To Have and Have Not: Energy security vs energy independence in a world awash in cheap oil

So, here are some of the deployments, and many of these you might have read about in the news, and it probably sounds very far away, the South China Sea, and a build-up of an installation on an atoll some 7,000 miles away probably doesn’t seem very strategic or very important, and certainly less worth paying attention to than the joys of $1.80 gasoline.

There are some deployments taking place in the South China Sea, and here you see the distances of these build-ups and air strips to air bases on the China mainland, being constructed by a nation which is very dependent on the crude oil and gas flows through the region.

Why? Naturally they want to secure energy supply. Don’t we all? What’s wrong with having an economy where you have secured your access to energy? Isn’t that what the USS Theodore Roosevelt is doing, what the USS Iwo Jima is doing? Securing access to energy or ensuring the stability of the oil price? There’s nothing wrong with securing access to energy except in this case it is not ourselves securing access. It’s somebody else. And where are they going to be deploying?