The world economy is highly integrated. That's a good thing, something that gives us common interests and motivation to get along - not that we are doing well at getting along or have ever done so in the past. Still, it's good to have shared interests and it's good to talk them up.

We sink or swim together and this gives us all an interest in one another's internal affairs. For example, Europe's mismanagement of its economy is a drag on the economies of the whole rest of the world. Something similar can be said about Japan. Both have been underperforming for a decade or more at great cost to everyone else as well as themselves.

The idea of any economy having security is mistaken when it does not explicitly include its trading partners as well as their partners. Yet we frequently hear this sort of nonsensical idea.

Four years ago, on the eve of 9/11, the need to reduce radically our reliance on oil was not clear to many and in any case the path of doing so seemed a long and difficult one. Today both assumptions are being undermined by the risks of the post-9/11 world and by technological progress in fuel efficiency and alternative fuels.

We spell out below the risks of petroleum dependency, particularly the vulnerability of the petroleum infrastructure in the Middle East to terrorist attack — a single well-designed attack could send oil to well over $100/barrel and devastate the world's economy. That reality, among other risks, and the fact that our current transportation infrastructure is locked in to oil, should be sufficient to convince any objective observer that oil dependence today creates serious and pressing dangers for the US and other oil-importing nations.

$100/barrel oil would cripple the world economy, including the US, even if the US didn't import one drop of it. We depend on our partners' well being. But if none of us used any oil at all the situation would be unchanged. If not oil then something else will be the soft target for wreckers. If middle east terrorists were somehow erased from history there would still be terrorists - leftists, greens, technophobes, religious zealots, secessionist militias, whatever - there will always be cranks and creeps. There is no escape from vulnerability, no fortress to hide in. Security depends on engagement and mutual interest not good fences and isolation chambers, and perfect security is not possible.

We do need to develop new sources of portable energy since there isn't enough oil to satisfy demand in future as developing world requirements rise. There isn't enough natural gas unless gas hydrates work out better than seems probable. Synthesis from coal could provide fuel for a good long time but finite supply isn't the only issue. We also suspect that we have pumped more carbon into the atmosphere than is good for us. We need to evolve away from burning things to power vehicles. It has nothing to do with security or geo-politics, it is techno-social evolution.

In what has become tediously lame and repetitive political strategy the article proceeds from scare mongering to lunatic policy proposals for dealing with the immanent threat. It's the usual litany: frugality, food burning, and eventually the switch to electricity.

Frugality will happen without any political pressure. Technological evolution will do that. Food burning is myopic and narrow minded. Biomass has higher uses than for fuel. We see the foolishness of turning forests into cord wood for fire pots, and tarting the idea up with new methods such as "cellulosic ethanol" doesn't change the basic issue. Plants are not sensible fuel sources. They make even less sense than fossil fuels. The switch to electricity is in progress. There are technologies to master still, but there is progress and the objective is clear.

Green Car Congress wonders:

. . . with advocates such as these [George Shultz, James Woolsey] — who presumably would have clout with the less demand-side focused members of Congress and the administration — behind fuel efficiency, plug-ins and a rational biofuel strategy, why can’t we get any traction?

Well, the ideas aren't very good, the advocates aren't politically important, and these aren't political problems in any event. We wouldn't be more secure economically, we wouldn't be more secure from terrorism and the transition to electric transportation will happen whether politicians mung things up or not. In the next couple of decades there will be progress in solar and nuclear technologies for power generation - and perhaps fringe sources such as gravitational generation and thermal energy conversion (wind is just an inconvenient way to tap solar power rather than another source) - as well as storage technologies to make the power mobile.

The political shenanigans will continue - it's big business - but we should ignore them as much as possible and deny them the power they seek. Rather than letting them use techno-social evolution as an excuse to grab even more power we should stick to the knitting and apply our resources to more useful activities. There's work to do.

Update

In Krugman: Illiberal Demagogue Alex Tabarrok points out how security actually works.

Nothing can harm the prospects for world peace more than the vicious idea that we do better when they do worse. The Chinese and Americans people already have enough mercantilists, imperialists and “national greatness” warriors pushing them towards conflict, what we need on this issue are liberal economists like the wise Brad DeLong who writes:

It is very important for the late-twenty first century national security of the United States that, fifty years from now, schoolchildren in India and China be taught that America is their friend, that it did all it could to help them become rich. It is very important that they not be taught that America wishes that they were still barefoot and powerless, and has done all it can to keep them so.

The attitude of Shultz and Woolsey is wrong. There are tensions in trade as in war but to avoid war we need to keep trading while wishing one another well. It is in our security interests for all oil producers and consumers to prosper. The tensions of the moment should not blind us to the longer term consequences of antagonistic policies and rhetoric that begrudge prosperity for competitors in either the economic or political spheres.