In his new movie W, a biopic about outgoing president George W. Bush, Oliver Stone presents a mad scientist scene in which Vice President Dick Cheney, played by actor Richard Dreyfuss, narrates a series of massive slides demonstrating how the countries adjacent to the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea contain most of this world’s proven oil and gas reserves. As the Cheney-Dreyfuss presentation unfolds, we see the locations where the U.S. government has constructed dozens upon dozens of Middle East military installations since the first Gulf. We are also told that the country which controls these Middle Eastern oil and gas reserves will control the Eurasian continent. This, in turn, will become key for the U.S. to maintain its dominant position in the global economy.

Much of Cheney’s program for the United States to retain its imperial role as the hegemonic world power can be understood in detail from Michael Klare's most recent book, Rising Powers Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, (Metropolitan Books, 2008) albeit with a context left out of the movie. For those not familiar with Klare, he is The Nation’s Defense Editor and also a professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. click for complete essay