February 2, 2026
Oil price has been thought to correlate with US aggression abroad; expensive energy impacts the US negatively, and cheaper, more plentiful oil is a positive. It has been why we fought. This was the foundation of the Carter Doctrine, from Jimmy Carter's own words:
I'm determined that the United States will remain the strongest of all nations, but our power will never be used to initiate a threat to the security of any nation or to the rights of any human being. We seek to be and to remain secure-a nation at peace in a stable world. But to be secure we must face the world as it is.
Three basic developments have helped to shape our challenges: the steady growth and increased projection of Soviet military power beyond its own borders; the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East; and the press of social and religious and economic and political change in the many nations of the developing world, exemplified by the revolution in Iran.
Each of these factors is important in its own right. Each interacts with the others. All must be faced together, squarely and courageously. We will face these challenges, and we will meet them with the best that is in us. And we will not fail.
Substitute Soviet for Russia and China, and Donald Trump probably posted the same thing on Truth Social 50 times last year, using ALL CAPS.
But energy markets adapted to the 1970s; today those sources are more widely distributed, and diversified. OPEC is less capable of doing its ordained mission for its members, but a new producer cartel is emerging. In 2019, the top five crude oil producers were the US (17mb/d), Russia (12 mb/d), Saudi Arabia (10 mb/d), Canada (6 mb/d) and Iraq (5 mb/d). 6 years laters, it's the US (21 mb/d), Saudi Arabia (11mb/d), Russia (almost 11 mb/d), Canada (5.6 mb/d), and China (5 mb/d). Iraq has dropped to 6th, with around 4.5 mb/d.
The cartel no longer OPEC, it is us. Trump also claims he effectively "owns" Canada. Our Saudi Arabian and UAE clients appear solidly dependent on Washington, and since 2003, Iraqi oil has been profiteered by the US, much as is envisioned for both Venezuela and the seducable sovereign movement in Alberta. Of the 2026 top six crude exporters, it's the Team USA versus Russia and China.
We have to ask: Do we fight for lower energy prices, or higher ones ? Why is dollar-denominated oil and gas such a mandate for Washington ? These are rhetorical questions, because the answers are as obvious as who blew up Nordstream II to create a new guaranteed energy market for US LNG. It is the reason Trump really doesn't plan to end the Ukraine war, despite his theatrics. Cheap oil is no longer why we fight, and our fiat concubinage is very grateful.
Since EO 13303, Bush 43's first Executive Order upon the takeover of Baghdad on May 22, 2003, "permanently" put all Iraq petroleum products into the US Treasury system, via the Iraq Development Fund. For 23 years, "Iraq's oil revenues, which account for about 90 percent of their national budget, are held in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under an arrangement dating back to the 2003 US-led invasion. Care was taken in the 2003 EO to ensure that "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process [against the Fund] is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void..." This is why Trump can tell Iraqis who they are allowed to elect.
It's good to be king ! Thanks to the permanent neoconservative aristocracy in DC, currently led by fake MAGA DJT, we call the shots in Iraq, and in Europe, and Venezuela, and the list goes on.
With the lack of imagination that both typifies and fragilifies massive centralized power structures, we are watching the end of empire in real time. More specifically, the end of the empire's fiat and a revelation of the gaping hollowness of what once was a respectable Republic, with an admirable Constitution.
Fiat lies are being revealed hourly; the republic is unrepublican and antidemocratic, the Constitution trampled and laughed at by those who imagine they are captaining the ship. Expensive energy, price-controlled upward to aid the dollar, or downward in some locales to prevent revolution, is the goal. Better yet are the beautiful armadas of Washington that hope to blockade, embargo and sanction other countries at will, demanding they bend the knee to Washington. It's the natural extension of the old Washington Consensus, where Western fiat debt was created for third world governments in order to control their exports, policies and alliances, which itself was a natural evolution of western colonialism.
It might look good on paper, but why the need for US government f inancialization of everything ? Why does it take years for allies to repatriate their gold held in the US ? Why will there never be an audit of "Fort Knox?" The glibness of the US empire is evident to most Americans, and the rest of the world. Faith in the US is collapsing, as it should. Its actual system of governance, its Israel First foreign policy , its obscene ever-expanding debt that counts everything we own and everything we will ever earn as collateral for even more borrowing - all of this is as embarrassing as it is deadly.
US foreign policy, and US domestic policies both reflect the suddenly visible pupation of the voracious, incessant worm of Washington into an impressive moth-like state intent on global piracy at all cost. With its inevitably short lifespan, it frenetically seeks destruction and threat of destruction to seize land, peoples, and assets around the world, and then somehow possess that land, eliminate those people, and consume those assets. The Donroe doctrine, and the rest of Washington's global projects rest on global obedience, global fear, and global faith in United States benevolence - each of which are fracturing, collapsing, and evaporating by the day.
Obedience is sought through destruction, of both people, governments and markets, and through a US envisioned control of global energy flows. Fear is created through bombs and threats, peppered with contrived demonstrations like the kidnap of Maduro, or Greenland, or random bombings - which are pronounced as wise and effective structural successes that the rest of the world correctly sees as weakness and waste. Global faith in the US has long been on a downward spiral, and confidence in the US as a trade or diplomatic partner has plummeted. But it is the irrational levels of federal debt that speak the loudest - and no one wants to put good money after bad.
The US treasury has technically owned Iraqi oil since 2003, and in early 2026 took over the tar sands of Venezuela. In between, Libya was destroyed. Of the other OPEC members, Washington controls Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Nigeria. We are the new OPEC - what we sought to break, we have become. Meanwhile, we seek control over Iran, Russia and China - the remaining primary energy sources for the planet.
The US dollar is collapsing, having exponentially lost over 80% of its value since 1976, and nothing is reversing this trend. Carter's doctrine - after trillions of dollars were wasted in war and posturing - has finally been fulfilled by Trump in a way that all but guarantees the end of the United States experiment.