US approaches to oil and gas, on the one hand, and diplomacy, on the other, have reversed course but continue to swing in opposite directions. This is regrettable. Oil and-increasingly-gas cross international borders in trade worth more than $1 trillion/year. They're strategically vital to countries that import and export them. Domestic policies affecting oil and gas always correlate with global affairs.
Former President Barack Obama disparaged oil and gas but cherished diplomacy. President Donald Trump embraces oil and gas but treats diplomacy, at least as conventionally practiced, like soaked newspaper. Obama eagerly shackled oil and gas with regulation. Trump is dismantling the restraints with equivalent zeal. Obama supported a staff dedicated to international energy relations. Trump taunts the world with talk of "energy dominance."
Both approaches limit themselves severely.
Mushy basis
Leaders of impoverished countries must have found perplexing Obama's reluctance to take full advantage of unconventional-resource development, which flourished while he was in office despite his policies. Leaders of oil-exporting countries must have bristled at his disdain for fossil energy. And leaders of hostile powers must have relished the former president's willingness to forswear wealth and influence by limiting resource development and to commit military funds to costly renewable fuels. Obama's approach to energy did not project, to allies or adversaries, seriousness toward the economic essentials of ground-level national interest. It provided a mushy basis for international relations.
Trump's energy policies show commitment to national interests and healthy understanding of how oil and gas contribute to them. As tools in international relations, however, oil and gas work better as levers than as clubs. Their production growth expands wealth, strengthens trade, and lowers vulnerability to supply disruption. The improvements strengthen the US internationally before anyone says anything. Brash slogans that depict oil and gas as tools of hegemony undermine the advantage.
They also combine harmfully with Trump's often-expressed hostility toward trade agreements he considers "bad." The US is now a major exporter of oil products and a growing exporter of crude oil and natural gas liquids. It's becoming a net exporter of natural gas and is destined to be a major gas supplier. Realization of the rich promise of oil and gas resource development depends on free and friendly trade, from which everyone involved benefits. But trade requires diplomacy-which, Trump must learn, differs in important ways from deal-making. A better alignment than exists now between robust resource development and thoughtful diplomacy would help make America-well, everyone knows Trump's favorite motto.
The foreign-policy establishment deserves some of the blame for discord between diplomacy and energy trade. International relations tend to be practiced by academic high-achievers in a rarefied realm. Too often, the consequences reflect more theory than expertise. How, for example, could foreign-policy experts in the administration of George W. Bush underestimate the ability of sectarian and ethnic conflict to challenge Iraqi unification after the fall of Saddam Hussein? And who can forget the Obama-administration expert who confidently suggested international terrorists would behave civilly if only they had good jobs?
Populism thrives
In gaps such as these between elite abstraction and mass experience, populism thrives. Thus did Trump become president, British voters decide to leave the European Union, and populist victories in recent elections derail usually imperturbable German politics. A remarkable message of democratic politics recently has been that many voters think those credited with knowing better really do not.
Many Americans thinking this way welcome Trump's departure from diplomatic nicety, the connective tissue of foreign relations. The oil and gas industry, ever akin to international affairs, should find this troubling. Oil, gas, and diplomacy should harmonize. Obama turned them onto opposite headings by orienting his administration to an issue driven by theory, embraced by academia, and seductive to foreign-relations professionals. Trump's presidency is partly a reaction, by bearers of the cost, against that priority, to be addressed here next week.