re: #259 imp_62

The underlying assumption that the US has ever cared about reformation and modernization of ME societies is on shaky ground. I don’t think that US policy was ever focused on much more than securing oil flow. But that engagement contains a huge policy “nut” of maintaining regional stability, regardless of the nature of individual regimes. That’s how we end up in bed with Wahhabites.

Problem is that oil revenues support all sorts of petty dictators, from Nigeria to Venezuela to the Middle East to Gazprom in Russia. The more we depend on oil, the more we are forced to depend on the corrupt regimes that supply it.