thinking about the Middle East

two things have got me thinking about Middle East security issues. One, I watched the documentary Gunner Palace yesterday. If you get a chance, SEE IT. It is, most likely, *the* film on the US occupation of Iraq. The director/cameraman spent a few months with an infantry unit stationed in one of the hot parts of Baghdad for several months in 2003, going out on patrols with them, filming them around their base, a palace formerly owned by Uday Hussein, and generally capturing the feel of being stationed in the place. Some of the soldiers he was with were on the cover of Time for the Person of the Year issue that year. The soundtrack is almost completely things filmed on-site, soldiers rapping, playing guitar, etc. (and some of them are pretty good).

So, yeah, see that.

Second, Time is running an article this week on what a war with Iran might be like.

So. Middle East security. I've come to a conclusion on this:

The only way to pacify the region is to make it economically irrelevant by removing the world's dependence on Persian Gulf oil.

This means heavily investing in and developing a whole range of alternative energy sources, diversifying the world oil production supply system, reforming the oil market system, and probably a number of other things I can't think of right now.

This will not be either easy or quick, but it is NOT optional. Oil money will fund the development and detonation of nuclear bombs and other ways to cause the death of millions (through war, terrorism, and all their side effects) if things go on as they are, and the pursuit of the same will provide constant reasons for those acts to be committed.

Just to be clear here, I'm not talking exclusively of attacks by fundamentalist muslim militants. I am also talking about military options by western forces, as well as Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, South American, and others. The entire world has a stake in this, and all of the major powers have reason to either use their oil supplies as leverage or to use their lack of same as a pretext for military action. We have already seen seventy years of this, at least. (one of Japan's reasons for attacking the US in World War Two was a US oil embargo, and their invasion of Manchuria was in part to gain access to extensive coal reserves there. Germany drew Romania into the Axis because Romania had oil. etc.)

Hasn't it been enough? What more will it take?