It's always all about oil

A faithful reader sent me the following about a McCain adviser:
"Scheunemann, a bearded, pear-faced gun geek who looks like what might have happened to a GI Joe doll if it had spent years stuffing its face at pricey restaurants while power-schmoozing politicians and petty dictators, also worked for recently-disgraced Bush fundraiser Stephen Payne, lobbying for his Caspian Alliance oil business. The Caspian oil pipeline runs through Georgia, the main reason that country has tugged the heartstrings of neocons and oil plutocrats for at least a decade or more." http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080818/ames
Oil always seem to come into everything, certainly for the "it's all economics" crowd over at The Nation (the quote actually comes from my wife's grandmother, an immigrant from Russia and a life-long communist who late in life cheered on Khrushchev in front of the t.v. during the latter's visit to the United States). Oil is relevant here, but it's only one element. Making it the thing that explains everything would be committing the fallacy of always explaining the world with the U.S. at the center. And we can turn it around also, namely by arguing that precisely because of Russia's clout on the oil and gas market, especially vis-a-vis Europe, and lately certainly also because of Putin's gangster-like behavior (go ask, for example, in Estonia, Ukraine, Poland, and, of course, Georgia) it is just common sense to find outlets for the energy resources around the Caspian Sea for which the Kremlin does not control the switch. Let's also give the Georgians credit for their efforts--imperfect, to be sure--to establish the foundations of an open society on the rubble of the Soviet era. Finally, oil really wouldn't matter so much if we in the West, especially the U.S., weened ourselves off it. This would indeed involve a change in our way of life, but a change is gonna come anyway. A change could have come after the first oil shocks of the 1970s, but (except perhaps for countries like Denmark--see T. Friedman's columns, last week) we chose carry on pretty much as usual.
At the request of another faithful reader, I will make my next post about the Wednesday ride (as in cycling)--about to begin, in spite of the howling wind and in defiance of the chance for showers.