GCC are US allies, I have no idea why US wants to destroy their own allies oil/gas infrastructure. How does that benefit the US to have weakened allies?
you put a lot of stock in the assumption of good faith, that what we call "allies" are treated in the most ideal dictionary sense. but the world is not run by a dictionary. now we have enough hindsight to see that the narrative of a 'federation of equals' itself is, and always was, a load of horseshit. it has only ever been used as the appeal to bring in the american trojan horse that deploys disarmament and dependency. europe? disarmed and vassalized. japan? its growth arrested and vassalized.
we can only call taking words at face value, "guillible".
torpedoing world energy and settling for just being the king of the rubbleheap can be seen as a 'reset' style of fighting where they can leverage the fact they are operating under fewer constraints (western hemisphere oil) to their advantage. remember, in any contest, if you have any marginal rate advantage over the opposition then it's just a matter of time that you come out ahead.
we should also take a more long term view regarding the strategy. it should be obvious at the gut check level that china is the real target. i expect us strategists view the reduction in energy availability to china not as a knock-out blow but rather an incremental build-up in resistance to their growth. the us will continue to pursue layering on more and more of these incremental rate reductions because again, maintaining supremacy only requires you to stay marginally faster than the guy behind you.
also just anecdotal observation, i think reset fighting is more native to the western character compared to the east. wrestling, grappling and taking you down into the mud with them is much more favored in western martial history, whereas eastern traditions favor minimizing contact through range and skirmish. even in eastern grappling such as judo, ending up on the ground is seen as something to be avoided. this difference in philosophy may be one of the underlying causes of mutual inscrutability. to the easterner, western expenditure of resources is abhorrently wasteful in their willingness to hurt themselves in order to hurt their opponent. to the westerner, the easterner's prioritization of preserving their resources and capital is despicable as misapplication of power.
so i do not think america has actually gone off its rockers; i think they would love everyone to think they have. feigning insanity is a classic tactic that should be familiar to eastern history. i would respect it.
i think the us is very much interested in protracting the destabilization of the middle east as it is the link between china and the rest of eurasia. destabilization will allow it to continue working around the chessboard; iran doesnt have to be fully defeated for it to lose its ability to intervene against subversive "democratization" actions in tajik/uzbek/kazakh areas next; afghanistan may also reprise its inflammatory role in the region, this time as a wedge to stress the china-pakistan relationship.
