After the Hurricane

Oil, Food and Politics: After the Hurricane

By George Friedman

In Hurricane Katrina, the United States has suffered a catastrophic geopolitical event -- though at least for the near term, in some respects, it does not appear to have been quite as catastrophic as initially feared.

For the past week, we have been discussing precisely why Katrina should be considered a "geopolitical event." This is an unusual way to view a natural disaster, but we consider Katrina to be the ultimate geopolitical event because it had, first, broad geographical significance, and second, substantial regional consequences. The hurricane certainly wreaked humanitarian and economic devastation upon the U.S. Gulf Coast, but it also impacted three much broader aspects of the geopolitical system: Oil, food and politics.

We could as easily classify these effects in terms of time: immediate fears, near-term worries and long-term concerns for the Bush administration. They would still appear in the same order.

With Americans already concerned about high oil prices, attention immediately fixed on oil. The Gulf of Mexico is a major source of U.S. energy supplies, and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) is one of the largest U.S. facilities handling supertankers, which cannot enter most ports. There is Port Fourchon, which handles oil pumped from the LOOP and is a center for companies that service the offshore oil platforms. Major refineries are scattered throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, and pipelines running through the region deliver critical supplies to other parts of the country.

However, of the three major geopolitical effects of the hurricane, the impact on the oil markets was possibly the least serious or long-lasting. As has already become obvious, no major system was damaged more than moderately by Katrina. The offshore platforms did not survive completely intact, but most survived. The LOOP and Port Fourchon survived, as did the refineries and the pipelines.

Now, attention is turning to world food supplies. Whereas the Gulf is a significant source of oil for the United States, it is a critical source of food commodities for much of the world. The fall harvest is beginning in the upper Midwest. More than half of the grain and soybean harvest comes down the Mississippi River in barges to the ports at New Orleans, from whence it is redistributed around the United States or is shipped to Europe, Asia and Latin America. Certainly, the world markets have other sources of grain and foodstuffs, but the American harvest is the major source.

In considering this issue, the navigability of the Mississippi becomes crucial.

The initial fear after Katrina struck was that the levees on the Mississippi (as opposed to the levees on the canals surrounding New Orleans) would break, causing the river to shift its course. This was a regular occurrence in the past: As rivers age, their meanderings shift -- with all that that means for populations living nearby, and with concomitant effects on their channels. In modern times, the Mississippi has been controlled by levees, which keep it on a firm course, with clear channels and easy navigation.

The fear was that if the river were blocked, the harvest wouldn't be able to get out. However, we can see now that this danger did not come to pass: New Orleans is flooded, but the Mississippi is not blocked. It did not change its course, it was not silted over, and no ship sank in the hurricane to stop up its channels.

That is not the end of the food supply issue, however -- one must also consider the ports. As we have previously pointed out, New Orleans has been the place where barges offloaded their cargoes of produce, and where the foodstuffs have been stored and reloaded onto oceangoing vessels. Likewise, those ocean-going vessels have delivered precious cargoes of industrial goods -- rubber, steel, petrochemicals -- needed by the Midwestern farmers and others. The port facilities at New Orleans are vital to the nation's economic well-being. There are workarounds, at least for a short time, but none that can as cost-effectively handle the tonnages that regularly pass through the ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans.

Katrina's devastation of New Orleans presents a serious medium- and long-term problem for the U.S. economy. Though the port complex survived relatively intact, the larger issue is one of population displacement. In order for the ports to be useful at all, the area must be able to house and sustain the labor force that operates them -- and the city clearly is in no condition to do that, and will not be for quite a long time.

However, about 50,000 U.S. troops -- including National Guard and regular Army units -- have moved into the area and begun the work of repairs. The Army Corps of Engineers and military logisticians are trained in the maintenance and operation of ports, so we logically could expect that, first, the ports will be functioning when the harvest comes pouring down the Mississippi at the end of September, and, second, that if civilian laborers are not available, U.S. troops will be filling in for them.

In short, the near-term problems are being handled.

That brings us to Katrina's third impact -- politics -- and a much larger unknown.

The human suffering resulting from the hurricane and perceptions of a slow government response have generated a cacophony of political finger-pointing and second-guessing, and President George W. Bush is taking an incredible drubbing. He is not the only politician being singled out for blame, of course -- but as the United States' commander-in-chief and leader of the free world, it is the verbal bullets being fired at him that are geopolitically significant.

There are many conceivable reasons why events transpired as they did -- including the possibility (if not probability) that the president and his advisers, who have been fighting a war since Sept. 11, 2001, were simply too exhausted to grasp the full scope of the Katrina situation before or in the first days after the hurricane struck. Other explanations have been and likely will continue to be put forth -- some with merit, others without -- but at the end of the day, the political controversy is merely semantic noise surrounding the core geopolitical issue.

And that issue is simply this: The power of any particular president, at any particular time, personifies American power. In the long run, U.S. power is, in our view, unassailable; but in the short run, it is possible that a president can be so beset by political controversies that his power is hollowed out. And if that happens, foreign powers not only might, but probably would, attempt to exploit the situation to their own advantage. If the perception is that the Bush administration has been substantially weakened or that the president is losing control of his domestic situation, new challenges within the international system are likely to arise and existing ones -- Iraq, Israel, Russia, China -- will be strengthened.

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