That's essentially what Michael Levi is saying in this smart post. His lament is that energy and related environmental issues are not viewed through a wider lens:
Until we can think about security, economics, and environmental risk at the same time, we're going to have a lot of trouble developing an energy policy that makes sense.
This made me think of an interesting conversation I had with someone earlier this week (a veteran of counterinsurgency campaigns), who was asserting that the U.S. military plan in Afghanistan similarly made no sense, because it pairs traditional counterinsurgency tactics (e.g., winning hearts & minds) with a heavy boots on the ground footprint. That large military presence (much of it a supply network) requires conventional firepower support that, in turn, leads inevitably to collateral damage (enraging the hearts & minds of indigenous would-be friendlies) and the subsequent undermining of the counterinsurgency campaign. Thus, it would appear that the U.S. has a screwy war policy to go along with its screwy energy policy.
