Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by Thomas Piketty

the political and military aspects of the choice must also be taken into account: even though it is never stated explicitly, it is not illogical for Saudia Arabia to lend at low interest to the country that protects it militarily. To my knowledge, no one has ever attempted to calculate precisely the return on such an investment, but it seems clear that it is rather high. If the United States, backed by other Western powers, had not driven the Iraqi army out of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq would probably have threatened Saudi Arabia’s oil fields next, and it is possible that other countries in the region, such as Iran, would have joined the fray to redistribute the region’s petroleum rents. The dynamics of the global distribution of capital are at once economic, political, and military.