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"Petroleum industry and trade Political aspects Middle East History 20th century."
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The Struggle for Iran
Beginning with the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in
spring 1951 and ending with its reversal following the overthrow of
Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953, the Iranian oil
crisis was a crucial turning point in the global Cold War. The
nationalization challenged Great Britain's preeminence in the
Middle East and threatened Western oil concessions everywhere.
Fearing the loss of Iran and possibly the entire Middle East and
its oil to communist control, the United States and Great Britain
played a key role in the ouster of Mosaddeq, a constitutional
nationalist opposed to communism and Western imperialism. U.S.
intervention helped entrench monarchical power, and the reversal of
Iran's nationalization confirmed the dominance of Western
corporations over the resources of the Global South for the next
twenty years. Drawing on years of research in American, British,
and Iranian sources, David S. Painter and Gregory Brew provide a
concise and accessible account of Cold War competition,
Anglo-American imperialism, covert intervention, the political
economy of global oil, and Iran's struggle against autocratic
government. The Struggle for Iran dispels myths and
misconceptions that have hindered understanding this pivotal
chapter in the history of the post-World War II world.
eBook
Crude Politics
Energy shortages, climate change, and the debate over national security have thrust oil policy to the forefront of American politics. How did Americans grow so dependent on petroleum, and what can we learn from our history that will help us craft successful policies for the future? In this timely and absorbing book, Paul Sabin challenges us to see politics and law as crucial forces behind the dramatic growth of the U.S. oil market during the twentieth century. Using pre-World War II California as a case study of oil production and consumption, Sabin demonstrates how struggles in the legislature and courts over property rights, regulatory law, and public investment determined the shape of the state's petroleum landscape. Sabin provides a powerful corrective to the enduring myth of \"free markets\" by demonstrating how political decisions affected the institutions that underlie California's oil economy and how the oil market and price structure depend significantly on the ways in which policy questions were answered before World War II. His concise and probing analysis casts fresh light on the historical relationship between business and government and on the origins of contemporary problems such as climate change and urban sprawl. Incisive, engaging, and meticulously researched,Crude Politicsilluminates an important chapter in U.S. environmental, legal, business, and political history and the history of the American West.
eBook
Energy and international war
Will international wars where energy resources play a central role continue to hold sway over life and death for industrialized nations, or is this a transient phase in the evolution of industrial societies? This book answers this question by tracing the history of energy and conflict from antiquity, through the epic hot and cold wars of the twentieth century, to expected outcome of the war in Iraq. It points the way to the end of wars over control of fossil fuels, and demonstrates why these may be the last major international wars over other resources as well.
eBook
Desert kingdom : how oil and water forged modern Saudi Arabia
Oil and water, and the science and technology used to harness them, have long been at the heart of political authority in Saudi Arabia. Oil's abundance, and the fantastic wealth it generated, has been a keystone in the political primacy of the kingdom's ruling family. The other bedrock element was water, whose importance was measured by its dearth. Over much of the twentieth century, it was through efforts to control and manage oil and water that the modern state of Saudi Arabia emerged. The central government's power over water, space, and people expanded steadily over time, enabled by increasing oil revenues. The operations of the Arabian American Oil Company proved critical to expansion and to achieving power over the environment. Political authority in Saudi Arabia took shape through global networks of oil, science, and expertise. And, where oil and water were central to the forging of Saudi authoritarianism, they were also instrumental in shaping politics on the ground. Nowhere was the impact more profound than in the oil-rich Eastern Province, where the politics of oil and water led to a yearning for national belonging and to calls for revolution. Saudi Arabia is traditionally viewed through the lenses of Islam, tribe, and the economics of oil. Desert Kingdom now provides an alternative history of environmental power and the making of the modern Saudi state. It demonstrates how vital the exploitation of nature and the roles of science and global experts were to the consolidation of political authority in the desert.
eBook
Taliban : the power of militant Islam in Afghanistan and beyond
The American bombing of terrorist bases in Afghanistan under the protection of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement has brought the Taliban into sharp focus as the most radical and extreme Islamic movement in the world today. Little is known about the Taliban because of the deep secrecy that surrounds their political movement, their leaders and their aims.The geo-strategic implications of the Taliban are already creating severe instability in Russia, Iran and the five Central Asian republics where the Taliban have become a major player in the new Great Game, as Western countries and companies compete to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Western and Asian markets.The Taliban's implementation of their extreme interpretation of Islam poses new challenges to the Muslim world and the West's understanding of radical Islam in the post-Cold War era.'This is an impressive and eminently readable analysis of the Taliban movement, of its background and impact on Afghanistan, and of the wider regional and geopolitical implications of the Taliban's advent to power. The author himself is especially well placed to provide this account, having covered Afghanistan itself for two decades and having direct access to policy-makers in Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia. This is not the first book to be written on the Taliban, or Afghanistan in the 1990s. It promises, however, to be by far the strongest. It would be hard to see how anyone could rival the range and details of this account: this bids well to be the leading book on the subject.' - Professor Fred Halliday, London School of EconomicsTaliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game was runner-up in the prestigious annual British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize, administered by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies.
eBook
Dying to Forget
Irene L. Gendzier presents incontrovertible evidence that oil politics played a significant role in the founding of Israel, the policy then adopted by the United States toward Palestinians, and subsequent U.S. involvement in the region. Consulting declassified U.S. government sources, as well as papers in the H.S. Truman Library, she uncovers little-known features of U.S. involvement in the region, including significant exchanges in the winter and spring of 1948 between the director of the Oil and Gas Division of the Interior Department and the representative of the Jewish Agency in the United States, months before Israel's independence and recognition by President Truman.
Gendzier also shows that U.S. consuls and representatives abroad informed State Department officials, including the Secretary of State and the President, of the deleterious consequences of partition in Palestine. Yet the attempt to reconsider partition and replace it with a UN trusteeship for Palestine failed, jettisoned by Israel's declaration of independence. The results altered the regional balance of power and Washington's calculations of policy toward the new state. Prior to that, Gendzier reveals the U.S. endorsed the repatriation of Palestinian refugees in accord with UNGA Res 194 of Dec. 11, 1948, in addition to the resolution of territorial claims, the definition of boundaries, and the internationalization of Jerusalem. But U.S. interests in the Middle East, notably the protection of American oil interests, led U.S. officials to rethink Israel's military potential as a strategic ally. Washington then deferred to Israel with respect to the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, the question of boundaries, and the fate of Jerusalem--issues that U.S. officials have come to realize are central to the 1948 conflict and its aftermath.
eBook
