‘Peace through strength’ doesn’t just come through military strength.
‘Peace through strength’ doesn’t just come through military strength.
S ecretary of State Marco Rubio was in Manila over the summer for the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The meetings were supposed to be about China and the South China Sea, but those closest to the discussions say Rubio’s meetings were laser-focused on something more urgent: energy.
The conflict with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz has rattled Southeast Asia. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil would, under normal conditions, transit the Strait of Hormuz. When Iran disrupted the traffic passing through that choke point, it had a ripple effect on the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other ASEAN countries that depend on Middle East oil. By several accounts, the finance ministers of those countries weren’t worried about whether the U.S. or China is the more reliable ally; they instead wanted to know who is going to make sure their oil arrives on time, and at prices their economies can digest.
Their worries are a wake-up call for the United States — not just regarding our relations with Southeast Asia.
Like our Southeast Asian allies, we need to think seriously about diversifying energy sources to prepare for a future we can’t foresee now but may come with alarming suddenness. That diversity has to include alternative energy sources such as nuclear, geothermal, and solar paired with storage.
“Peace through strength” doesn’t just come through military strength, from warships and munitions to strong alliances backed by a robust industrial base. It also comes through ensuring the grid that powers all our resources stays on when an adversary seriously tests our resolve.
Therefore, diversification of our energy supply must be part of any national security strategy.
That’s one of the reasons why China has spent two decades building overwhelming dominance in solar manufacturing, panel production, and critical mineral processing, all while increasing its infrastructure leverage across the Third World through its Belt and Road Initiative.
The ASEAN countries would rather not become vassal states of Beijing, but Washington’s slow start on this energy front — allowing China to take the lead in solar and energy storage — is a strategic gift to our superpower rival that will have effects across the Indo-Pacific.
Encouragingly, the Pentagon and the military understand the importance of energy diversification. They’ve spent years developing microgrids and on-base solar-plus-storage capabilities. They know that any military installation that’s dependent on a fragile or unreliable local grid becomes a target for cyberattack, a kinetic attack by a state or non-state actor, or a simple natural disaster. Distributed solar generation paired with battery storage is one way that critical installations can insulate themselves against grid failures and price spikes — or much worse.
As a national security professional, I am constantly thinking of ways to reduce an adversary’s opportunities to hurt us. An energy grid, a military base, or an allied economy that draws on multiple sources — natural gas, nuclear, and solar among them — is harder to coerce or neutralize than one that depends on a single chokepoint, a single supplier, or a single strait eight time zones away.
That’s why Rubio’s trip to Manila is so crucial. The ASEAN governments are choosing resilience over dependence, diversification over exposure. That’s the same posture America should take.
American policymakers have long understood the logic of strategic redundancy in defense spending, alliance structures, and industrial policy. We need to apply the same logic, without hesitation, to the energy grid that powers us all.