[ppi] [ppiindia] Cut oil prices and tyrants will fall

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/30/opinion/edfried.html 


Thomas L. Friedman: Cut oil prices and tyrants will fall 
Thomas L. Friedman The New York Times Monday, January 31, 2005


DAVOS, Switzerland One of the most striking things I've found in Europe these 
past two weeks is the absolute conviction that the Bush team is just itching to 
invade Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. 
.
Psssssssst. Come over here. A little closer. Now listen: Don't tell the 
Iranians this, but the Bush team isn't going to be invading anybody. We 
Americans don't have enough troops to finish the job in Iraq. Our military 
budget is completely maxed out. We couldn't invade Grenada today. If Iran is to 
forgo developing nuclear weapons, it will only be because the Europeans' 
diplomatic approach manages to persuade Tehran to do so.
.
For two years the Europeans have been telling the Bush administration that its 
use of force to prevent states from developing nuclear weapons has been a 
failure in Iraq and that the Europeans have a better way - multilateral 
diplomacy using carrots and sticks. Well, Europe, as we say in baseball, 
"You're up."
.
"I think this is an absolute test case for Europe's ability to lay out its own 
idea for a joint agenda with the United States to deal with a problem like 
Iran," said the Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash, author of "Free World: 
America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West." "OK, we think bombing 
Iran is a bad idea. What is a good idea?" For the Europeans to be successful, 
though, Ash said, they can't just be offering carrots. They have to credibly 
convey to Iran that they will wield their own stick. They have to credibly 
convey that they will refer Iran to the Security Council for real sanctions, if 
it is unwilling to strike a deal involving nuclear inspections in return for 
normalized economic relations with the West.
.
"Very often there is the notion that Europe is the soft cop and the U.S. is the 
hard cop," Ash said. "Here it must be the other way around. Europe has to talk 
as credibly about using economic sanctions as some in Washington have talked 
about using military force."
.
The United States has to help. The carrot the Iranians want for abandoning 
their nuclear program is not just unfettered trade with the West, but some kind 
of assurances that if they give up their nuclear research programs, the United 
States will agree to some kind of nonaggression accord. The Bush team has been 
reluctant to do this, because it wants regime change in Iran. (This is a 
mistake; we need to concentrate for now on changing the behavior of the Iranian 
regime and strengthening the reformers, and letting them handle the regime 
change.)
.
If multilateral diplomacy is to work to defuse the brewing Iran nuclear crisis, 
"the Europeans have to offer a more credible stick and the Americans need to 
offer a more credible carrot," Ash said. But the Europeans are not good at 
credibly threatening force.
.
That's why this is a serious moment. If Britain, France and Germany, which are 
spearheading Europe's negotiations with Iran, fail, and if the U.S. use of 
force in Iraq - even if it succeeds - proves way too messy, expensive and 
dangerous to be repeated anytime soon, where are we? Is there any other way the 
West can promote real reform in the Middle East?
.
Yes, there is an alternative to the Euro-wimps and the neocons, and it is the 
"geo-greens." I am a geo-green. The geo-greens believe that, going forward, if 
we put all our focus on reducing the price of oil - by conservation, by 
developing renewable and alternative energies and by expanding nuclear power - 
we will force more reform than by any other strategy. You give me $18-a-barrel 
oil and I will give you political and economic reform from Algeria to Iran. All 
these regimes have huge population bubbles and too few jobs. They make up the 
gap with oil revenues. Shrink the oil revenue and they will have to open up 
their economies and their schools and liberate their women so that their people 
can compete. It is that simple.
.
By refusing to rein in America's energy consumption, the Bush administration is 
not only depriving itself of the most effective lever for promoting internally 
driven reform in the Middle East, it is also depriving itself of any military 
option. As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, points 
out, given today's tight oil market and current U.S. consumption patterns, any 
kind of U.S. strike on Iran, one of the world's major oil producers, would send 
the price of oil through the roof, causing real problems for our economy. "Our 
own energy policy has tied our hands," Haass said.
.
The Bush team's laudable desire to promote sustained reform in the Middle East 
will never succeed unless it moves from neocon to geo-green.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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