It's the Technology (and Immigrants), Stupid

The book tour took me yesterday to Austin, where I was on a panel called “American Empire.” Its driving theme was: Is America Rome, meaning has it peaked out and begun an irreversible descent as the world’s superpower?

Of course the last decade on the Caspian Sea -- and the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline -- shows that the U.S. is still quite capable of projecting triumphant, positively received policy thousands of miles from its shores. And one of the more intriguing points yesterday, raised by my co-panelist Cullen Murphy, author of Are We Rome, was that America has endured numerous declines, only to right itself. Another co-panelist, Amy Chua, author of Day of Empire, cited a common thread linking history’s successful “hyper-powers,” as she calls super great powers -- an ability to harness the genius of multiple nations through a tolerance of immigration.

These observations made me look anew at the current decline of Big Oil.

A hot topic today is the search for a technological breakthrough that would shatter the centrality of fossil fuels -- mainly oil and natural gas -- to the global economy. Something of the magnitude of the transistor and its impact on the vacuum tube. See Zoom, a new book by my Economist colleague Vijay Vaitheeswaran and Iain Carson, and the recent cover story in U.S. News & World Report by Marianne Lavelle, for instance.

For its very survival, Big Oil of course is a huge player in this furious search for a technological Holy Grail. But, as the authors write in Zoom and U.S. News, Big Oil isn't alone. Silicon Valley and its deep-pocketed venture capitalists and legendary garage-bound inventors are also in the fight.

That's because of the monumental stakes involved. Imagine a fortune encompassing the current wealth of Saudi Arabia, Big Oil and Russia, and you’ve got a notion of the possible figures.

Which brings us back to American Empire. Zoom and U.S. News seem to assume that an American company or inventor will make this breakthrough. If one does, it will be evidence that America retains its ascendance as not just the world’s strongest military power and biggest consumer of imported goods, but its most potent source of evolutionary technology.

And that is the stuff of what superpowers are made.

But what if it's not a U.S. company? What if the inventor is Indian, Chinese or Russian, such as one of the students or scientists whose entry to the U.S. has been blocked or long-delayed? Or possible immigrants from countless other countries, like Pakistan?

Since we are discussing a breakthrough of historical proportions, it could in fact be a decade, two, or more, before it’s made. Meaning that the key mind behind it could be a child at the moment, and have absolutely no genius identifiable to a consul in a distant U.S. Embassy.

If the discovery is made in, say, India or China, it will catapult that nation toward the comparative great power position of Microsoft in the software world.

The impact of America's less-open doors, including on its technological edge, has been discussed at length elsewhere. But technological superiority has been the hallmark of America's big oil companies for decades -- it's how it talked its way into great deals on the Caspian and in Russia, where in large part because of that technology, for instance in deep offshore drilling, Big Oil is experiencing perhaps its last heyday.

America would probably find a way to cope with the challenge posed by such a discovery elsewhere. But it would mark more evidence of the U.S. leaving it to others to bring cutting-edge invention to the world.

America's Unnoticed New War

As I've traveled this week for the launch of The Oil and the Glory, I've been asked if we're at the start of a new Cold War with Russia. Even my wife says that I at times seem to regard Russia as the devil.

The answer is no.

Yet, the West and Russia are undeniably in a new battle for influence and power.

But there is a difference in how their armies are arrayed: Russia, in the person of Vladimir Putin, has fought brilliantly so far. But the U.S. seems barely to have noticed that it has a new war front in addition to terror.

The war is over the flow of oil and natural gas from the former Soviet Union to Europe. It's similar to the 19th and 20th century struggle for mastery of sea lanes in that the conflict is over who will control arteries vital to everyone.

The stakes are high -- influence in Europe, on whom the U.S. relies for support on political and economic issues around the world. And, so far, Russia has the pronounced advantage.

The odd thing is that the U.S. actually won the first battle of this war, but it's Russia that's learned the lessons and applied them.

The U.S. victory was the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, linking the Caspian and Mediterranean seas. Its launch last year spelled the first break in Russia's nation-breaking economic stranglehold over Central Asia and the Caucasus, sending about 1 million barrels a day of oil to the West.

Yet, while the U.S. has now turned its focus to missiles, Russia is fighting the new war by building its own ingeniously plotted energy pipelines to Europe. They have names like Nord Stream and South Stream, and there are more.

This is Russia pursuing its national interests -- the market dominance of Europe for Gazprom, its natural gas giant, and its oil companies.

That's not evil. It's devilishly shrewd. And it's been all but unanswered by the U.S.

Putin's Churchillian Aspirations

Ninety-dollar-a-barrel oil is wonderful for one's self esteem, as well as for stimulating the deference of one's acquaintances. But can it earn genuine respect?

That is Vladimir Putin's challenge. His best chance of securing that much-craved legitimacy is to pull off a diplomatic miracle. One such as resolving the Iranian crisis.

His high-minded actions and statements with his Caspian Sea neighbors in Tehran this week imply that Putin recognizes this. But can he do it?

One piece of intriguing news involves Putin's meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. According to Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, Putin gave Khamenei a "message" of which the nuclear issue was a component, and that "we are now examining it."

Yesterday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad undercut Larijani by saying that Putin had not even mentioned the word "nuclear."

Still, let's take Larijani at his word. One enormous factor calling for optimism is that the two parties involved -- Russia and Iran -- would love to resolve the nuclear issue in a way that raises their own diplomatic credentials while diminishing the West's.

It's not known what Putin's message was. But we can imagine. For instance, on the difficult issue of electricity-production, he might have suggested a Russian agreement, for example, to build, supply and manage a self-contained nuclear power facility for Iran. In order to make Iran feel both safe and part of a bigger club, Putin might have suggested a comprehensive mutual defense accord building on the declaration that the Caspian republics made Tuesday. Putin definitely would have included a face-saving measure that allowed Iran to climb down on the nuclear issue without appearing to have done so.

Any agreement that gets Iran to renounce nuclear weapons-making ambitions would catapult Putin, and Russia, into a different and higher global sphere, while improving Iran's image as well.

Putin would not be spending so much diplomatic time and effort simply being a spoiler. He would receive -- and deserve -- genuine deference.

Georgia and Russia: The Bigger Battle to Come

The Economist is in a snit that the OSCE white-washed over Georgia's missile row with Russia. A studiously neutralist RFE/RL interview with the author of the offending OSCE report ends up making the Vienna-based mini-U.N. organization look egregiously non-judgemental.

The pieces are must-reading. Edward Lucas, the author of the Economist piece, is legitimately outraged. But the OSCE -- the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- was right to punt. The incessant friction between Russia and Georgia over border incursions is a diversion from the main issue, which is getting Georgia ready for full NATO membership.

The two neighbors are not going to become friends any time soon. The Kremlin's loyal spokesmen say that the Georgians' main foreign policy is irritating their northern neighbor. The Georgians in turn ascribe most of their ills to malign conspiracies from Moscow.

These competing claims informed their most recent series of disputes, in which Georgia accused Russian military jets of illegally penetrating Georgian airspace, and firing a missile that allegedly missed its intended target, a radar installation. In the most recent flare-up, Georgia said it had possibly shot down an invading Russian jet.

The record in general supports Georgia's assertions. Since the 1991 Soviet breakup, Georgia has been the victim of repeated aggressive acts from the north -- the dismemberment of the country through military support of Abkhazia; the severing of natural gas and electricity supplies; and the cutoff of trade and air service between the countries.

Yet Russia and Georgia themselves have seemed to try to cool the flareup. Neither has raised the issue of the apparent crash of the errant jet recently, for instance. That is wise from Georgia's standpoint when it has much work to do to achieve its ultimate foreign policy aim, which is tying itself formally to the West through NATO and EU membership.

The West has a long-standing interest in making Georgia's NATO membership happen; the EU portion will happen far down the road if at all.

Here is where it makes sense not to get too involved in these predictable sibling squabbles. Russia will accuse NATO of encirclement. The West will have to forcefully argue that it has a legitimate interest in Georgia's independence and stability. That will be a battle writ large.