The afloat forward staging base (interm) USS Ponce (AFSB(I) 15) in the Persian Gulf in April. Formerly an amphibious transport dock ship, Ponce was recently converted and reclassified to fulfill a longstanding U.S. Central Command request for an Afloat Forward Staging Base to be forward deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility, centered in the Persian Gulf.
Puzzling placement in Monday’s New York Times of this story detailing how China is sucking as much petroleum as it can out of Iraq.
We noted on Battleland more than two years ago that China was the destination of nearly 50% more oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf than the U.S., so this hardly came as news.
Perhaps the Times’ editors gave the story such a prized position because they liked this paragraph so much they wanted to ensure it made the front page, just above the fold:
“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.”
Well, we didn’t lose out. Oil is a fungible commodity, by and large, so for every barrel Beijing buys from Baghdad, that’s frees up another barrel, elsewhere, for other buyers.
But Makovsky’s second point — our 5th Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply — is worth noting.
We pegged our story two years ago to a paper by Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Princeton University:
Stern’s paper pegs the cost of the U.S. military presence in the [Persian] Gulf from 1976 to 2007 at $6.8 trillion. Last week, he estimated — at Battleland’s request — that the cost through 2010 was about $8 trillion. The Persian Gulf mission pins down the U.S. military, Stern maintains. “The massive investment in Persian Gulf force projection essentially precludes U.S. ability to project force elsewhere,” he says. “China understands this perfectly, even if we don’t.”
…Do the math: the U.S. is spending trillions to protect the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf…So even — if the heavy U.S. investment in protecting the Persian Gulf pipeline makes sense — why is it shouldering close to 100% of the cost of protecting it while countries (and commercial competitors) like Japan, China, India and South Korea get a free ride?
Remains a relevant question.