Doug writes:
So why can't we just buy it? If the US wanted to deny oil to China, or France, wouldn't it be a lot easier to deny oil to China or France? This idea of control, coming either from Cheney or Cox, sounds phantasmic.
=========================== Well, Iraq was a test case of the neocon hypothesis, was it not? - both in terms of how easy it is to secure control of overseas oil fields, even in a broken defenceless country, and to break up the national oil company and redistribute its assets to the multinationals.
Now, presumably flush with success in Iraq, we are told the US is hellbent on repeating its experience in Iran. Carrol even takes it a step further, arguing "u.s. control (and _blocking_ Chinese or Indian (and I would add, EU and Russian) control makes a good deal of sense", by which I understand him to mean total US control of all of the world's pipelines and tankers which carry oil between producing and consuming nations. Carrol puts even the neocons to shame in his vaulting overestimation of American power! The oil price has less to do with American military power than with the American economy. It's based on on fluctuations in demand in consuming countries, futures speculation, insecurity of supply from producing countries, and agreements within the producers' cartel. But I'm no expert. Are there any historical instances since WWII where 1) US military control of the oil supply drove the price down?, or 2) Exxon, Shell, BP, Total, and the other Western multinationals have agitated for US military intervention to lower oil prices?
