Graeme Wood

So there's that.

Also, though, if you talk to the Saudis, for example, I brought this up when I had an interview with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.

And I asked, at what point, if you feel disrespected by the United States, you turn to the Chinese.

And he very openly said, look, there's people in the East who are very happy for us to be disrespected by the United States.

And we're ready to turn toward them.

Now, there's many other Saudis who maybe in a moment of less impulse and peak would say, OK, well, that would be complicated to do.

It would be to turn away from the United States after the long, productive relationship we've had with them.

Would be like turning from 110 volts to 220 for the entire country where we've set up ourselves completely to work with the Americans and to change that to the Chinese would not be a minor step.

It would not be an overnight step.

So it wouldn't be that easy to do.

But all of those countries have developed strong relationships with China that I think are in a way protecting them already.

And of course, they'll probably see ways that it would be useful for them to hedge by doing

developing those connections too.

Yeah, that's correct.

There's one other important fact about Persian Gulf oil and Saudi oil in particular,

The Saudis have this magical ability to produce more or less oil whenever they wish.

This is something that other countries basically don't have.

So in that sense, they kind of operate as a sort of fed in the hydrocarbon business.

And so to take them offline, to remove that capability means that there's a very important economic lever that no longer is in American hands, Saudi hands, anyone's hands.

And having those levers at hand can be awfully important for world markets.