re close,” says Pudas. “I think that in the last year to year and a half, the amount of activity focused on this subject has grown enormously. My job is to be dissatisfied and impatient” with what’s being done. Two recent studies, including one commissioned by Pudas’ office, have galvanized support for developing a comprehensive Defense energy policy that moves the department away from oil dependency. Oil addiction is seen to undermine national security in a number of critical ways:

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