I got several reasonable criticisms on my recent article calling for possible nationalization of the Saudi owned Port Arthur, Texas-based Motiva oil refinery. Comments expressed concern like, “America has never nationalized anything,” “it sets a bad precedent,” or “such a step will chill foreign investment.” One disgruntled respondent took personal offense, and through some convoluted reasoning, somehow concocted a relationship to Trump and white supremacy.
Given our precious and uber-successful 250-year ongoing experiment with capitalism, these comments deserve a clarifying response. During WWI, President Wilson exercised his powers to nationalize railroads and telegraph lines. Even gunmaker Smith & Wesson fell under government control. In the next world conflagration, WWII, more railroads, coal mines, even now gone retailer Montgomery Ward were commandeered. Harry Truman attempted to nationalize the steel industry during the Korean War only to be barred by the Supreme Court. Each instance, the sitting President believed circumstances presented enough of an existential threat to exercise draconian powers. In all cases, private ownership was restored once the crisis had passed.
Just as in The Great War and followed by the imperative to vanquish Nazi Germany, America now finds itself in a different kind of war for continued existence: an economic war.
Religiously and redundantly adhering to counsel from flawed models, our leaders elected to place our economy in an induced coma. Resulting financial convulsions from this unforced error may ring for years or decades, ultimately yielding more dead bodies than a herd immunity strategy. What would be the highest good for the greatest number, utilitarianism gets dismissed as quackery.
It hasn’t made the headlines lately, but the Asian flu outbreak of 1957 robbed an estimated 1–2 million lives on world population half the size of today, and that despite a vaccine becoming available within months. By now, everyone knows the 1918 Spanish flu wiped out 20–50 million on a total base of only 500 million people. World War I between civilian and battle casualties wiped out 20–22 million, while World War II claimed an astronomical 60 million. The slaughter of the Civil War tallies over 600 thousand, two percent of the citizenry, or analog to 6.6 million Americans today.
So historically, using stolen lives as the disaster metric, COVID-19, so far at least, barely ranks as a rounding error. Through all of these catastrophes, the economy lumbered along. Wars can revive an economy. It was only World War II that allowed America to fully emerge from the Great Depression exacerbated by the stifling New Deal programs. This crisis resonates differently.
So perhaps my vocabulary failed when I referenced the word “nationalization.” A more befitting call would be to “confiscate,” “appropriate,” or “seize,” or “forcibly take control of” the Motiva Refinery. All justified in the name of American national interest to win a war to avoid complete economic collapse. Guns count but as one of many weapons in Twenty-first-century warfare. Saudi Arabia wields its only stick in an otherwise puny arsenal.
But does the stink of weakness so emanate from our pores that a parcel of Middle East desert can act with overt hostility with no apparent retaliatory fear? Has the American ethos so devolved that there should be a moment’s hesitation that this overt belligerence needs immediate attention? Does creeping political correctness scare the President or normally clear-thinking politicians from action?
Confiscate or nationalize the refinery, or make a concrete threat to torpedo one of the tankers; By whatever means, America needs definitive leadership to extinguish this threat. The word nationalism has degenerated into an expletive connoting bigotry, and racism. But it’s proper context only means to protect American interests first. The left conflates any policy that safeguards America with past colonialism and their skewed definition of imperialism.
America attracts more foreign capital than any other nation. Especially in current turbulent times, investors flock to our dollar as a haven of safety. A contradiction is that within this pool of capital flooding our shores, are billions from all the dictatorships and autocracies that denounce us and call for our demise.
During the American Revolution, several states, approved by the Continental Congress, adopted laws to confiscate the property of loyalists to the British Crown. Whatever the fate of the Motiva refinery, centuries of American rule of law consecrating respect for private property will not vanish in a puff of smoke.
I still work to comprehend why we refer to this country as an ally or more disingenuous, a friend. Friends don’t dump 40 million barrels of unwanted oil on a friend’s doorstep, knowing storage is in short supply, and knowing the further commodity price pressure will expedite bankruptcy of countless businesses and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. The exigencies of war call for extreme measures; A single calibrated act in a time a crisis. America, as an investment hub, will continue. The exception proves the rule.
