Nutural resource production and consumption patterns also influence the operation of the system. System-level analyst would say that the U.S. military reaction to Iraq's attack on Kuwait in 1990 and
the threat to the rest of the oil-rich persian Gulf region was virtually foreordained by the importance of petroleum to the prosperity of the united ststes and its economic partners. As US. Secretary of State James A
Baker Ill explained to reporters, "The economic lifeline of the industrial world runs from he Gulf, and we cannot permit a dictator . . . to sit astride that economic lifeline.