Why the Middle East is Afraid of Brazil

Much as been made of the discovery of some new oil fields off the coast of Brazil lately, even though they haven't started tapping into it yet, but it appears our friends in the Middle East are also very nervous about what this means for them.

America's Arab allies may be ill-advised to count on the presence of U.S. forces being permanent. America's enemies in the Middle East might foresee a day in which the Great Satan boards his ships and goes home, leaving the region to its fate.

What the author also hints at with this statement is that without the Americans fighting their battles for them the Arabs government might be in trouble without our presence.

What would cause us to get on our ships and leave? Simple, the ability to fill all of oil needs from right here in our hemisphere and no longer have to rely on the whims and volatile Arab countries for it.

The author sums it up this way.

And what would that fate be? If the main reason for America's military presence in the region has been dependence on oil, there are other oil-hungry powers. The three biggest customers for the oil of the Gulf will be China, Japan and India, and they have a keen a strategic interest in ensuring a reliable supply.

The problem is that there are three of them, and the two most populous, India and China, are developing almost inexhaustible appetites for imported oil. There is already a quiet arms race underway between them in the Indian Ocean, with China building ports that look like naval bases in Pakistan and Myanmar, and India building aircraft carriers. If the Americans turn away, and India and China rush in to fill the vacuum and secure their access to oil, the Arab world may yet come to look back on the American era in the region as a golden age.

Golden Age indeed.

I still would rather we start tapping into our own oil in the Gulf of Mexico and ANWR and, more importantly, build some more refineries. Sure we need to pursue other sources for our energy needs also but until that technology and ability is available we need to make the best use of what we have at our fingertips.