This is why I don't understand the opposition to domestic oil drilling. As long as we're still using oil, all that happens by not drilling ourselves is that we enrich and enable the Saudi government instead.
Also seems like there are many other things we could do w.r.t. the Saudi government if we wanted to short of "well, shit, guess the only option is domestic drilling" so this seems like a wild digression with no real relevance here.
Yes, we could.
> and take over all the oil fields.
No, we couldn't.
Obviously stealing a country's resources is frowned upon, just wondering if you meant anything specific
Though honestly, in areas of free speech my country seems to treat Saudi Arabia as a fecking role model.
Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia have only grown more extreme in the past twenty years despite ever tighter integration into global markets and higher value industrial development.
That’s not to say they shouldn’t be used or that trade should be stopped. Only that trade in and of itself is not the moderating influence it was believed to be, and that despotic governments are not strongly deterred by refusals to trade.
This is partially because those regimes put in a large amount of effort and money into ensuring that they’re as insulated as possible from slow downs in any trade area that western countries can easily refuse trade, while working to increase interdependence in areas where they have the advantage.
For instance, there’s a reason Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has such a huge defence industry component and why it focused first on being able to manufacture its own ammunition, bombs, missiles, etc (all the things easiest to cut off) and then on developing the skills to modify existing systems and substitute other components or elements if needed. The goal is to ensure the US (or another partner) can’t influence the kingdom by refusing to deliver bombs for a while. Much of the Middle East is moving in the same direction.
International economic ties do help to prevent war even if their ability to do so is limmited. They also serve as a warning for when a state desires to go to war because you will see the state trying to limmit ties in order to limmit the effect of sanctions.
We've tried that in China. And look what happened—yes, the standard of life due to trade with the rest of the world has risen quite a lot, but the Chinese people thank the Chinese government for that. So rather than clamoring for western style freedoms, instead they're more loyal to the Chinese government than ever, and so changes are in the opposite of the direction we wanted.
Let's do both!