How Can We Dismantle Russia's Biological Weapons Program? Stop Buying Their Oil

I’m back from my annual chili cook-off with what’s left of my Peruvian Chili. No honors this year. I had to use beans, since I had it so hot it would have incapacitated most of the crowd had I not scaled it back, and the judges hate beans. Oh well. Live and learn.

Now how could such a remark possibly be relevant to a blog on renewable energy? Well, one of the reasons I love this event is that several of its participants teach university classes in international relations, and I never fail to learn something relevant to the macro forces that underlie global current events. And normally, when you trace these things back to the root, you find the world’s insatiable appetite for energy.

My host’s brother’s most recent book is 320,000 words detailing the history of the Soviet biological weapons program. The initial intent of the program when it was developed in the early 1970s was to enable the wiping out of whatever may have remained of an enemy’s population after a nuclear exchange. But what remains of that program now?  And what’s its intent as it currently may exist? No one knows. Only Russians are allowed near it.

That, of course, is unacceptably scary – yet not surprising, as the Russians persist in their inscrutable behavior. Here’s something to think about: Where the Germans openly acknowledge the terrible mistake they made in following Hitler, the Russians have never taken an analogous position with respect to Stalin, a man of equally terrible crimes against humanity. Putin and now Medvedev seem to want to waltz on and pretend the past has no meaning, or hope that the world will forget the atrocities of that period, barely 50 years ago.

This, of course, is regrettable — and for so many reasons, one of which is sheer practicality. What’s the downside to making a move that can only act to show honesty, and begin to rebuild trust with the rest of mankind?

I’m not expecting the Russians to take my advice. So the question becomes: How does one deal with them as a rogue state? The best answer: make them irrelevant. What’s the matter with marginalizing them, and deal with them only when they want to come to the table with integrity and honor? The answer is as simple as it is brief: Oil. The world can’t do what is should because we need their oil — not only the immediate region , but also most of Western Europe depends on Russian oil.

Why we persist in our devotion to oil — when there are several lethally important reasons not to — remains a mystery.