Oil and Strategic Planning Since 1973

Abstract

There is a long-standing Anglo-American, and to a lesser extent, a continental European tradition of defending, at the very least, critical portions of the international trade structure (including lines of communication) for resources. In a sense, the reliance on overseas trade has been treated as a historically accepted vulnerability. The period 1973 to the present has seen a series of crises posing actual or potential threats to Western access to oil supplies. The ‘oil shocks’ of 1973–74 and 1979–80, coupled with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the recent war in the Persian Gulf, have given rise to a very substantial amount of comment concerning oil and security, often giving the impression that oil vulnerability is something new on the strategic scene. Clearly, this is far from being the case. Nevertheless, while resource vulnerabilities have been an enduring concern of political and military leaders, the events in the Middle East and Southwest Asia over the past two decades have caused such perceptions of vulnerability to reassert themselves strongly in Western, and particularly American, strategy.