Colucci: An oil boom is a power boon

Lamont Colucci, associate professor and chair of politics and government and interim director of the Center for Politics and the People at Ripon College, posted his most recent opinion column on the U.S. News & World Report website about how the U.S. oil revolution could lead to a titanic shift in national security policy.

“However, this energy issue has been dominated by the wrong people: economists, businessmen, engineers and environmentalists,” he writes. “They all have their required expertise, but all of this is really an issue of foreign policy and national security.

He says there are four ways that this new situation can be welcomed by conservatives, liberals, realists and environmentalists: the potential for prosperity and profit at home; the ability for the United States and the West to properly research, test and develop alternative energies allowing the market (and need) to dictate success and failure; the enhancement of freedom and human rights; and national security.

Read Colucci’s entire U.S. News & World Report column here.