Download or read book Oil Power and War written by Matthieu Auzanneau and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of oil is one of hubris, fortune, betrayal, and destruction. It is the story of a resource that has been undeniably central to the creation of our modern culture, and ever-present during the darkest exploits of empire the world over. For the past 150 years, oil has become the most essential ingredient for economic, military, and political power. And it has brought us to our present moment in which political leaders and the fossil-fuel industry consider extraordinary, and extraordinarily dangerous, policy on a world stage marked by shifting power bases. Upending the conventional wisdom by crafting a “people’s history,” award-winning journalist Matthieu Auzanneau deftly traces how oil became a national and then global addiction, outlines the enormous consequences of that addiction, sheds new light on major historical and contemporary figures, and raises new questions about stories we thought we knew well: What really sparked the oil crises in the 1970s, the shift away from the gold standard at Bretton Woods, or even the financial crash of 2008? How has oil shaped the events that have defined our times: two world wars, the Cold War, the Great Depression, ongoing wars in the Middle East, the advent of neoliberalism, and the Great Recession, among them? With brutal clarity, Oil, Power, and War exposes the heavy hand oil has had in all of our lives—and illustrates how much heavier that hand could get during the increasingly desperate race to control the last of the world’s easily and cheaply extractable reserves.
Download or read book Oil War written by Robert Goralski and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1987 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full story of the role that oil played in the origins and outcome of World War II.
Download or read book The Oil Wars Myth written by Emily Meierding and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do countries fight wars for oil? Given the resource's exceptional military and economic importance, most people assume that states will do anything to obtain it. Challenging this conventional wisdom, The Oil Wars Myth reveals that countries do not launch major conflicts to acquire petroleum resources. Emily Meierding argues that the costs of foreign invasion, territorial occupation, international retaliation, and damage to oil company relations deter even the most powerful countries from initiating "classic oil wars." Examining a century of interstate violence, she demonstrates that, at most, countries have engaged in mild sparring to advance their petroleum ambitions. The Oil Wars Myth elaborates on these findings by reassessing the presumed oil motives for many of the twentieth century's most prominent international conflicts: World War II, the two American Gulf wars, the Iran–Iraq War, the Falklands/Malvinas War, and the Chaco War. These case studies show that countries have consistently refrained from fighting for oil. Meierding also explains why oil war assumptions are so common, despite the lack of supporting evidence. Since classic oil wars exist at the intersection of need and greed—two popular explanations for resource grabs—they are unusually easy to believe in. The Oil Wars Myth will engage and inform anyone interested in oil, war, and the narratives that connect them.
Download or read book The First World Oil War written by Timothy C. Winegard and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Oil is the source of wealth and economic opportunity. Oil is also the root source of global conflict, toxicity and economic disparity. In his groundbreaking book The First World Oil War, Timothy C. Winegard argues that beginning with the First World War, oil became the preeminent commodity to safeguard national security and promote domestic prosperity. For the first time in history, territory was specifically conquered to possess oil fields and resources; vital cogs in the continuation of the industrialized warfare of the twentieth century."--
Download or read book Petro Aggression written by Jeff D. Colgan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oil is the world's single most important commodity and its political effects are pervasive. Jeff D. Colgan extends the idea of the resource curse into the realm of international relations, exploring how countries form their foreign policy preferences and intentions. Why are some but not all oil-exporting 'petrostates' aggressive? To answer this question, a theory of aggressive foreign policy preferences is developed and then tested, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Petro-Aggression shows that oil creates incentives that increase a petrostate's aggression, but also incentives for the opposite. The net effect depends critically on its domestic politics, especially the preferences of its leader. Revolutionary leaders are especially significant. Using case studies including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, this book offers new insight into why oil politics has a central role in global peace and conflict.
Download or read book No War for Oil written by Ivan Eland and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debunking numerous myths that have emerged about the world's resources of oil, this book argues that the use of U.S. military power to secure oil is not only needless and costly--in both lives and money--but also counterproductive to U.S. security. Intended to make government, the media, and citizens think more rationally about oil and the use of military power to secure it, this account suggests that the free market is still the best vehicle to deliver the product most efficiently from producer to consumer and that a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Persian Gulf would be beneficial in the context of potential terrorist threats. Thorough and invaluable, this focused analysis chronicles the history of the battle over oil.
Download or read book Drugs Oil and War written by Peter Dale Scott and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies. This strategy was originally developed in the late 1940s to contain communist China; it has since been used to secure control over foreign petroleum resources. The result has been a staggering increase in the global drug traffic and the mafias associated with it--a problem that will worsen until there is a change in policy. Scott argues that covert operations almost always outlast the specific purpose for which they were designed. Instead, they grow and become part of a hostile constellation of forces. The author terms this phenomenon parapolitics--the exercise of power by covert means--which tends to metastasize into deep politics--the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. We must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority, Scott contends, but also in so-called soft power. We need a "soft politics" of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is embroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.
Download or read book A Century of War written by F. William Engdahl and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Control the oil and you control entire nations," said Kissinger. Oil is an instrument of world domination in the grip of the Anglo-American empire. This is a story about power, power over entire nations and continents. Century of War is a gripping account of the murky world of the international oil industry and its role in world politics. Scandals about oil are familiar to most of us. From George W. Bush's election victory to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US politics and oil enjoy a controversially close relationship. William Engdahl takes the reader through a history of the oil industry's grip on the world economy. His revelations are startling. A thin red line runs through modern world history, covered in oil and blood. This book is not for the faint of heart, but for those who can see beyond the daily media manipulation of reality that is called news.
Download or read book Who Won the Oil Wars written by Andy Stern and published by Collins & Brown. This book was released on 2005-10-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since oil displaced coal as the fuel of choice a century ago, it has been the cause of some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts. This book examines the role oil has played in these conflicts in the last hundred years. It looks at the actions governments and multinational companies have taken to secure their oil supplies since the 1920s, often provoking accusations that they promote conflict and support corrupt or violent regimes. Oil was an important factor in both world wars. Conspiracy theorists believe it also sparked the Suez Crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Biafra war and conflicts in Angola and Chad in which oil companies such as Elf (Angola) and various companies including ExxonMobil (Chad) are said to have played a murky role. The book starts with a look at Empire building and how at the start of the 20th century Britain, France and Germany sought to carve up the world’s supplies of ‘black gold’. The clamour for oil intensified during World War II – in fact the bombing of Pearl Harbor was allegedly at least in part to prevent Indonesian oil from reaching the US. Successive chapters chart the rise of OPEC and the Suez Crisis in 1956, and the Cold War ‘Proxy Wars’, when the importance of Middle East drew the US and Soviet Union (then perceived as the world’s superpowers) into conflicts between states in the region. The book also assesses the power of major oil companies – not only the huge environmental devastation they have caused but the local conflicts that have arisen. For instance, scandals involving the French oil company Elf indicate that it had funded both sides in the civil wars in Angola and the Congo. In conclusion the book looks at other sources of oil, chiefly in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. What effect will large-scale oil extraction have on these regions?
Download or read book Oil Globalization and the War for the Arctic Refuge written by David M. Standlea and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the battle to develop the oil resources of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Download or read book Oil the State and War written by Emma Ashford and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction : A Petrostate Typology -- Applying the Typology : Petrostates at War --Resource Arms Racing : Oil Wealth and Military Power -- Proxies and Altriusm : The Light and Dark of Oil Wealth -- Institutions, Intelligence, and Personalization : The Resource Curse and Foreign Policy -- Crude Power : The Oil Weapon in Practice -- Under the Umbrella : Soft Oil Power and Hegemonic Protection C -- Conclusion : Peak Petrostate? -- Appendix A: Methods and Measurements -- Appendix B: Oil and Conflict -- Appendix C: Military Spending and Arms Sales -- Appendix D: Soft Power, Sanctions, and Oil.
Download or read book The Party s Over written by Richard Heinberg and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically. Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies. We are entering a new era, as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times. In The Party's Over , Richard Heinberg places this momentous transition in historical context, showing how industrialism arose from the harnessing of fossil fuels, how competition to control access to oil shaped the geopolitics of the 20th century, and how contention for dwindling energy resources in the 21st century will lead to resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia, and South America. He describes the likely impacts of oil depletion, and all of the energy alternatives. Predicting chaos unless the U.S. -- the world's foremost oil consumer -- is willing to join with other countries to implement a global program of resource conservation and sharing, he also recommends a "managed collapse" that might make way for a slower-paced, low-energy, sustainable society in the future. More readable than other accounts of this issue, with fuller discussion of the context, social implications, and recommendations for personal, community, national, and global action, Heinberg's updated book is a riveting wake-up call for humankind as the oil era winds down, and a critical tool for understanding and influencing current U.S. foreign policy. Listen to an interview with Richard Heinberg from WRPI.
Download or read book Halliburton s Army written by Pratap Chatterjee and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2010-03-23 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Halliburton'sArmy is the first book to show, in shocking detail, how Halliburton really does business, in Iraq, and around the world. From its vital role as the logistical backbone of the U.S. occupation in Iraq -- without Halliburton there could be no war or occupation -- to its role in covering up gang-rape amongst its personnel in Baghdad, Halliburton'sArmy is a devastating bestiary of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism. Pratap Chatterjee -- one of the world's leading authorities on corporate crime, fraud, and corruption -- shows how Halliburton won and then lost its contracts in Iraq, what Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld did for it, and who the company paid off in the U.S. Congress. He brings us inside the Pentagon meetings, where Cheney and Rumsfeld made the decision to send Halliburton to Iraq -- as well as many other hot-spots, including Somalia, Yugoslavia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Guantámo Bay, and, most recently, New Orleans. He travels to Dubai, where Halliburton has recently moved its headquarters, and exposes the company's freewheeling ways: executives leading the high life, bribes, graft, skimming, offshore subsidiaries, and the whole arsenal of fraud. Finally, Chatterjee reveals the human costs of the privatization of American military affairs, which is sustained almost entirely by low-paid unskilled Third World workers who work in incredibly dangerous conditions without any labor protection. Halliburton'sArmy is a hair-raising exposéf one of the world's most lethal corporations, essential reading for anyone concerned about the nexus of private companies, government, and war.
Download or read book Cold War Energy written by Jeronim Perović and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of Soviet energy during the Cold War. Based on hitherto little known documents from Western and Eastern European archives, it combines the story of Soviet oil and gas with general Cold War history. This volume breaks new ground by framing Soviet energy in a multi-national context, taking into account not only the view from Moscow, but also the perspectives of communist Eastern Europe, the US, NATO, as well as several Western European countries – namely Italy, France, and West Germany. This book challenges some of the long-standing assumptions of East-West bloc relations, as well as shedding new light on relations within the blocs regarding the issue of energy. By bringing together a range of junior and senior historians and specialists from Europe, Russia and the US, this book represents a pioneering endeavour to approach the role of Soviet energy during the Cold War in transnational perspective.
Download or read book The Oil Curse written by Michael L. Ross and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-08 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explaining—and solving—the oil curse in the developing world Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. What explains this oil curse? And can it be fixed? In this groundbreaking analysis, Michael L. Ross looks at how developing nations are shaped by their mineral wealth—and how they can turn oil from a curse into a blessing. Ross traces the oil curse to the upheaval of the 1970s, when oil prices soared and governments across the developing world seized control of their countries' oil industries. Before nationalization, the oil-rich countries looked much like the rest of the world; today, they are 50 percent more likely to be ruled by autocrats—and twice as likely to descend into civil war—than countries without oil. The Oil Curse shows why oil wealth typically creates less economic growth than it should; why it produces jobs for men but not women; and why it creates more problems in poor states than in rich ones. It also warns that the global thirst for petroleum is causing companies to drill in increasingly poor nations, which could further spread the oil curse. This landmark book explains why good geology often leads to bad governance, and how this can be changed.
Download or read book War for Oil written by Dietrich Eichholtz and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nazis' quest for oil as a cornerstone of their imperial mission
Download or read book Why Did the United States Invade Iraq written by Jane K. Cramer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume presents the foremost scholarly thinking on why the US invaded Iraq in 2003, a pivotal event in both modern US foreign policy and international politics. In the years since the US invasion of Iraq it has become clear that the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not as urgent as the Bush administration presented it and that Saddam Hussein was not involved with either Al Qaeda or 9/11. Many consider the war a mistake and question why Iraq was invaded. A majority of Americans now believe that the public were deliberately misled by the Bush administration in order to bolster support for the war. Public doubt has been strengthened by the growing number of critical scholarly analyses and in-depth journalistic investigations about the invasion that suggest the administration was not candid about its reasons for wanting to take action against Iraq. This volume begins with a survey of private scholarly views about the war’s origins, then assesses the current state of debate by organising the best recent thinking by foreign policy and international relations experts on why the US invaded Iraq. The book covers a broad range of approaches to explaining Iraq – the role of the uncertainty of intelligence, cognitive biases, ideas, Israel, and oil, highlighting areas of both agreement and disagreement. This book will be of much interest to students of the Iraq War, US foreign and security policy, strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics and IR/Security Studies in general.
