V1 re-enters the blogosphere. Nigerian oil is just the beginning.
After taking time away for several months, the V1 Blog has been presented with no shortage of fodder with which to illustrate the inadequacy of federally managed national airspace. From an ATC system outage, to passengers’ rights, to the DOT’s pre-occupation with NextGen as the sole solution to air traffic congestion – the challenge for this blogger is not to find recent events worth commenting on. Rather, the challenge is to choose among the vast number of opportunities for affecting change which are presented by the policies of the U.S. DOT and the FAA.
Today, V1 is presented with a perfect opportunity for re-entering the blogosphere with an event which illustrates the core purpose of The V1 Concept of Air Transportation Management; making the U.S. an economically efficient competitor for increasingly constrained global resources in the 21st century.
Subsequent to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest flight 253 by a Nigerian citizen, the WSJ reported today that the oil-rich nation of Nigeria has balked at being placed on a security watch list by the TSA. To the point, there has been language voiced by Nigerian officials that this measure merely serves to push that nation closer to America’s ideological competitors, China and Iran, as trading partners for Nigerian oil.
Here we are, once again witnessing the unpredictable confluence of choice, chance and certainty on the global stage. A Nigerian national has attempted to destroy a U.S.-flagged aircraft in U.S. airspace on a holy Christian holiday. The U.S. has reacted by instituting measures, after the fact, which are designed to prevent a recurrence. The leaders and citizens of Nigeria have been insulted not only due to the stand-alone perception of these measures, but more importantly, because of how they tie into events internal to Nigeria – and beyond the realm of U.S. diplomacy. Immediately, Nigeria has threatened to reduce the amount of oil it trades with the U.S. Worse, it is threatening to trade with our ideological antagonists.
And so it goes. In the global economy of the 21st century, the U.S. continues to meet with complex events which challenge its efforts to secure a continuous stream of foreign oil for ensuring domestic economic growth.
Since June 2008, V1 has been proposing that the U.S. look increasingly toward a national policy of competing for global resources through an economically efficient posture – instead of through a military/diplomatic posture. Accordingly, since air transportation is a direct enabler of over 5.5% of U.S. GDP, and an indirect enabler of all manner of commerce, yet continues to waste huge amounts of national resources and economic productivity, it seems logical that this industry should be the primary focus of a national policy calling for a complete re-design. Such a re-design must move away from the inefficient federal monopoly which has squandered American resources and productivity for decades. And for the purposes of global competitiveness and sustainability, the re-design must move toward the creation of a free market for the distribution and consumption of aviation infrastructure.
Or, we can continue to spend our national economic wealth propping up diplomatic ties with nations such as Nigeria. And we can also continue to spend our wealth on a continuous military presence in other oil producing regions. How much does that cost?
Copyright © 2010 by Scott R. Davies. All Rights Reserved.
