Why would you want to slow down China's growth? And why in any vestigially sane world would you want to prohibit the export of investment goods to China? Even if the US government had the capacity to compel citizens to save (it doesn't), I can't see how that would have had any impact on US trade with hina. Certainly the US could have used higher interest rates to discourage borrowing, but that goes back to the mismanagement of the 2000/2001 recession, which is intimately tied to the economic and political impact of 9/11.
The US government doesn't have that power. Maybe in theory it does, but in practice it does not. For better or for worse the US remains a democracy, and the citizenry wouldn't stand for it. Reform isn't just about leadership, needs some followership as well.
Oil consumption patterns worldwide are inextricably linked to the incentive to consume created by the oil glut and consequent low prices that prevalied from 1985-2005. High prices will change that, but it will take time. Trying to oppose an overwhelming macroeconomic incentive with policy is generally pretty futile.
Unrealistic, I fear. I don't think there's a supplier on the planet that would commit to supply oil to the US at significantly below market price. Certainly the Saudis, Venezuelans, and Nigerians won't, and I very much doubt that the Canadians would.
Lots of alternatives are competitive if prices stay high. It will take at least a decade of high prices for those alternatives to draw the needed investment and develop into meaningful contributors... and when they do, it will be a response to high prices, not to government policy.
Lots of things might have worked. Nothing will work if it's not tried, and nothing was tried. The problem was simply allowed to fester. Of course it was only an irritant, but an irritant that isn't dealt with ultimately provides an incentive to overaction.
It was actually rather complicated. Realistically, no alternative that left Saddam in power would have been suitable or acceptable. Saddam's side deals with France and Russia had the UNSC effectively bottled. The status quo was almost universally perceived as unacceptable.
The Clinton administration made no attempt at all to resolve the festering sore that the Iraq situation had become. They made no attempt beyond a few cursory high tech drive-by shootings to deal with the clearly emerging problem of AQ. They sat by and watched while an enormous equity bubble blew beyond all reasonable proportions, with a devastating impact on the S economy. These situations might not have been completely solved, but some attempt might have been made to manage them. None was. All the chickens came home to roost on poor George's lap, and while the Bushies managed those problems badly, we'd do well to recall how and when those problems cane to be.
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