WILD CARDS - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 185

wrong. Leaders may not want to go to war, but miscalculations and
miscommunications could take them down that path anyway. 12 Political
scientists have studied the links between economic interdependence
and war intensively over the past few decades, and they found that
although trade between democracies indeed makes war less likely, eco-
nomic interdependence among less similar pairs (as the United States
and China are) does lit le or nothing of the sort. 13
h e big dif erence from 1914 is the advent of nuclear weapons. h e
prospect of nuclear conl ict is good reason to believe that the United
States and China will not go to war over each other's territory as the
European powers did during the twentieth century. But it is not good
reason to entirely dismiss the possibility. Leaders can be guilty of wish-
ful thinking even when nuclear weapons are involved. h ey may believe
that they are taking only limited steps, expecting that their adversary
will see things similarly, when in fact the other side feels existentially
threatened. h

e result could be an unintentional escalation to the

nuclear level.
Perhaps more important, though, is the prospect of proxy bat les
in distant lands, much like those that occupied the United States and
the Soviet Union for more than four decades of the Cold War. Indeed,
the past decade has been rife with warnings that the United States
and China will clash over control of energy resources in places from
Africa to the Arctic. 14 h e thesis is suspect: so long as markets func-
tion reasonably well, military confrontation looks awfully unat ractive.
But just as the United States feared that the Soviet Union would move
from Afghanistan to Iran and gain control over world oil resources, it
could eventually come to fear similar moves from China. At that point,
self-sui ciency in energy, and particularly oil, could change the U.S.
calculus, sparing the country harm.
What do these possibilities mean for the future of U.S. energy? Both
sides of the i ght, as is their wont, will see implications in their own
favor. Advocates of greater ei ciency and alternative fuels can conclude
they would help make the United States independent of global energy
systems if need be. Proponents of ramping up domestic oil and gas
production will say the same thing. Each side can also i nd arguments
against the other. Partisans of new energy sources can point out that,