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It's been a commonplace of official opinion and polling data for some time that the American public is "exhausted" with our recent wars, but far too much can be read into that. Responding to such a mood, the president, his administration, and the Pentagon have been in a years-long process of "pivoting" from major wars and counterinsurgency campaigns to drone wars, special operations raids, and proxy wars across huge swaths of the planet (even while planning for future wars of a very different kind continues). But war itself and the US military remain high on the American agenda. Military or militarized solutions continue to be the go-to response to global problems, the only question being: How much or how little? (In what passes for debate in this country, the president's opponents regularly label him and his administration "weak" for not doubling down on war, from the Ukraine and Syria to Afghanistan).
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Similarly, the NSA's surveillance regime, another form of global intervention by Washington, has—experts are convinced—done little or nothing to protect Americans from terror attacks. It has, however, done a great deal to damage the interests of America's tech corporations and to increase suspicion and anger over Washington's policies even among allies. And by the way, congratulations are due on one of the latest military moves of the Obama administration, the sending of US military teams and drones into Nigeria and neighboring countries to help rescue those girls kidnapped by the extremist group Boko Haram. The rescue was a remarkable success… oops, didn't happen (and we don't even know yet what the blowback will be).
3. American-style war is a destabilizing force. Just look at the effects of American war in the twenty-first century. It's clear, for instance, that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed a brutal, bloody, Sunni-Shiite civil war across the region (as well as the Arab Spring, one might argue). One result of that invasion and the subsequent occupation, as well as of the wars and civil wars that followed: the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, and Lebanese, while major areas of Syria and some parts of Iraq have fallen into the hands of armed supporters of al-Qaeda or, in one major case, a group that didn't find that organization extreme enough. A significant part of the oil heartlands of the planet is, that is, being destabilized.
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4. The US military can't win its wars. This is so obvious (though seldom said) that it hardly has to be explained. The US military has not won a serious engagement since World War II: the results of wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq ranged from stalemate to defeat and disaster. With the exception of a couple of campaigns against essentially no one (in Grenada and Panama), nothing, including the "Global War on Terror," would qualify as a success on its own terms, no less anyone else's. This was true, strategically speaking, despite the fact that, in all these wars, the US controlled the air space, the seas (where relevant), and just about any field of battle where the enemy might be met. Its firepower was overwhelming and its ability to lose in small-scale combat just about nil.
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As for peace? Not even a penny for your thoughts on that one. If you suggested pouring, say, $50 billion into planning for peace, no less the $500 billion that goes to the Pentagon annually for its base budget, just about anyone would laugh in your face. (And keep in mind that that figure doesn't include most of the budget for the increasingly militarized US Intelligence Community, or extra war costs for Afghanistan, or the budget of the increasingly militarized Department of Homeland Security, or other costs hidden elsewhere, including, for example, for the US nuclear arsenal, which is buried in the Energy Department's budget.)
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Over the last decade, rising oil prices have been driven primarily by rising production costs. After the release of the IEA's World Energy Outlook last November, Deutsche Bank's former head of energy research Mark Lewis noted that massive levels of investment have corresponded to an ever declining rate of oil supply increase . . .
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In the new age of expensive, difficult-to-extract unconventionals, investment expenditures in production costs nearly match total revenues every year, and "net cash flow is becoming negative while debt keeps rising." Sandrea also blames the "close link between rising debt and production, the rising cost of debt to total revenues and negative cash flow, which add to concerns about the sustainability of the business." The cash flow per share of US independents investing in shale oil and gas "is negative" and "trending more negative with time."
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Overall, he describes the shale oil and gas business as "analogous to an equation that operators have yet to solve." Based on "an holistic review of the consensus and experience to date, the equation may still not be workable for a few more years, if at all." His sobering conclusion is that only about 40% of purportedly recoverable US shale oil and gas reserves may be commercially viable:
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Mark Lewis sees the increasingly unsustainable fossil fuel business model as being potentially wiped out over the next two decades by the renewable energy industry, which in contrast "has achieved tremendous cost reductions in recent years."
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At the White House, Mr Obama said the US' firm resistance to "basic" new gun controls was his "biggest frustration".
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"This is becoming the norm. And we take it for granted in ways that, as a parent, are terrifying to me. Right now, it's not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress... We should be ashamed of that."
Answering gun rights supporters who say America's violence stems from mental health issues rather than the prevalence of firearms, Mr Obama said, "You know, the United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people. It's not the only country that has psychosis."
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He has continued to press Congress for further restrictions, although sceptics note that if the murder of 20 children failed to goad Congress to action, it is unclear what could.
"If public opinion does not demand change in Congress, it will not change," Mr Obama said on Tuesday.
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