I just reviewed the prepared text of Barack Obama's foreign policy speech today, entitled, "A New Strategy for a New World."

Most of the speech is recycled language. It's arguable if its five points (Iraq, al-Qaeda, Nuclear Proliferation, Energy Security, and Alliances) really add up to a strategy, or just a to-do list. What is new for Obama, however, is the his linkage of our oil dependence to our national strength. I'm not the closest Obama watcher, but it seems to be his strongest articulation to date:

One of the most dangerous weapons in the world today is the price of oil. We ship nearly $700 million a day to unstable or hostile nations for their oil. It pays for terrorist bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut. It funds petro-diplomacy in Caracas and radical madrasas from Karachi to Khartoum. It takes leverage away from America and shifts it to dictators.

While it's good speech writing, the new rhetoric is not balanced by a corresponding policy change. To do so would entail following up Obama's rhetoric with a decisive committment to get off oil as a transportation fuel. Right now, he's only promising a 35% reduction. In a global oil market with Chinese consumption rising, 35% is just not enough to increase our security.

Both McCain and Obama have much more room to capitalize on the oil-security nexus. But which candidate will take full advantage of it? Jim Woolsey, one of President Clinton's CIA directors and a dyed in the wool neoconservative, is all about radical energy transformation, well beyond what Senator McCain or Senator Obama has advocated. Andrew Marshall, the neoconservative head of the Pentagon's futurist think tank, is also way ahead of the two candidates.

One thing is certain: the inersection of energy, economics and national security is just beginning to make its mark on this presidential campaign.