Just days after millions of Americans cheered and waved the flag at parades celebrating what they thought was victory in the gulf war, the New York Times has revealed the whole thing was a cruel hoax: the U.S. actually lost.

''Gulf victory: An energy defeat?'' ran the shocking headline in Tuesday's Times. Oh sure, Iraq's army had been torched, Saddam Hussein's ambitions gelded, Kuwait liberated and all that. And yes, access to Middle East oil had been secured, assuring a continuing supply of cheap energy.

But that's just the problem. With oil back below US$20 a barrel - about the same as in the mid-1970s, in real terms - consumption is on the rise again, after falling for many years. And that means (gulp) a rising market share for imported oil. Or, as it is usually put, the U.S. is becoming more ''dependent'' on imports.

According to the Times, ''there is widespread agreement in the oil industry that the U.S.'s long-term energy security may have been set back.'' Far better to have lost the war, it seems: ''If Saddam Hussein controlled Kuwait and bullied Saudi Arabia . . . production would be cut and the market price of oil would rise, which would eventually reduce imports.'' The illusion of victory has instead lulled policy makers to sleep. ''In the absence of strong government policy,'' a scandalized Times reporter notes, ''what defines the pattern of energy production and use is'' - chance? the gods? Saddam? - ''price.''

This is strong stuff indeed. Widespread agreement in the oil industry in favor of strong government policy to prop up oil prices. Of course, this concern about plentiful cheap oil - sorry, our growing oil import dependency - is not limited to the U.S.

The same sort of headlines pop up regularly in the Canadian press. ''Canada vulnerable to another energy crisis,'' the Globe & Mail warned not too long ago, suggesting that within a few years, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could be ''back in the driver's seat.'' Even The Financial Post (''Oil dependency leaves Canada over a barrel'') was not immune. Agitation for some sort of ''energy policy'' continues unabated.

Such is the strength of this appeal to energy sovereignty its proponents never seem to feel it necessary to explain just why we should be concerned about the level of imported oil. Is it because so much of it comes from the ever-unstable Middle East? Would we be better off if it came from Norway? But this is absurd. Oil is oil is oil. It is one market, indivisible: a vast, global pool. If OPEC shut off the taps, it would affect the entire world in the same degree, OPEC customers and non-customers alike.

Very well, is it shortages we should worry about? Impossible, so long as prices are allowed to rise. The shorter supply became, the higher the price would rise, ensuring supply would always meet demand.

Is it fear of a sudden leap in price, then? But this would afflict us even if we imported no oil, since domestic prices are set as much by world markets as the import price. The only way to insulate ourselves would be to prevent oil from being exported - a rash act, just when it was fetching a good price.

At any rate, there is scant prospect of the real price of oil interrupting its 100- year-long decline. If it did, the barrelhead price is such a small portion of the final price that we'd hardly notice it. We use much less energy per unit of gross domestic product than we did 20 years ago - about one-fifth less. Of total energy use, oil takes up much less than it once did - again, about one-fifth less. And of total oil production, the dreaded OPEC takes up a much smaller share than in its heyday. Higher oil prices not only encouraged oil conservation, but brought other producers in line.

Those effects have not substantially been reversed. North Sea oil production is at its peak; the U.S. is pumping more, not less, oil domestically; Alberta has the same 10-year supply of proven reserves it was reckoned to have 10 and 20 years ago, with billions of barrels more still to be found.

Who can tell how much more the Soviet Union, already the world's largest producer of oil, might be capable of producing under a rational economic system? Then there's Iraq and Kuwait, desperate to rebuild their economies and shut out of the world oil market for many months. And Nigeria, and Iran, and . . .

''The U.S. has no more need for an 'energy policy' than it has need for a shampoo policy or a socket-wrench policy,'' writes Virginia Postrel in Reason magazine. You can all go back to the parade.