The Tremendous Cost of Oil Dependence

The good people at the Truman National Security Project are out with a new study today on the costs to American security of reliance on oil. Truman COO and Iraq veteran Jon Powers' op-ed on Huffington Post previews the study and includes a telling quote from former CIA Director James Woolsey:

Except for our own Civil War, this [the war on terror] is the only war that we have fought where we are paying for both sides. We pay Saudi Arabia $160 billion for its oil, and $3 or $4 billion of that goes to the Wahhabis, who teach children to hate. We are paying for these terrorists with our SUVs.

From an economic perspective, the reliance on oil is also tremendously costly. This graph (via calculatedrisk) illustrates that more than half of America's trade deficit now consists of imported oil: