Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

6Brittle Powerreview by more than fifty experts from the military, civilian government,industrial, and academic communities—to omit those concepts, technologicaldetails, and references that could be useful to an adversary with enough skilland insight to mount an effective assault in the first place. That is, the materialpresented here should be grossly insufficient to help persons who do nothave such skill, but superfluous to those who do. This book is a warning, butnot a cookbook. Citations are omitted where necessary to protect a specificpoint of vulnerability from being identified (or to honor a source’s wish thata statement not be attributed). No proprietary or classified information hasbeen used or received. The official predecessor of this book 10 —virtually identicalin technical substance—underwent formal government classificationreview before being released for unlimited public distribution.Some residual risk will nonetheless remain—perhaps the price of free andinformed discussion in a democracy. We believe the only thing more dangerousthan discussing these distressing matters is not discussing them; for ifonly terrorists are aware of what they can do—and energy-related attacksaround the world demonstrate weekly that they are—then the real dangersembodied in present energy policy will persist and sooner or later will beexploited. Reported attacks on centralized energy facilities are steadily (and,of late, rapidly) becoming more frequent, more sophisticated, and more violent.Not to recognize and combat this trend is to surrender to it—benefittingnobody but the enemies of a free society.Third, energy security is more than a military problem. Military power,to be sure, rests more than ever on secure supplies of energy. The Allied lossof five hundred fifty-two oil tankers in World War II would have spelleddefeat had not American industry, fueled mainly by domestic coal, beenable to build nine hundred eight more. 11 Europe would have run out of oilduring the Suez crisis if American oil fields had not been able to provideenough extra “surge” capacity to make good our allies’ deficit.But the flexibility of the 1950s had disappeared by the time the Vietnamwar hastened our nation’s shift to being a net importer of oil. Vietnam wasour first largely oil-fueled war, directly using somewhat over one million barrelsof oil per day—about nine percent of national oil use, or nearly twice thefraction lost in the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo. 12 Any future wars may haveto be fought largely with oil shipped from foreign countries in foreign tankersby foreign crews. 13 Fighting a replica of World War II today with ninety percentof our oil imports cut off (corresponding to a virtual closure of sea lanesby submarine warfare) would require roughly half the nation’s oil. 14 Thiswould imply at best drastic civilian rationing and at worst a serious disadvantageagainst an enemy that happened to enjoy relatively secure access to