I don't believe there is enough oil produced in the world to cover all the demand without the Gulf

We need to change the demand equation, and not just for the US

True

Trump is doing the same thing with the EU coal market, too.

And China.

Okay, let's back up a moment

Is there any disagreement that sending vast sums of money to the Gulf states simply ends up funding hate back at us?

Not from me

I think Saudi imports are only like 10% of US oil demand. That's basically marginal demand.

Not just money from us, but money from Japan, China, India, Europe, and south africa

Oil is a world market after all and money is money

Whoever is throwing money at the Gulf States it comes back to us as hate. That's why Trump is trying to keep everyone from trading with Iran and not just the US.

Sounds like Trump is already on the right track by negotiating trade deals that replace Arab oil with US oil.

Can the US replace Arab oil? Arab oil is cheap to get out. They can always undercut us.

As long as oil is a thing, money will flow to the Gulf...unless we can get the whole world to embargo them and actually respect the embargo

I can't imagine China paying us more for oil when they can get it cheaper from Kuwait and Qutar

We could bar the US oil services industry from operating in the Middle East. That would have them riding camels again really quick.

You're so confident that China and Europe and Russian experts wouldn;t fill the gap?

If the Saudi-Iranian conflict goes hot in the gulf, American oil will be pretty damned cheap in comparison.

Their oil is the easiest to get out of the ground

I'm confident that it would be an economic shock to the Middle East.

Possibly, but not for very long

And it would just continue to make the US irrelevant

Which is already slowly happening

Yeah, who knows how high the market's geopolitical risk premium on Middle Eastern oil can go.

Just witness how alternate currency transfer systems are being developed to get around the Dollar embargo in Iran

What did you expect to happen?

Exactly what is happening

The point of a US embargo is to cut the embargo target out of the US market, which it did.

I predicted the current middle east situation on 9/11/2001. I was stranded in Norfolk, VA a stone's throw from the biggest naval base in the world and outlined what I wanted to see (ME back to camel herding) and what i expected to happen (invasion of Iraq leading to civil war and an increase in world terror)

Iran won the US-Iraq War

All Americans go ahead and pat yourselves on the back

And terror won

I think everybody expects destabilization of any Middle Eastern dictatorship to unleash more global terrorism.

Assad and Saddam were actually good for us. Morality aside, realpolitik can be mighty handy.

Ghaddafi too once we tamed him

Everything Obama did in the Middle East defied realpolitik favorable to the US.

He only took over the mess that Bush II created

He made it 100x worse!

I can't think of a single good thing Obama did with respect to foreign policy.

He did exactly what he was elected to do. An election win that was the biggest since the Reagan era.