News
Energy Security: War game preps for the unimaginable but hits close to home
July 14, 2011
Annie Snider, E&E reporter
When crises strike, there are only a handful of people in the room as the National Security Council charts a course of action. But a war game played out with top former officials yesterday gave a peek into that room, revealing how the country's top security leaders might react to the sort of energy security crisis that experts say is no longer so far-fetched.
With music worthy of the TV action-drama "24" playing in the background and three large screens displaying maps, breaking news updates and commodities price charts, a team of NSC officials led by former George W. Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley debated how to handle an unfolding mock crisis.
For the simulation, the group gathered when news broke of an attack on Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery, which produces 10 percent of the world's supplies. With production down, oil prices spiking and open questions about who perpetrated the attack and whether another might be imminent, the team -- which also included former Obama Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair, former Deputy Secretary of State Ambassador John Negroponte and former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer -- debated options.
Should they tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? How could they reassure markets? And what military and diplomatic maneuvers should be taken?
Soon, though, the situation deteriorated. Through mock cables delivered by crisp-suited aides and TV news updates, the council learned that Iran and Venezuela were cutting production, turning what had been primarily a market issue into a threat of supply shortages.
Then came news that unresolved issues around the national debt had prompted a credit rating agency to consider downgrading the U.S. credit rating -- a scenario that turned from imagined into reality a mere six hours after the game ended, when credit rater Moody's announced it was placing the U.S. rating under review.
War-games like yesterday's are an essential tool for the U.S. defense and intelligence communities. They help security experts anticipate how countries, companies and other key players might respond to events. And although the scenarios are sometimes deliberately far-fetched, analysts say that real events often play out in ways few would have predicted.
For example, in March, the head of the Pentagon's strategy office said that although the Pentagon plays out hypothetical cases to help plan force structure and sizing, no one would have thought of the situation the military was then facing.
"Who would have thought of the concurrency of the efforts we're engaged in now?" Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Amanda Dory said at an energy, climate and security conference. We have "ongoing efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, efforts against al-Qaida, and then when you layer in a massive humanitarian disaster in support of an ally that will extend for a lengthy period of time, and when you layer in the no-fly zone enforcement with another group of allies."
'One little quiver here can shake the whole thing'
Yesterday's game, designed by Securing America's Future Energy, an energy security non-governmental organization that works closely with defense and corporate leaders, was vetted by defense experts, market analysts and economists to make sure the scenarios were plausible.
Held at the National Summit on Energy Security, the exercise was aimed at drawing attention to the dangers of the United States' reliance on petroleum -- a point that was underlined as the crisis escalated and the mock team's conversation turned from near-term moves to assuage markets to an assessment of precarious economic and security situations created by America's reliance on oil.
"We have allowed ourselves to be worked slowly into a very delicate position with this international oil market controlled largely by countries who are at best neutral toward the United States, at worst antagonistic," Blair said. "It's all so delicate that one little quiver here can shake the whole thing."
The news clip announcing the credit review had already noted that the United States requires far more oil to produce a single unit of gross domestic product than other triple A-rated countries, and Blair said it was essential to decrease the country's oil intensity.
"I think the reason we got here was we allowed the oil intensity to increase while sort of holding the geopolitical structure together," he said. "But we've got to make some structural changes so as to not allow that geopolitically fragile system to hurt us."
Soon, the counselors were calling for a bold, comprehensive energy plan.
Fleischer said it could either broadly opening up American resources for development, or tapping renewables in a big way, making "America green once and for all." Either one would work, he said, so long as it was bold.
"Anything else is just doodling in the margins of history," Fleischer said. "We need to put the president on track for something so big the country gets excited behind the new mission he's established. This is a chance to do something big in advance of something globally catastrophic, where America leads the world out of it."
After decades of failed attempts to address the nation's energy security, many say it will take just such a crisis to motivate action.
"The more acute the crisis became, the bolder the talk got, so I do think it creates an opportunity," Negroponte said of the war game. "The question for us is: Can we, with our intelligence, anticipate this and make those kinds of decisions before a crisis arises, and I'm not brimming with optimism on that score."
Reprinted with permission.