Four Insights From Four-Star General Charles Wald

I recently spoke with General Charles Wald for an episode of my podcast. Here are four key takeaways from our discussion.

We don’t get to pick the world we live in. But we can influence it.
As the world’s only superpower, we can do a lot of things. But we can’t do everything. We need to be smart about how we pick our battles.

The U.S. Navy protects the world’s oil.
The Fifth Fleet keeps a close watch on the 17 million barrels of oil that flow through the Straits of Hormuz every day. America only gets five percent of the oil that comes out of the Persian Gulf, but we pay 100 percent of the bill to protect it. That’s a pretty good deal for OPEC, but not such a great deal for us.

Guess who was the first president to promise to end our addiction to Middle Eastern oil? Richard Nixon.
It started with Nixon. But every president – from both parties – in the 40-plus years since has said he would end our dependence on OPEC oil. Not one of them has come close to delivering on that promise.

Protecting OPEC oil has cost America trillions of dollars…but we keep doing it anyway.
Starting with Jimmy Carter and continuing through every president since, it has been U.S. policy to use our military to protect Middle East oil. In the last two decades alone, we’ve spent over six trillion – trillion – dollars on military missions to do just that. Think of what we could have accomplished had we put the same effort and investment in getting America the energy plan it deserves.

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