Many countries with very unstable exports have relatively stable national incomes; others whose exports are stable have highly unstable national incomes.
A country that consumes more than 20 percent of the world's oil supply but owns 2 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way out of high prices or dependence on exports from unstable countries.
Whatever the Republican candidates might say, a country that consumes more than 20 percent of the world's oil supply but owns 2 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way out of high gas prices or dependence on exports from unstable countries.
When Texaco struck oil in Ecuador, the country was unstable and impoverished; its chief export was bananas.
A stable Balkans is an asset for all, but an unstable and poor one could export crime and migrants or even lurch back into conflict.
And Saudi Arabia — with a rising youth population and sectarian tensions, a suppressed civil society, and a ruling family whose oil wealth is being challenged by U.S. shale production and non-fossil-fuel consumption — seems precariously unstable, in a region that exports instability.
Extending NATO membership to Georgia would entangle the alliance in those two conflicts on Russia's unstable southern border and along the export routes for Caspian basin oil, in a region Russia considers within its sphere of influence.
Russia bullies its European energy customers; Saudi Arabia, Iran and others export terrorism; Nigeria is unstable and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez spews hate.
The TPP also would require the United States to automatically approve all exports of liquefied natural gas to countries in the agreement, which would mean more dangerous fracking, more coastal export terminals, and more unstable pipelines here at home.
But this does not take away the existing concern that an unstable international supply or a distortion in the export policies of major exporting countries can have detrimental effect for a net food importing country such as Bangladesh.
Other emerging economies remain unstable partly because they still rely on exporting raw materials like oil or soybeans, and thus tie their fate to volatile swings in the global commodities market.
