Money and Terror: Is There an End to American Addiction to Oil?

Abstract

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world, said President George W. Bush in his February 1, 2006 State of the Union Address, delivered before a Joint Session of Congress.

The hypothesis we try in this paper to test is the following: President Bush's pledge about putting an end to the US oil addiction is not a workable issue, neither on the short-term nor on the mid-term, as long as oil is still the main source of energy for humankind.

We will demonstrate:

1 - that the OPEC and Saudi Arabia are still acting as the masters of the oil markets;

2 - that the US businessmen and politicians are still bound to the oil industry and policy is depending upon it;

3 - that as a consequence of this double dependence (economical and political), the US self-declared policy of encouraging reform and democracy in the Middle East is seriously handicapped as a wide portion of the terror financial network still escapes the US control.

Keywords: February 1, 2006 State of the Union Address, George W. Bush, Addiction to oil, Opec, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism funds, Democratization, Middle East, Egypt, Tunisia, Gulf

JEL Classification: A14, B30, D74, D70, D80, H77, H70, H80, N15, N25