But this time around, there are some New Victims too, most notably in Eastern Europe. No longer propped up by subsidized Soviet oil prices, all the newly emerging democracies, or whatever you want to call them, are especially vulnerable, thanks to their greater susceptibility to inflation and their near-total dependence on Russia for oil. In the case of some, this might have big political implications. Ukraine, for example, already reliant on its larger neighbor for most of its trade, will be made seriously destabilized by high oil prices, thereby propelling the country further into Russia's geopolitical embrace. As this week's events prove, New Villains are emerging too.
Tax revolt is such a rare thing here that no one even knows quite how to respond to it.
Tony Blair tried to deflect the blame onto OPEC, for example, but that only made things worse. He was immediately caught out by editorialists and columnists who pointed out that 80 percent of the retail fuel price in Britain is in fact accounted for by taxes. There are also, this time around, New Victors, although that distinction may be a dubious one. A long-term boom in oil prices would allow President Vladimir Putin to put off reforms indefinitely, would give him extra cash to pump into his tattered army, would enable him, in other words, to keep on going as if nothing had changed just as high oil prices enabled his Soviet predecessors to go on as if nothing had changed in the 1970s thereby setting the stage for an even more dramatic collapse when oil prices go down again. One can also imagine, if things get really bad, that high oil prices could conceivably help Iraq.