Ghandi was facing a Western government with a different worldview than others. I don't believe his method would have worked so well against say, Syria.
I agree wholeheatedly that this is an ideological conflict. I tend to see things is huge pictures and don't really pay attention to details (as my son says I need to go to school NOW!) but what it appears to me that ME countries want is us out of their oil, yet the ability to control the market of that product. Hey I'm a capitalist I agree, but also as a capitalist we should be looking for ways to get off that dependence of an expensive foreign commodity, and move away from ME oil altogether, but then where does that leave that region if we aren't supplying the income we currently provide.
As you can see I circle around big questions that really go nowhere :) And as Erika said, I have a bad habit of playing devil's advocate!