It is, rather grandly, titled 'The First Law of Petropolitics' - as oil prices climb, so political freedoms in major oil producing nations diminish.
It was coined last year by US uber-columnist Thomas L. Friedman in Foreign Policy magazine, and expanded in a lengthier article yesterday for the New York Times. In the first piece, he explained his basic reasoning thus:
When I heard the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declare that the Holocaust was a 'myth', I couldn't help asking myself: 'I wonder if the president of Iran would be talking this way if the price of oil were $20 a barrel today rather than $60 a barrel?'
While not pretending to be rigorous science - "I am not trying to get tenure anywhere," he insisted - Mr Friedman illustrated his article with charts plotting civil and political rights in major petro-nations as determined by so-called "freedom indexes" produced by US thinktanks, against oil prices. The inverse relationship is striking.
He added anecdotal evidence, for example pointing out that not only was Bahrain the first Gulf state to hold free elections, among other reforms, but also the first such state expected to run out of oil.
And did Ronald Reagan bring down the Soviet Union? Nonsense, Mr Friedman suggested; of far more impact was low oil prices, hovering around $17 a barrel when the bloc formally dissolved in late 1991.
In yesterday's expanded think piece, Mr Friedman calls for a "Green New Deal" reducing America's dependence on oil and thus cutting global demand and prices.
George Bush's current refusal to make major steps towards curbing oil use leaves the US not only dependent on illiberal regimes but also ends up financing the very radical Islamist elements he is supposedly battling, Mr Friedman argues, cheekily calling it "a policy of 'No Mullah Left Behind'".
The arguments are clear, he says:
People change when they have to - not when we tell them to - and falling oil prices make them have to. That is why if we are looking for a Plan B for Iraq - a way of pressing for political reform in the Middle East without going to war again - there is no better tool than bringing down the price of oil.
Of course, it's perfectly possible to argue that The First Law of Petropolitics is simply a very specific example of a universal political law - a well-fed, economically sated population rarely erupts in revolt.
However, Mr Friedman's notion is an interesting way to approach modern geo-politics. Yesterday's article also goes further and predicts that a green revolution in the US is on its way.
As an example, he notes that the US army is pushing for more energy-efficient technologies to reduce its reliance on vulnerable fuel supply chains, adding:
Pay attention: When the US army desegregated, the country really desegregated; when the army goes green, the country could really go green.
