OPEC met in Vienna and decided to enact an effective oil production cut of half a million barrels a day (mbd), reducing overall OPEC supply to 28.8 mbd. This cut, a deliberate effort to prop up prices despite the worsening global economic crisis, was quite in character for the oil cartel. OPEC produces today about as much oil as it did thirty years ago despite its ownership of 78 percent of global proven reserves of conventional crude oil and even though the global economy and nonOPEC production have doubled over the same period. And this OPEC domination of more than three-quarters of the world’s crude is more than matched by oil’s monopoly of over 95 percent of the world’s transportation fuel. This meager OPEC production level is more stunning in light of the fact that in 2007, the cartel expanded its member roster to include Ecuador and Angola, which together produce about as much oil as Norway. Deeply embroiled in a struggle against radical Islam, nuclear proliferation, and totalitarianism, the U.S. faces a crude reality: Saudi Arabia and Iran, the same Sunni and Shi‘ite theocratic and dictatorial regimes that most strongly resist America’s efforts to bring democracy and the rule of law to the Middle East, will increasingly sit in the driver’s seat of the global economy. As the leading countries of OPEC they are in more of a position each year to thwart each and every U.S. foreign policy priority. While the U.S. economy bleeds, petrodictatorships around the world—even at oil prices well below last summer’s stunning $145 peak—are on the receiving end of staggering windfalls. With 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves and the world’s second largest natural gas reserve, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems unfazed by the prospects of international sanctions against his country as a result of its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Oil also lubricates the so-called Bolivarian revolution led by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who is using Venezuela’s oil wealth to buy political influence in the Western Hemisphere and to consolidate, now with Russia’s help, an anti-U.S. bloc in the region.