AS THE strategic and economic value of oil skyrocketed during the first half of this year, many experts declared that the global distribution of power is rapidly shifting to oil exporters-specifically, Russia and the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). This belief has led to a lot of talk about the rise of "authoritarian capitalist" great powers and "the return of history."
But let's imagine-as The National Interest asked me to do-that the summer of 2008 turns out to be the all-time peak of oil prices, and that the end of the oil era is imminent. The first instinct is to assume that in this world-a world in which oil would be a minor commodity, irrelevant to both geopolitics and the global economy-America would be much better off. Oil-exporting autocracies would fade into obscurity, and the Middle East would revert to barren sand-strewn lands. This imagined future, after all, is what drives politicians from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to say that ending dependence on foreign oil will liberate America.
But would this really be the case? It may be that the assumptions we hold are grounded in a misunderstanding of the global order. Perhaps instead, without oil dominating their economies, the Middle East oil states would be far less dependent on the United States for trade, for security and for dollars. Perhaps the dollar would no longer be the world's reserve currency, which would severely hinder America's ability to fund its current-account deficit-and its military superiority. And then, perhaps, the security guarantee the United States provides to the Middle East-and by extension the entire oil-dependent world-would be null and void.
In short, a world that doesn't need oil may also be a world that doesn't need the United States. But when prices of oil are skyrocketing, people aren't thinking about the possible long-term implications of energy independence, only the short-term gains.
