Before one can dream of using oil as an economic weapon, one must first have the discipline to overcome the temptation to be its victim.

For decades now, Middle Eastern autocracies have been spoiling themselves silly with the easy money derived from Westerners' exploitation of their oil reserves.

It is ironic that the call to Muslim countries to use oil as an economic weapon comes from Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Not unlike the Arabian rulers, Mahathir has been using oil revenues from western markets to gloss over his own leadership inadequacies with self-serving mirages of economic achievement.

It is not totally unreasonable to predict that if this cash pipeline from the industrialised West is cut-off or even reduced to a trickle, these regimes would fall in no time. Where would the money come from to feed the greed of the power-brokers, cronies, ruling elites and uniformed services that keep the cowering population in check?

The truth is, without its oil revenue, Malaysia under Mahathir, would not even have enough money to keep the government going. Couple that with the arrogance displayed in answering critics about his mega projects as being internally funded (oil money, that is), you have a lethal combination of intrinsic weakness and extrinsic self-gratification. Ask any drug counsellor and he will tell you that these are precursors to addiction. We are coming to be addicted to oil money.

Too bad, Mahathir, you are the victim, oil is the economic weapon, and the West have been subtly using it to tame tin-pot dictators for years. That is why they are so protective of the ruling classes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Indonesia and Venezuela.

Need Mahathir be reminded that the legitimate key to the strength of a nation — Muslim or otherwise — is the nurturing of the collective resilience, strength, depth, maturity and consciousness of its people. These cannot be achieved through excessive paternalism, divide-and-rule politics, draconian laws and selective prosecution.

Let us not resort to Don Quixotic weaponry but instead return to the reality of the good old values of democracy, freedom and justice for all. We might scrape our knees in the process, but we will be the better for it in the long term.

If we try this approach, I feel sure we would still be able to keep the F1 circuit, Putrajaya, KLIA, Langkawi, the Twin Towers and all the other "emperor's new clothes" which, incidentally, would be the first to be auctioned off should Petronas go broke playing hard-to-get.