MY resources?

If a political situation in another country radically effected the security of the United States would It be justified in the use of military force?

Let's say a radical cleric takes control of Saudi Arabia and says they will no longer ship oil to the West. Would the US have a right to assert control over the strategic assets?

 

This is pretty much the original question. I think it is a moot point since the US would obviously invade and take over the oil fields-- justification be damned. I doubt there is any legal justification.

As far as a moral justification, probably IMHO. It might be needed to prevent a near complete breakdown of American/ European society which is totally dependent on foreign oil. Oil at hundreds of dollars per barrel could lead to mass starvation in parts of the world.

This justification is sort of on the level of the justification for "illegal" immigration from desperately poor areas of the world to other areas.

 

This thread supports Tom Friedman's recent NYT editorial in which he says not is the time to phase in at least a $1/gallon tax on gasoline to start the process of weening folks from their gas guzzlers and cheap oil life styles.

 

Why would you propose such a regressive tax that would disproportionately impact poor people?

 

Burma received a lot of coverage at the time. I believe there is no oil there. Africa (Central and Southern) is kind of the forgotten, hopeless continent in general. I think Ivory Coast receives more coverage in France because they have historic connections, not so much in the rest of the world.

Things would be better for the world because you would not have despotic regimes in ideologically backwards societies that can blackmail the world and influence it in a hugely negative way. To turn your logic around, I doubt that the backwards Saudi ideology could have spread like that in the world without all that oil money.

P.S.: How did I define the word "world"?

 

Interestingly I watched Syriana yesterday and it addresses these issues. good movie.

 

Each of these questions really depend on what the long term goals of your country.
Is your country trying to secure strategic alliances? Then you would probably go with 1.
Is your country to trying to make as much money as possible? Then you would probably go with 2.
Is your country trying to assure your own infrastructure future? Then you would probably go with 3.

This is greatly simplifying things but that seems to be where your question is going. As other posters have noted there are many problems to this view though regarding contracts and such. Two other factors I would consider is also the inability to control prices through either greater production from other sources or a switch to other energy sources and greater conservation. Another factor though is if you go with option 3 while you might be buying your own country some more time you are also handicapping it by trying to hand on to an oil based finite infrastructure.

I would suggest looking at Norway for probably the best example of a country that has oil yet is preparing for a future not dependent on fossil fuels. They sell their oil on the world market but also tax oil domestically to encourage the development of other energy sources and conservation so while they are an oil producer they are also one of the least dependent on oil for their infrastructure.

 

What contract? I have paid FICA taxes, but I don't remember a contract being signed between myself and the US Government. I just remember money being withheld from my paycheck. So far as I am aware, Social Security is paid entirely based on appropriations in the current budget, not on some contract with workers. Your starting premise, that Social security is a contract, would appear to be flawed. From that, it is no surprise that your conclusion is likewise flawed.

I believe you are referring to the concept of efficient breach. Imagine if the City of Houston contracted with a construction company to build a new arena for the Rockets. The estimated cost of construction was $400 million, with an additional $40 million in profit for the construction company (the numbers don't matter, they are illustrative). Assume that the NBA ceased to exist and that the proposed arena could serve no other possible purpose. It would make no sense to spend $440 million for the arena to be built. Instead, the City could just pay the $40 million to the construction company and call it a day. This would be an efficient breach.

None of this has anything specifically to do with large corporations. If you contract with a plumber to install a new sink in your house, you can prevent his performance and pay him only the expectation damages if you change your mind and decide you like your old sink better. It just makes more sense than completing performance then paying for the old sink to be installed. The plumber is no worse off.

 

How so? I remember wathing it, but can't remember much about it.

 

matt damon's character was an oil trader. the mock country was led by an older shiek who was retiring. he had two sons to choose to leave power to, an older son who wanted to make the oil more accessable to world markets and getting the most value out of it and using the money to invest in the country.

the retiring emir however was tied to the US and made decisions based on US influence. he younger son was just going to be a figure head controled by the US so the US would have the most access to resources and not have the oil price dictated by the world market. matt damon wanted to help the older son get the most out of the oil. however the father passed the power down to the younger son. the older son was still going to try to obtain power, he was killed by the CIA.

 

I’m with you now. Yes, it would have an impact on global oil prices. I realise that you’re primarily posing a moral question here, and I’ll get back to it in a bit, but here’s just a quick comment on this specific issue.

If it looked like the price of oil was going to go up and stay up other options would start to kick in. I haven’t read the recent papers on this, but at somewhere around $150/barrel synthetic hydrocarbons start to become an option. The processes I was reading about use waste CO2, so the resulting hydrocarbons are even carbon neutral. The inputs are CO2 from coal fired power plants, or from scrubbing it directly from the atmosphere, hydrogen produced from water, and electricity. It’s more efficient to use the electricity to run electric vehicles directly, of course, but if there aren’t very many electric vehicles on the road you can use it to produce hydrocarbons. Or, if there is a good location for generating electricity but it is very remote, making transmission lines prohibitively expensive, it may make sense to essentially convert the electricity to hydrocarbons and then ship them out. If anyone wants to look up the latest on this you can search for carbon neutral hydrocarbons, synthetic gasoline, and synthetic fuel.

With respect to the morality question, given the way I see morality (see Kohlberg), I think heads of state, and politicians in general, should, and sometimes even do, behave morally. And I think behaving morally is ultimately good politics in the long run as well. In short, I think we live in a global community, and just as it is in your own community, being respectful and helpful to your neighbours creates a better community for everyone. If you try to take advantage of your neighbour, or you deny him help when he needs it, there’s a much greater chance he’ll come back later and try to screw you, or at the very least he probably won’t help you the next time you need help. If you help him, otoh, there’s a much greater chance that he’ll help you. Not every moral act will be reciprocated, of course. My morality is not about a good deed for a good deed or an eye for an eye tradeoffs. It’s about behaving a certain way on principle, but along with that also goes the fact you tend to reap what you sow.

I think you would be interested in Kohlberg, btw. His work addresses dilemmas much like the one you posed.
http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm

 

I think you’re right in that as long as relations remain the way they are the US will continue to import oil from Saudi Arabia. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that the Saudis own a refinery Texas, and they import oil from Saudi Arabia for their refinery. However, I don’t think the US wants to be dependent on oil from unstable regimes and regions anymore, and that may well include Venezuela. Oil from the ME has been enormously expensive for the US if you consider the real costs, including the costs of the Gulf War and the Iraq War, and the cost of the ill will and extremism created by the US’s relationship with the ME because of oil.

Replacing Venezuelan oil with oil sands oil reduces the US’s dependence on Venezuela, and if I’munderstanding you correctly the Mexicans’ underperformance issues could be seen as a kind of a reserve for the US. If something were to happen in the ME which caused oil imports to be cut off, I’m guessing the Mexicans could probably be persuaded ($$$) to increase production to help make up the difference. There are also marginal wells in the US and Canada that are brought back on line as the price of oil rises, and possibly other ways to make up the difference as well. I think the overall objective is to not be dependent on ME oil and therefore to not be put in a position where the US has to interfere in the ME, politically or militarily, in ways that are designed primarily to protect the US’s access to oil.

 

^ As long as oil is sold on a global market the Middle East will always figure very largely in the US policy even if other sources are developed to offset US use of Middle East oil.

 

Oil is too valuable to burn as a fuel.

 

To some degree yes, but to much less of a degree. I think one of the key reason the US has been able to risk the democratic revolutions in Egypt and Libya, and the recent unrest in the ME in general, is because it is much less dependent on ME oil even now. 10 – 20 years ago I’m not sure the US could have risked this kind of instability in the ME. Why did the US get involved in the Gulf and Iraq Wars, after all? Why did it get into alliances with Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Mubarack, etc.? There were other reasons as well, especially in the Cold War era, but a big one was access to oil.

 

I think he means that as long as the price is global, the ME will remain a factor, if it becomes unstable what's to prevent other countries from seeking other sources

 

I think that you're putting more thought into the political reasoning behind where oil is bought from than most refiners do. (Major exception being CITGO, as it is owned by the Venezuelan government.) First of all, you're mostly correct on one point: Motiva is a joint venture between Shell and Saudi Aramco, and operates a refinery in Texas and 2 in Louisiana, and I know the one in Texas runs at least some Saudi crude. For the major refining companies, they care about one thing as far as politics go: Are the producing country's politics stable enough to provide the crude in the volumes that they need? If there is stability, they'll deal with everyone from Canada to Mexico to Venezuela to Libya. Refineries are typically designed for a type or narrow range of crude. You can revamp them to run different crude, but that will either cost a lot of money or reduce throughput. Refiners don't want to invest a lot of capital revamping a refinery to run a crude with risks of production outages, so stability is important to them. The rest of the politics don't seem to matter much.