>> The possibility of not having to militarily rescue the oil supply of China with our own 5th fleet is an incredible shift in power toward us.
I was with you up until that statement. There’s either a typo in there, or else I just don’t understand it.
I am just pointing out that we can actually affect China as well because we will not only be self sufficient for oil and gas but we can affect China’s vulnerability as the new dominant consumer of fossil fuels.
China will not be able to provide its own supply as we will.
I.e. most of the oil from that region is actually consumed by China (Europe too), but if you remove a fraction of it from the overall world market, it drives the price up a lot. Ergo, when we are “stabilizing” or otherwise operating to bring nutjobs to heel in the ME, we’re essentially securing China’s oil supply.