Or the US could mind its own business and it won’t be a target for terrorists, like Japan, Switzerland, etc. When the credit crunch finally hits, maybe the US won’t have a choice but to disengage for world policing, because it can’t afford it.

Having lived five years in the US and five years in Japan over the last decade, I think my observations on the situation may be interesting to readers.

In Japan, the concentrated nature of the population makes public transportation efficient (and even profitable) and easy to sustain and maintain. Toll roads, car fees, and gasoline are expensive enough that its almost never worth driving unless you have a family of at least three people. So the country operates without everyone having to drive, and has a very sound public transportation infrastructure. And were the gasoline sky-rocket in price or the supply to suddenly be cut in half, the country would continue to function.

In the US, the very existence of suburbia is based on the premise of cheap gasoline and everyone being able to drive themselves. Were gasoline to triple in price, or the supply to suddenly be cut in half, its frankly hard to see how suburbia, and thus much of middle class America, to continue to enjoy current luxuries, as commuting to work, delivering food and supplies to distant places, and much more would cease to be possible. With almost no remaining long-distance infrastructure in the US outside of trucks and automobiles, the country is incredibly vulnerable to any constriction on gasoline supply.

Yet the oil imports to the United States are diverse, and come from the Middle East, Africa, Indonesia, elsewhere in the Western hemisphere plus domestic production. Japan is more resilient in that daily life is less dependent on cheap auto fuel, but it is dependent on the Middle East (with a trickle from Indonesia and North America) and thus far more vulnerable to a regional crisis. US oil supplies are diverse enough that the country is really only doomed if there was a system-wide failure in the import/export chain of global energy supplies. I believe the numbers are that 86% of Japan’s oil comes from the Middle East, compared to 19% of the United States.

How has Japan’s economy done compared to ours over the past generation, again?

One might look at it this way – organizing things in such a way that the basic assumption is that cheap fossil energy is not inexhaustible may involve economic costs in the short run, but avoid greater costs and perhaps catatrophe in the longer run.

That is not to say that the US-Japan comparison of the relative health of those economies rests on energy alone. There are many macroeconomic factors.

But in a general way, I am not convinced that the real alternatives of the future are between growth, on the one hand, and stagnation (if we follow the advice of those who would support an environmentally-friendly retooling of the economy). It looks more like a choice between stagnation (if we make an effort to clean up, whether or not something can be done about “global warming”, the overuse of land a la Jared Diamond, etc) and disaster if the status quo is maintained.

Now, Chirol’s question – I guess that “sustainable counter terrorism” would involve strong institutions, the rule of law working in tandem with strong intelligence agencies. That is to say, good information on the one hand but doing our best to uphold people’s rights on the other hand, not being arbitrary, and allowing for mechanisms to correct and fend off injustice. We (speaking as a Canadian) have to practice what we preach, otherwise we might as well be Turkmenistan.