The Geopolitics of Global Oil
- NINT 5342 - The Geopolitics of Global Oil (Spring 2010)
What is the actual "role of oil" in today's wars, confrontations and international relations? Oil has always had geostrategic importance, but how exactly does oil does oil drive geostrategy today? What was "the role of oil" in the Iraq War? In the U.S.-Iran confrontation? In U.S. policy to Venezuela, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Africa?
Today, 95% of all world transport is based on oil distillates. Security of supply is an existential issue for all states. Yet, alternative
fuels and modes of transportation cannot replace our ubiquitous oil-centric infrastructure for decades, and a popular theory claims that a new era of oil "Resource Wars" has dawned. This view rests on the claim that global oil production has "peaked" and will lead to "an end of industrial society," to "massive population reductions" and "war" - even perhaps a "world war" among the Great Powers, most especially the U.S. and China. Others claim that competition for "dwindling oil resources" drove the Iraq War, explained as a simple "oil grab" by the U.S. and Britain for their oil companies. Especially prominent is the theory on the emergence of a new, "multi-polar world," where OPEC oil-producing states and the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are said to be uniting to "seriously challenge" U.S. supremacy in dollar-based trade (especially in oil markets) and in military affairs.
In response, this course first reviews the availability and geo-distribution of oil and other energy resources. We then examine the
political economy of the international oil system that has emerged since OPEC nationalizations, during 25 years of North-South conflict and collusion, replacing the old neo-colonial oil system. Using this political-economic, historical analysis, we then carry out an in-depth analysis of the actual "role of oil" in major geostrategic conflicts and confrontations from WWII to present.
Regarding U.S. grand strategy, since the fall of the USSR the ability of the U.S. superpower to hold Western Europe and Japan under its nuclear umbrella has diminished. We examine whether and how the U.S. role as protector and hegemon of today´s globalized oil-market and oil-security system has grown in importance - especially its dominance of the Persian Gulf Region and the world's oceans - as a pillar of its global hyperpower status.
Concentration:Conflict and Security