>
> How does the U.S. "control" Middle Eastern oil? As I've said here a million
> times, if it wanted to shut off supplies to, say, China, it'd be much easier
> to blockade China than try to exercise "control" of the Persian Gulf.
> There's no button in Baghdad or Riyadh that can shut off the flow to China.
> And trying to shut down ME oil would throw the world economy into a
> tailspin.
>
>
> Doug
>
Perhaps being able to avert such a shutdown (presumably by cranky regionals) is precisely the purpose of such control? Most of the Great Powers can get behind this mission, especially if the US is willing to pay the enforcement costs. (Surely American oil companies would like to grab the oil, as in the protest placard version of the story, and of course they weild some political influence - but they're politically and economically a small part of American industry as a whole, who mostly have no reason to care who pumps the oil, as long as they can operate in an economy where its supply isn't suddenly restricted.)
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Eubulides <paraconsistent at comcast.net>wrote:
>
>
> But yeah ex post rationalizations of what was/is clearly a stupid
> policy is not a minefield worth navigating. Kakistocracies are almost
> completely impervious/inscrutable to the quest for narrative coherence
> written by outsiders.
>
> Ian
Policy elites were pretty divided on Iraq. I don't think you can explain anything away as the product of Bush's oedipus complex or whatever. A lot of smart people - probably not that many with your values, but a lot of people who'd studied the situation extensively - thought that the US would be better off if it invaded Iraq. Many others just like them thought differently - the evidence, at least as it appeared to an intelligent trained professional and not a supergenius, as someone declaring them all idiots would have to be, was presumably mixed. Most big international moves are necessarily gambles.