If you could make something a higher priority in fighting the war on terror, what would it be? A little more than one third of the index’s experts said killing or capturing terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden. About the same number favored promoting democracy in the Muslim world. More than two thirds said stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states. But devising a more aggressive energy policy?

It may surprise, but the index’s experts said that ending America’s dependence on foreign oil may be the U.S. government’s single most pressing priority in winning the war on terror. Eighty-two percent of the experts said that policymakers should make ending America’s dependence on foreign oil a higher priority. And nearly two thirds said that current U.S. energy policies are actually making matters worse, not better. “We borrow a billion dollars every working day to import oil, an increasing share of it coming from the Middle East,” says index participant and former CIA director James Woolsey. “[F]or example in Saudi Arabia, billions are transferred to the Wahhabis and like-minded groups who then indoctrinate young people to hate Shiites, Sufis, Jews, Christians, and democracy, and to oppress women horribly.”

If U.S. policymakers don’t take this vulnerability seriously, terrorists do. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s No. 2, has labeled the global energy infrastructure a key strategic target for terrorists. In February, Saudi Arabia’s government foiled an al Qaeda plot to attack the Abqaiq oil facility, the country’s largest. Some 30,000 security forces are now guarding the country’s oil fields. Global oil markets are so tight that even the threat of a supply disruption can cause a spike in price. These tight markets are partially responsible for the higher prices Americans will pay at the pump this summer. But the index suggests that there may be a greater price for our energy policy: losing the war on terror.