Book on Suicide Terrorism

[Ziggurat]

I meant that any oil produced by an oil tyranny would have a tarriff if it were brought into any western nation. The tarriff would vary according to the vileness of the tyranny. The vileness measure (and therefore the tarriff) would be recomputed yearly. The maximum tarriff might be 200% for a Saddam Hussein.

Enforcement would clearly be an issue but if the west were committed, this would not be too big a deal.

The effect would be something like this: Global oil prices would rise to to perhaps 60 dollars a barrell. Tyrannian oil would sell for $20 plus a $40 tarriff. Utopian oil would sell for $60 with no tarriff. This would give Tyrannia an incentive to reform. It would also give the west a new source of revenue. It also would have been much more effective in the late 90s when oil prices were lower.

Such a scheme would end up being essentially irrelevant, precisely because oil is fungible. World prices are $60 per barrel. We put a tarrif on Tyrannian oil so that they can only sell it to us for $20 per barrel. No problem: they just sell to China for $55 per barrel. China gets cheaper oil than we do, and Tyrannia only feels a minor pinch. All it does is shuffle around where oil goes to. It also creates a market for oil laundering: small oil-producing countries with low or zero tarrifs can make money by buying from countries we impose large tarrif on at slightly discounted prices, then resell it at their low tarrif rates. It's an unworkable and unenforceable idea. Hell, considering how poorly oil sanctions worked against Iraq (and there we nominally had world consensus), I can't imagine there being anywhere near the global solidarity to pull off anything of the sort without it quickly becoming the sort of farce that the oil-for-food fraud was.