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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (8245)	10/30/2001 2:48:55 PM
From: Climber	Respond to of 281500

Lindy, As for the Saudi oil, the American oil companies involved in ARAMCO never "owned" it in the first place, and their concessionary rights to develop the fields would have expired in 1999 at any rate, even if "Saudi-ization" hadn't occured. Climber

To: LindyBill who wrote (8245)	10/30/2001 10:51:53 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi LindyBill; Re: "But, as far as I am concerned, legalizing theft by calling it "Nationalization" does not make it right." While it's true that stealing isn't right, the question here is who is responsible for punishing the stealing. If the state of Texas steals an oil field from a US oil company based in Austin, the United States is definitely involved. But when US companies agree to do business in foreign countries they subject themselves to foreign laws. We don't make the laws in Saudi Arabia any more than they make the laws in the United States. Back when people were worried about the United States being bought up by the Japanese I laughed. We can pass laws that, for instance, charge very high property taxes, (but rebate them to American citizens) and take back that property any time we want to. Foreigners who invest in the US always have that hanging over their heads, but so do US citizens who invest in foreign nations. Letting our foreign policy be automatically entangled with the interests of (even our own) multinational corporations is a bad idea. If we're going to threaten foreign nations according to how they apply their laws to our multinational corporations we have to look at it on a case by case basis. Simply calling all of it theft and threatening military action is too simple. And it does cut both ways. Just a few days ago congress was talking about manufacturing an antibiotic without bothering with the details of the patent owned by a German company. On the other hand, I understand that during WW1 (and maybe WW2 as well) the two sides paid each other royalties on military patents. (Anyone remember the details?) -- Carl