User 170687

Oil, Iraq and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Way Forward

Your reasoning behind the war is certainly true, but I believe your assessment of other countries behaviors prior to and following the war is naive at best. Prior to the war the French and Russians were trying to have sanctions lifted for Saddam so that their oil companies would be the sole developers of Iraqi Oil. Moreover, the assertion that Putin and Co. were not going to do their internal resource grab, is at best, wishful thinking. Look at what he's done in consolidating political power and destroying their free media. The Chinese would be buying up oil and other natural resources anyplace they can whether or not the Iraqi war even happened. Finally, Chavez is simply following the route of any dictator wack-job. If they were solely a sugar producing company he'd try to toss out all the "evil" foreign sugar companies too.

Your solution would seem to be satisfactory only if other countries put soldiers on the ground AND paid the US government compensation for a portion of our cost of occupation. Moreover given Peak Oil and the turn around time required for oil field production the price drop would likely be dramatically less than expected. While such a move would have better benefits than our current status quo I do not think they would be as large as you envision.