Clarissa's Blog

There was an oil crisis in the 1970s that devastated the economy of the developed countries and eventually brought in the neoliberal revolution that I keep talking about. I wasn’t alive back then, but people who remember it know that it was very tough.

The constant presence of the United States in the Middle East since then aimed at preventing the repeat of that oil crisis. The policy was successful in achieving that goal.

Now, sadly, everything changed. In the course of its war against Iran, the United States demonstrated that it’s impotent to effectuate a desired regime change. Iran is now emboldened to do the things that it feared doing when it thought that the United States was a lot stronger militarily than it is. Concealing defeat in the war and simply withdrawing is the worst possible thing that the U.S. can do right now. Not starting at all would have been enormously better. But we can’t go back in time. We have now painted ourselves into a corner in which every day can bring a repeat of the oil crisis of the 1970s.

The original goal was to solve the problem once and for all. Iran has a regime change, and the U.S. does not need to hover around the region any longer. We can go back home and concentrate on our own issues. Currently, the result has been the exact opposite. Iran realized that the United States is a lot weaker militarily than it was always presumed to be. Leaving the field of the battle will not erase anybody’s memory. It will not allow us to go to the pre-war status quo.