Price Dollars in Oil, Not Oil in Dollars

A very strong case has been made by William Engdahl (the author of A Century of War – Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order) that the three principal goals of US foreign policy in the last 100 years have been energy security, energy security and energy security.

But it is becoming clear that the Iraq war – while aimed at reducing US reliance upon Saudi oil – may have unintended consequences in terms of changing the dynamics of the oil market generally and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in particular. When it is considered that the US, with 5% of the global population consumes 25% of global energy supplies, we see the sheer impossibility for China or India to begin to approach US levels of consumption within the existing global political and financial market settlement that has been maintained since Bretton Woods in 1944. But what is the alternative?

Asia Times