Quote Originally Posted by Fabius Maximus View Post
Alternative view: the Saudi Princes waged one of the great economic wars of the post-WWII era against the USSR for control of the oil industry. They opened their spigots, crashed the price of oil, and bankrupted the USSR.
I'm not sure the oil price lows of the mid- 1980s had anything to do with such lofty strategic aims. Rather, they were a combination of an increase in supplies and stocks due to high prices following the Iranian Revolution; a slowdown in demand due to these same high prices; and ambitious Gulf development expenditures (and hence pressures for larger OPEC quotas). When the price started to drop, the Saudis eventually tired of being the swing producer, and instead for a while sought to maintain revenues by offsetting price declines with production increases.

At most the (secondary) strategic aim was to reduce the market share of high-marginal-cost oil producers (with North Sea, older-well North American producers, and new explorations being more vulnerable by this time than the Soviets were).