How should the West deal with a situation where, first, the Westernized establishment in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc., is anxious to sell the local resources in order to build up huge "modern" cities and buy lots of Ferraris, but second, the local fundamentalist Islamists disagree?
From a simplistic external viewpoint, if country X is willing to sell oil, should other countries buy it without regard to the selling country's internal politics?
In essence my quick answer comes from my summary: 5) Possibly the most important thing we can do is not fight, or even preach, but simply find ways to stop giving money to the extremists in Saudi Arabia.
I really believe that the West needs to temper its dependence on Middle East oil in order to give it options in dealing with various countries.
In an ideal world of course we would be very careful about our economic ties with repressive governments everywhere. Of course, that is not the real world. Thus, I do not propose that (were we to make the necessary investments in alternative energy) that we seek to tie trade to internal politics more in the Middle East than anywhere else, in the general case.
(Kuwait is in my mind a good example of the general case.)
However, in the case of Saudi Arabia I think there is an enormous pile of evidence that much of the money we pay for oil is recycled straight out into the construction of fundamentalist organisations, many of whom really, really do see us as the enemy and want to do us large amounts of harm. This seems like a bad way to spend our money, we should work hard to find ways to stop enabling this.
I don't think they mind us buying their oil: it's the incessant interference that bothers them.
