 WSJ. Global guerrillas are transforming US security policy at its edges. Unfortunately, like a huge dinosaur, it will take a decade for the message of this new threat to transform policy. However, by that time, the threat will have evolved.
The U.S. is bracing for an era of continuing attacks by insurgents bent on blocking the flow of a commodity vital to the world's economy. The result is shaping up to be a globe-spanning and open-ended U.S. campaign to offer protection.
Costs are not properly allocated (this is a place were privatization can help):
As much as a quarter of today's price is thought to be a "terror premium," reflecting worries that attacks could cut oil supplies. In addition, since the early 1980s, the U.S. military has spent an average of $4 to $5 per barrel to protect oil leaving the Persian Gulf, estimates Amy Myers Jaffe, an analyst at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. (NOTE: This is likely much higher now)
The scale of the problem is too large:
Massing ships around Iraq's two terminals has been effective so far, says Capt. Kurt Tidd, commander of the Navy task force in charge of protecting the terminals. But the world's oil infrastructure is vast. "We can line up all the ships in the world around all the platforms in the world, and we're going to run out of ships," Capt. Tidd adds.
The perils of a lack of strategy:
Lt. Burke pondered what form the next attack might take. "I don't know what it's going to look like," he said. "But it'll be different.
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