Back in 2003, the US was headed towards complete dependence on foreign oil. Additionally, the demand for energy (particularly from China) was growing far faster than production, which meant an energy price spike was inevitable.
Of course, this could be avoided if another big source of oil was found and exploited. However, based on existing production technology, the only big fields left untapped were in Iraq, but due to sanctions (limiting production to 2m barrels a day, far less than the 8 m bpd projected to be possible).
The result was inevitable. The US invaded Iraq to free up production (that's largely why the fields were secured in the first couple of days of the invasion), but it screwed up. The national security "brain-trust" didn't anticipate that the Iraqi guerrillas would disrupt this production so effectively (I covered this in detail on this blog and in my book). The result? Iraq produced less oil, for years after the invasion, than it did under sanctions.
That loss of production in combination with disruption caused by Nigerian guerrillas (who copied the success of the Iraqis), produced an energy crunch that drove the global economy into a massive recession. Worse, this recession became a decade long depression due to the disruption caused by the banks and hedge funds we allow to hack the global financial system.
One of the benefits of this oil crunch was that high prices spurred technological innovation that led to an upheaval in the US energy system over the last decade. New technology has enabled US oil and natural gas production to boom. Not only that, this tech enables energy production to scale industrially -- that's a big change if you understand the implications.
The most immediate benefit of a return to US energy autonomy has been lower natural gas, oil, and gasoline prices (autonomy that will only grow as solar zooms). However, there's other benefits that should be obvious too. Since the US isn't dependent on Middle Eastern energy anymore, US national security policy will be decoupled from Middle Eastern conflicts. Like it or not, this is inevitable.
What does this mean?
- If the US does get involved in Middle East conflicts it's due to outdated policy and doctrine.
- Nobody in the West will do anything to stop the spread of ISIS (as a humanitarian crisis it rates well below Rwanda).
- Saudi Arabia is going to get desperate to get the US to intervene. It sees ISIS as an existential threat. How will it do that? I've got some ideas...