Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Gulf - Softcover

Stephen C. Pelletiere

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0944624456 ISBN 13: 9780944624456

Publisher: Maisonneuve Press, 2004

Synopsis

Asserting that the desire to control the Persian Gulf s oil supply sent the United States to war against Iraq in both 1991 and 2003, this work develops a nuanced argument around that claim. It explains how the Persian Gulf came under the control of a system or a cartel a coercive arrangement designed to ensure benefits to members and deny them to outsiders. The evolution of the oil system in the United States from its roots in Pennsylvania entrepreneurs to the Texas wildcatters is traced through the dominance of the oil barons in the Standard Oil era. Further, each United States conflict in Central Asia is analyzed, and the central role of oil in those conflicts is revealed. A new introduction and postscript address the motivations behind the most recent war in Iraq.

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen C. Pelletière was the Central Intelligence Agency s senior political analyst on Iraq throughout the Iran-Iraq War. In 1988 he became a senior research professor at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pa. While at the college he produced two of the government s most influential studies on Iraq Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East and Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War. Dr. Pelletiere got his PhD from the University of California in Berkeley. He studied Arabic on a Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) grant for a year in Cairo. He did his research for his dissertation on Egyptian Nationalism in the Dar Al Kutb in Cairo on a Fulbright. He has published three books on Iraq The Kurds: An Unstable Element in the Gulf; The Iran-Iraq War: Chaos in a Vacuum, and this volume Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Gulf. He is currently writing another book under contract for Praeger American Arms in the Gulf: Wars of Mass Destruction. His most recent publication is A War Crime Or an Act of War? The New York Times (January 31, 2003).

Review:

Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Gulf is a fascinating and strange history of global oil politics. Stephen Pelletiere, a professor at the US Army War College, does a wonderful job of destroying the myths of the free market system, even though that is probably not his primary intention. --D. Nordberg, Questia

About this edition

• Publisher: Maisonneuve Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0944624456
• ISBN 13: 9780944624456
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 250