How is this for a long-term conspiracy on the part of oil companies and the arms industries?

Replace oil company with multinational corporations and you have the idea of New World Order. A global government controlled by corporations. The expansion of the corporate empire built by the country of the United States.

“Order out of chaos.”
Silent weapons for quiet wars.

I doubt any of them care about what happens in 70–100 years. Selfish people play for the now, not the future.

I don’t know how accurate this is, and I can’t document it, but a long time ago, I heard a quotation attributed to a Japanese industrialist, stated somewhere around 1903. It was said that Japan could never conquer the US militarily, so the way to do it would be economically.

Those companies certainly haven’t done anything to improve the situation, but for the answers you have to go way way back in the history of the region and study that to learn some of the basics. I’m still scratching the surface but wow, what a Mess everyone has made of that area. Plus even the so called moderate leaders of today don’t really lead. They have social needs, but wow those are some nice shiny tanks and planes. Let’s buy the shinky stuff, we can meet the needs later. Sad.

I recommend two books for you, both from the same Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Daniel Yergin.

Read The Prize and The Quest. (Read them in that order, too.) You will learn more about the energy business than you might imagine. They are each long books, so somewhat daunting in that respect, but very readable, very well researched, and completely fascinating.

I’ve worked in different aspects of “the energy business” (not oil) for over a quarter-century, and there were things I learned here that I “thought I already knew”, and now I understand that I had not really known what I thought I knew. This, to me, is the best kind of education. Highly, highly recommended.

The short answer to your question is “NO, this is no kind of conspiracy such as you suggest. No one in those businesses has that kind of time horizon.”

I read The Prize some years ago, just after publication. I haven’t read The Quest. I’ll see if the library has a copy,

In 1961 Eisenhower warned of a Military-Industrial Complex that now existed. In his statement he explained that “Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” This meant that prior to the cold war companies manufactured weapons then afterwards went back into making products for the consumer market but now we have developed an industry that is solely focused on the manufacturing and selling of weapons so it must have conflict in order to survive. And he was correct. This is what we got and what we still have to this day.

Do we not speak of a “Strategic Oil Reserve”? Would promoting instability in foreign oil producing companies create a push for more oil production in the US and would a push for more domestic oil require a loosening of environmental regulation that is “hampering” the fuel industry? Would funding a group like ISIS not serve both these purposes? Kind of a win-win scenario in that prices rise as oil production and distribution decrease and fear increased the ability to produce it domestically at whatever cost. Are there people out there who would gain from both higher oil prices and the manufacture and distribution of weapons? Would overseas conflict not also assist in increasing the bottom line for weapons manufacturers? I would have no problem envisioning a scenario where energy companies engaged in promoting conflicts to keep the price of oil inflated but I would look for a tie in with the M-I complex.

Many of the major multinational corporations have interlocking boards of directors. The prime directive of any corporation is to maximize return on stockholders’ investments. It is therefore considered to be in the corporate best interest to skirt around any laws that prevent this.