Question revisitée à la lumière des événements pétroliers: qui a gagné la Guerre froide?

L'universitaire Michael Klare, spécialiste des questions d’énergie, analyse sur le site TomDispatch.com, ce 8 mai, la question de la dépendance du pétrole des USA, et plus encore la question de la puissance et de la souveraineté des USA à cette lumière. Evidemment, cette analyse est encore plus pertinente à l’heure de la montée des prix du pétrole, comme le signale Tom Engelhardt qui présente le texte de Klare sur son site : «A barrel of crude broke another barrier Wednesday – $123 – on international markets, and the talk is now of the sort of “superspike” in pricing (only yesterday unimaginable) that might break the $200 a barrel ceiling “within two years.”»… On mesure comme le temps passe, et dans quelles conditions, lorsqu’on se rappelle le pétrole à $20 le baril, le 11 septembre 2001.

Klare trace donc son portrait des USA, sur le fond du constat historique que le pétrole a constitué le principal instrument de la puissance brute des USA, transformée en capacités économiques, industrielles et militaires, transformée au-delà en capacité politique d’influence et d’hégémonie, tout cela sans précédents dans l’Histoire. Fort justement, Klare fait remarquer que l’inversion de la tendance de puissance (dépendance du pétrole venu de l’extérieur franchissant le seuil des 50%, avec l’augmentation des prix du pétrole comme facteur complémentaire), conduit dans ces conditions de l’importance centrale du pétrole pour la puissance US, à une érosion de plus en plus rapide de la souveraineté nationale à mesure de l’augmentation de cette dépendance.

«…When it came to reliance on imports, the United States crossed the 50% threshold in 1998 and now has passed 65%.

»Though few fully realized it, this represented a significant erosion of sovereign independence even before the price of a barrel of crude soared above $110. By now, we are transferring such staggering sums yearly to foreign oil producers, who are using it to gobble up valuable American assets, that, whether we know it or not, we have essentially abandoned our claim to superpowerdom.

»According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At a current price of about $115 per barrel, that's $1.5 billion per day, or $548 billion per year.»

Cette question de la souveraineté est évidemment mise en évidence par le phénomène des “fonds souverains”, constitués pour une part très importante par la richesse des pays producteurs. Les “fonds souverains”, agissant comme une conséquence indirecte de l’évolution que décrit Klare, constituent un facteur indirect supplémentaire important dans l’érosion de cette souveraineté nationale.

»While our economy is being depleted of these funds, at a moment when credit is scarce and economic growth has screeched to a halt, the oil regimes on which we depend for our daily fix are depositing their mountains of accumulating petrodollars in “sovereign wealth funds” (SWFs) – state-controlled investment accounts that buy up prized foreign assets in order to secure non-oil-dependent sources of wealth. At present, these funds are already believed to hold in excess of several trillion dollars; the richest, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), alone holds $875 billion.

»The ADIA first made headlines in November 2007 when it acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America's largest bank holding company. The fund has also made substantial investments in Advanced Micro Systems, a major chip maker, and the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant. Another big SWF, the Kuwait Investment Authority, also acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Citigroup, along with a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill Lynch. And these are but the first of a series of major SWF moves that will be aimed at acquiring stakes in top American banks and corporations.

»The managers of these funds naturally insist that they have no intention of using their ownership of prime American properties to influence U.S. policy. In time, however, a transfer of economic power of this magnitude cannot help but translate into a transfer of political power as well. Indeed, this prospect has already stirred deep misgivings in Congress. “In the short run, that they [the Middle Eastern SWFs] are investing here is good,” Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) recently observed. “But in the long run it is unsustainable. Our power and authority is eroding because of the amounts we are sending abroad for energy….”

Un autre volet de cette situation de décadence accélérée de la puissance US à cause de l’évolution de la question du pétrole est l’aspect militaire. Klare fait remarquer que la puissance militaire US, basée sur une capacité unique de “projection de force”, dépend du pétrole dans une mesure également unique parmi les puissances militaires existantes. La dépendance des forces armées US du pétrole est considérable («…the U.S. Department of Defense is the world's single biggest consumer of petroleum, using more of it every day than the entire nation of Sweden.»). Par conséquent l’évolution de la situation pétrolière a un effet direct sur la capacité de ces forces. L’avenir est prometteur à cet égard, avec les deux tendances qui s’ajoutent là aussi, du coût en augmentation constante de la dépendance du pétrole et de l’augmentation constante de cette dépendance à cause des choix de structuration et de modernisation des forces US.

»…Every day, the average G.I. in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles, and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing aircraft. With U.S. forces paying, as of late April, an average of $3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million per week, $5.1 billion per year) to stay in Iraq.

(…)

»Worse yet, the U.S. military will need even more oil for the future wars on which the Pentagon is now doing the planning. In this way, the U.S. experience in Iraq has especially worrisome implications. Under the military “transformation” initiated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, the future U.S. war machine will rely less on “boots on the ground” and ever more on technology. But technology entails an ever-greater requirement for oil, as the newer weapons sought by Rumsfeld (and now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) all consume many times more fuel than those they will replace. To put this in perspective: The average G.I in Iraq now uses about seven times as much oil per day as G.I.s did in the first the Gulf War less than two decades ago. And every sign indicates that the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon's capacity to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.»

Klare termine par le tableau concurrent d’une Russie en pleine affirmation de puissance grâce à ses capacités de producteur d’énergie. Il donne ainsi une réponse à la question qu’il posait implicitement au début de son analyse, en rappelant la chute du Mur de Berlin («Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated the Soviet Union as the world's other superpower») – et les cris de triomphe qui accompagnèrent, du côté US, l’événement que personne, également du côté US, n’avait vu venir… Finalement, 20 ans plus tard, qui a gagné la Guerre froide?

Mis en ligne le 9 mai 2008 à 09H21