Fareed Zakaria's foreign policy priority? A plan for greater energy conservation and independence:

...Reducing our dependence on oil would be the single greatest multiplier of American power in the world. I leave it to economists to sort out what expensive oil does to America's growth and inflation prospects. What is less often noticed is how crippling this situation is for American foreign policy. "Everything we're trying to do in the world is made much more difficult in the current environment of rising oil prices," says Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World." Consider:

· Terrorism . Over the past three decades, Islamic extremism and violence have been funded from two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, not coincidentally the world's first- and second-largest oil exporters. Both countries are now awash in money, and no matter what the controls, some of this cash is surely getting to unsavory groups and individuals...

And what's the one single thing that would make a difference? Not drilling in Anwar, of course, but our cars:

It's true that there is no silver bullet that will entirely solve America's energy problem, but there is one that goes a long way: more efficient cars. If American cars averaged 40 miles per gallon, we would soon reduce consumption by 2 million to 3 million barrels of oil a day. That could translate into a sustained price drop of more than $20 a barrel.

Are American political constituencies such that this can never become part of the platform of a serious US political leader? As Zakaria concludes:

We don't need a Manhattan Project to find our way out of our current energy trap. The technologies already exist. But what we're searching for is perhaps even harder: political leadership and vision.

With people like Ari Berman and others thinking about the Dems and foreign policy, perhaps not just a critique of the Democratic strategic class is in order, but a putting forward of some of the more innovative ideas and thinkers like Zakaria and Jeff Sachs on greater energy independence and debt relief/poverty reduction would be useful.

Posted by Laura at August 23, 2005 09:48 AM