Pass the Dutch, Baby...

Why shouldn't China invoke the Carter Doctrine?

Shmuel Rosner has a piece in Slate on the global oil supply that builds a House of Nerves out of mere data. 40% of the world's supply runs through the Straits of Hormuz: true! China gets oil from the Sudan: true! China would like to cooperate with Iran on energy: all true! And then he leaves us with an abrupt incoherent ending about the necessity of kicking foreign oil, like this was 2005...China is going to drink our milkshake!

Okay, fine. China is the number two consumer of oil in the world (impressively conservative, considering it is 5 times the size of the number one consumer). It is no longer an arriviste superpower; preeminence demands concomitant international commitments, what was once called "The White Man's Burden." You want a steady flow of oil, then DIY, bitches! Plus, you get to handle all these Dutch-diseased petrostates, with their feudal economies...The Carter Doctrine should belong the the US no more than territorial disputes in the Gambia should be settled by Great Britain.

Not to sound Lewis Lapham-esque, but empires have a way of passing the torch. Seems about time the US took what it has left of UK-like Regal Splendor, even if it's the geopolitical equivalent of a 40 of Olde English and some Hot Pockets, and found a stoop to sit on. If the cost of being out of Iraq is Chinese PT boats in Basra, sign me up. The US Treasury could stand to have that 3 billion a week back. Kids from the sticks could stand to have all their limbs attached.

Besides which, the twin goals of kinder-gentler foreign policy and hydrocarbon conservation satisfy one another. Not only is Defense a colossal consumer of oil, it provides a free platform for extraction and pipeline companies to work on the side. Shutting down our bizarre, high-school protection racket in the Mideast is a win-win: no more defending oil means less oil needed for Defense.

And all those rogue states China's dealing with? Well, rogues have a way of being brought into the fold when necessary. Is Rosner trying to say that oil from Saudi Arabia is morally cleaner than oil from Venezuela? Or is he saying that we should clean up our own house? In which case Exxon-Mobil and Conoco-Philips and Total-Fina-Elf need to move out of Sudan. And everyone needs to make friends with Brazil.

And so, President Hu, we bequeath to you the Carter Doctrine, a destructive little bit of "statecraft" so insane that only a peanut farmer could enact it with a straight face.

What's the Chinese for Military Keynesianism?
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