Furious over sanctions, NKorea vows to nuke US

[Scootaloo]

10. Well, here's a question.

Does throwing a nation into chaos help or hinder the production and export of oil (or other resources?) By any strain of logic, it's a negative impact on the export economy of a nation. Tearing Afghanistan up didn't really help us get their minerals, and fucking up Iraq severely lowered oil production there.

The point is control. Thus our alliance with Saudi Arabia; if their oil wells dried up tomorrow, we'd start buying their sand instead. Their primary export to us isn't crude; it's influence, control. Similarly Israel; it's the stick to Saudi Arabia's carrot.

Why? Well, this is the painful part - no reason, really. That is, no specific, tangible reason. Most of the Middle East isn't soaked in crude - Syria certainly isn't. However useless the region is to us though, it's better that we control this useless region, than some other empire control it and potentially find use.

We cooked up our sweetheart deals with Israel not because Israel was particularly useful for anything, but becuase we were basically buying them away from the Soviets. we helped overthrow Mossadegh for BP, but we supported the Shah and his murder-parties for decades after because he was aligned against the Russians and Chinese, a staunch anti-communist. The Saudis similarly fund and influence powerful anti-left movements through the Muslim and Arab worlds (both religious and secular) as a bugger against - again - soviet / chinese influence (nevermind that both nations are now as hyper-capitalist as we are, the principle remains)

It's not for barrels of this resource or boxes of that one. it's imperial brinksmanship. we seek to rule just to keep others from doing so - and strong independent states (or worse, strong states aligned with competing empires, like Iran or Syria) are utterly intolerable