Oil prices are up to $115 a barrel for Brent crude on the basis of market fears that western governments will not be able to limit their involvement in Syria to a few missile strikes shot from warships located safely offshore and that the Sunni-Shia conflict will spread across the Middle East. The forward market is suggesting that spot prices will go even higher.

Maybe. The western involvement certainly looks ill-prepared and lacking in strategic purpose. The response to what is happening in Syria from the US, in particular, reminds me of the impotent response of the dying Ottoman regime to the gradual collapse of its empire across the Middle East in the years before the first world war.

But consider an alternative view. Syria is a minor oil producer and its output has been reduced for months. Libya is underproducing and there is trouble in Nigeria. What is new?