Oil and politics: Even with advances, energy influences power struggles around the globe

Oil and politics have been historically intertwined and have created focal points of soft power.

Today, Europe is being held hostage by Russia leveraging its natural gas supplies to deter European involvement in its ongoing war in the Ukraine. Europe, lacking its own hydrocarbon energy sources, is forced to contend with a hostile nation to ensure its citizens can keep warm this upcoming winter. Fossil fuels and hydrocarbon production continues to be used as political currency in geopolitics and wars.

Until recently, America faced a similar fate. For decades, America was tied to the whims of Middle Eastern leaders dating back to 1945, when the then King of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arranged to supply Saudi oil to the United States in exchange for security assurances. This consequential agreement led to a long-term interdependency built atop a supply chain of oil. Furthermore, it led to the formation of a regional political block known as the Arab League, which enabled the Middle East to consolidate power globally, creating geopolitical consequences across the entire region and the globe.
 
This complex arrangement stood at odds with America’s support for the State of Israel. America has been forced to play a complicated game to placate foreign energy producers in the Gulf to satiate its critical energy needs.

The energy renaissance in America changed that landscape in America’s favor — thanks to the discovery of horizontal drilling by domestic producers. Compounded by the lifting of the export ban in 2015, America has changed the dynamic.

Furthermore, America’s status and production capacity enabled a geopolitical reset in the region, galvanizing parts of the Arab League to join Israel in counteracting a resurgent Iran. This reset was embodied in the signing of the Abraham Accords — linking America’s closest ally Israel with former foes like the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Morocco, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and even the African nation of Sudan. Effectively, energy independence in the U.S. laid the foundation for the Middle Eastern political block to partially refocus its geopolitical position — where once it saw Israel as a foe to viewing it today as a regional ally. There is a bipartisan effort to continue bringing new countries into the fold, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. All of this would not have been possible without American domestic production.

Energy has always been a mosaic of various sources, ever shifting in the wake of new technologies. However, the evolution of transitioning to new sources of energy needs to account for the political and security implications that those transitions enable. By mitigating the potential threat of being cut off from oil and gas supplies via the Straits of Hormuz, Gulf nations, Israel and America need to work together to combat any threats to the global energy supply chain.

We commemorated the second anniversary of the historic Abraham Accords this month, but we cannot forget that the world’s energy economy still is powered by fossil fuels. Russia has reminded Europe of the dangers of rushing to transition without a long-term plan.

America’s soft power cannot revert to the dark days of reliance on others to solve its natural resource needs without risking our combined national and global security.

Tony Coelho was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1978 to 1989 representing a district in central California as a Democrat.

Fred Zeidman is the co-chair and director of the Council for a Secure America. He served as chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and was appointed by President George W. Bush in March 2002, serving in that position from 2002-2010. He serves on the board of directors of Chamber Energy.