Cheap oil could be a Trojan horse for America

“Subversion introduced from the outside.” That’s part of Encyclopedia Britannica’s definition for a Trojan horse, the hollow structure that allowed Greek soldiers to penetrate the city of Troy and win the Trojan War. What if the drop in oil prices currently making everyone cheer at the pumps is exactly that — a Trojan horse?

Subversion theory dictates that in order for an offensive move to be effective, it has to be welcomed. And who in America isn’t psyched about cheap gas right now? Meanwhile, the U.S. government likely feels differently. It was set to reap profits from its shale boom — that is, before Saudi-led OPEC decided to flood the market with massive supply.

To whose ultimate benefit is the price drop? On the face of it, the only real benefactors appear to be global consumers. So then why bother flooding the market? Despite the Saudi oil minister suggesting that his country wouldn’t mind watching oil prices take an even greater plunge, Saudi Arabia is still taking an income cut on its primary source of revenue at a time when it’s projecting a $39 billion deficit for 2015. Why are the Saudis pretending that a kick in the rear is a gluteal massage?

Saudi interest in the petroleum high-dive games could be strictly political, as Saudi Arabia has a long history of “political funding.” For example, we’ve already seen the Saudis supply the “Syrian rebels” with resources in their failed regime-change efforts against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ultimately leading to the rise of the Islamic State terrorists currently wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.

One theory is that Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are conspiring to weaken the economies of Russia and Iran. The motives would make enough sense. With respect to Iran, Saudi Sunni and Iranian Shiite regimes have long hated each other, while America is perpetually concerned about Iranian nuclear unpredictability. On the Russian front, Saudis and Russians have been at each other’s throats over Saudi funding of Islamic terrorism in Russia’s North Caucasus region and over Russia’s defense of Assad in the interests of maintaining Russian oil interests and of curtailing Islamic terrorism. Meanwhile, the U.S. currently seems intent on squeezing Russia economically.

But as much sense as a U.S.-Saudi Arabia conspiracy theory might make, there are some significant problems with it. The U.S. chose Russia as a partner over Saudi Arabia and Qatar when faced with that choice in Syria last year. There are no shared ideological interests between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia — aside from mutual cooperation in combating the Islamic State, which both countries had a role in creating. The Saudis couldn’t possibly manage to weaken the Russian economy to the point that Putin would abandon Assad and bail on Russia’s associated economic interests in the region — nor would America want that at a time when Assad’s forces are now fighting against a common Islamic State enemy. Moreover, Russian and Saudi ministers met in Moscow in November to discuss cooperating on oil to better manage their respective economic interests. That last fact alone flies in the face of any Saudi-U.S oil price conspiracy theory.

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