Blood and Oil
"Since September 11 and the commencement of the "war on terror," the world's attention has been focused on the relationship between U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the region's soil. Klare traces oil's impact on international affairs since World War II, revealing its influence on the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines. He shows how America's own wells are drying up as our demand increases; by 2010 the United States will need to import 60 percent of its oil. And since most to this supply will have to come from chronically unstable, often violently anti-American zones - the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Latin America, and Africa - our dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military involvement."--BOOK JACKET
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3recommend
5mentions
4people
2008–2022years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- This one should be great and yes shows a few things we didn’t typically get to see. But it hates its subject so much that it resorts to few lies(aka falsehoods) thrown in for good measure. Disappointing because of that.
Read books of Clarke and Tenet for a better account.
Blood and Oil is a good non partisan account of the history of oil dependence since WWII. Great for more background.
- Piggy backing off of this, Blood and Oil is a really good read if you want to understand modern KSA / MBS.
- It depends what you want to learn about specifically.
For a general introduction there is an excellent 3 part BBC documentary "Iran and the West":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_the_West
If you want an inside account of things from a 'Prince': "Blood and Oil:: Memoirs of a Persian Prince"
For fascinating insight into Iran's geopolitics, economics and the context of the 1979 revolution (with major implications for the current global oil market) consider Andrew Scott Cooper's excellent book: The Oil Kings
here's an article from 2014 by Cooper to whet your appetite: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/18/why-would-the-saudis-cra...
and here's quite a good interview with Cooper from 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BXCx8oNvoo
His more recent book (not out yet): The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran
http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Heaven-Pahlavis-Imperial/dp/0...
But be aware that as always, behind every tyrant walks a cadre of sycophants with bloody mops attempting to twist history & exonerate the guilty. IMHO Hooman Majd, Reza Aslan and Trita Parsi are all varying degrees of apologists for the Islamic regime.
If you have a more specific interest, let me know and perhaps I'll be able to recommend something else.
- That's fine. It would still have been quite vulnerable to a ~1990 Iraq. Even a ~2000 era Iraq wouldn't need to conquer the country, but merely strike critical oil infrastructure. They were thought to have chemical weapons, etc.
If you don't believe the US cares much about such things, I recommend the book (unfortunately titled) "Blood and Oil" by M. Klare.
- Huh? I just read Blood and Oil by Michael Klare. The number given there was 67% for transportation, with 40% of that for individual automobiles (much of the rest is for trucking - aviation is a relatively small component). That also seems to square with various online sources:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/fossil_fuels/offmen-how-o... http://cadlab6.mit.edu/2.009.wiki/anchor/index.php?title=Per... http://www.oildepletionprotocol.org/getinformed/oilandtransp...
