graphic: U.S. Dept. of Defense
Thursday’s announcement regarding new nationwide CAFE standards was greeted with a degree of surprise; initial reactions viewed the policy as a chit to quiet the concerns of the enviro left after Wednesday’s announcement by President Obama regarding approval of exploration for offshore oil.
But there should have been no surprise; the statement from the office of the White House press secretary Wednesday in advance of Obama’s speech clearly indicated that an agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation on CAFE standards was going to be signed today. This issue was simply lost in the angry hubbub over the drilling decision.
It was not the only issue lost Wednesday which had also been included in that same statement from the White House. Media outlets did not make note that the decision to allow exploration for petroleum offshore in specific portions of the U.S. coast was driven in part by the Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review. Here’s the key excerpt from the White House press secretary’s statement:
Department of Defense Energy Security Strategic Emphasis: The recently released Quadrennial Defense Review makes clear that crafting a strategic approach to energy and climate change is a high priority for the Department of Defense (DoD). This reflects mission considerations above all. The Department’s own analysis confirms what outside experts have long warned: our military’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels creates significant risks and costs at a tactical as well as a strategic level. The DoD is actively pursuing strategic initiatives to enhance energy security and independence and reduce harmful emissions, including encouraging the development and use of domestically produced advanced biofuels. You can learn more about DoD’s energy initiatives here.
Congress established a process during the Clinton years by which the country’s strategic defense needs would be assessed and reported by the DOD, analyzed and incorporated into the federal budget process every four years. The first QDR was issued in 1996; the most recent was published in February 2010, the second such report created based on post-9/11 assumptions about U.S. security needs.
The 2010 QDR addresses both climate change and energy security (p. 84) as threats to which the DOD must be prepared to respond; DOD has already begun a more comprehensive effort to be “green”. However, as outlined in the QDR, the DOD’s strategic response to energy security is thin in comparison to climate change response. Does this suggest a continuation of the 2006 strategy — enshrined in the QDR which made reference to the Global War on Terror as “the Long War” — in the absence of a more detailed and current strategy?
Congress also specified in 2006 that a panel would review the content of the QDR once published and provide an independent assessment of the conclusions reached by the Defense Department. (To the best of my knowledge, there was no such panel review conducted in 2006 under the terms specified by Congress that year.)
The panel named to review the most recent QDR is loaded with former Bush administration officials and defense personnel, most selected by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. To make matters worse, half of the panel has a conflict of interest as they are linked to defense industry contractors. It’s likely that many of these same contract firms have ties to fossil fuel firms as well, since one critical purpose of our nation’s Defense Department has been to protect fossil fuel production so heavily wound into the American way of life. Here’s the panel members with conflicts of interest:
Richard Armitage: Member, board of directors, ManTech International;
J.D. Crouch: Head of technology solutions group, QinetiQ;
Joan Dempsey: Senior vice president, Booz Allen Hamilton;
David Jeremiah: Member, board of directors, ManTech International; chairman,Wackenhut Services; chairman, Technology Strategies & Alliances, a consulting firm with defense contractors as clients;
George Joulwan: Member, board of directors, General Dynamics;
Alice Maroni: Member, board of trustees, LMI Government Consulting, which provides consulting services for the military;
Jack Keane: Member, board of directors, General Dynamics; adviser to chairman,URS Corp.; chairman, Keane Advisors, a consulting firm with defense contractors as clients;
John Lehman: Chairman, J.F. Lehman & Company, a private equity firm that owns defense contractors; member, board of directors, Ball Corp., and EnerSys;
Robert Scales: Chairman, Colgen LP, a consulting firm with defense contractors as clients.
Note, too, that former Bush administration National Security adviser Stephen Hadley, who now works for defense contractor Raytheon, is a co-chair with former Defense Secretary William Perry, who is the chairman of the board of LGS Innovations, a division of Alcatel Lucent and a defense contractor as well.
Perhaps the drilling decision announced Wednesday also looks so much like Bush administration policy continuation because it’s the same Defense Department — quite literally, the same Defense Secretary at the helm — loaded with left-behinds from the previous administration, which concluded in its QDR that energy security would continue to be a problem for the foreseeable future.
Lacking a truly independent review panel which sees continued expansion of oil production as a risk to our country rather than a benefit to its “sponsors”, there’s little chance that our nation’s security strategy and consequently the DOD will change over the rest of Obama’s term in office, or that pressure by the military industrial complex to “drill, baby, drill” will ease any time soon.
