By Andrew L. Jaffee

Victor Davis Hanson is a true liberal in the old sense of the word — open-minded, educated, and well-rounded — though he’s considered “conservative” by many. He’s not afraid to expose Middle Eastern dictators for what they are: petty tyrant thugs (a term leftists are afraid to utter). He’s also not afraid to use the terms “conservation” and “alternate fuels,” which many right-wingers consider apostasy. Here he is, from the Washington Post:

… In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is confident that powerful nations abroad will overlook his thuggery in hopes of getting a chance to buy his country’s oil — or in worry that any tension would send world prices even higher. Mr. Ahmadinejad also knows — and fears — that without supporting terrorists or trying to acquire a nuclear bomb he would be just another tinhorn loudmouth like Cuba’s Fidel Castro or Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

Yet vast oil profits do little to help — and probably much to harm — Middle Eastern countries. Unlike in places where economic achievement is the result of savvy business leaders, a hardworking labor force and a literate public, tribal hierarchies in the Middle East simply metamorphosed into billion-dollar nations by virtue of sitting atop crude oil.

One result is a big inferiority complex in the Middle East. There is always the fear the gas and oil reserves will dry up, leaving a Libya, Iran or Saudi Arabia with as much global attention as a Chad or Bulgaria.

Another result is unstable societies. When nations acquire collective wealth gradually through their own industry, a middle class can arise. But in the Middle East, a few tribal and religious sects with oil are fabulously wealthy; almost everyone else is abjectly poor. Illegitimate monarchies and jittery dictatorships — always in fear of coups, terrorists and revolutions — depend upon oil-needy foreigners, trading scarce oil and endless petrodollars for export goods and protection.

If the U.S. could curb its voracious foreign oil purchases by using conservation, additional petroleum production, nuclear power, alternate fuels, coal gasification and new technologies, the world price might return to below $40 a barrel.

That decline would dry up the oil profits of those in the Middle East who now so desperately use them to ensure that their own problems must also be the world’s.