Still, we must recognize there is, in short, no easy or perfect fix to our energy dilemmas. Any post-9/11 reassessment of our energy strategy must accept this reality. But it should focus on measures that will allow us to achieve practical progress instead of on risky, expensive alternatives that continue to ignore the demand side of our energy quandary. All that is lacking is the political will-and leadership-necessary to move beyond what could be called, without exaggeration, a policy of denial.

Joe Barnes is a research fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Police at Rice University and a former member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.  Amy Jaffe is the Wallace Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute and Associate Director of the Rice University Energy Program. She is project director for the Baker Institute/Council on Foreign Relations task force on Strategic Energy Policy chaired by Edward Morse. Edward L. Morse is Executive Adviser at Hess Energy Trading Company and was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Energy Policy in 1979-81.

1 See, for example, "Our Enemies, the Saudis", by Victor David Hanson, Commentary, July-August 2002.

2 Of course, should Iraqi production increase dramatically, oil revenue on a per capita basis could rise even if prices fall considerably. A future democratic government could conceivably find it in its interests for domestic political reasons to leave opec-but that will remain an open question for some time. Full privatization of the Iraqi oil sector, however, would make its participation in opec extremely problematic. With production and transportation facilities in private hands, it would be very difficult for Baghdad to constrain production and exports. This is surely one of the great appeals of privatization from the neoconservative point of view.