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.
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Notes
Edward N. Luttwak, ‘Intervention and Access to Natural Resources’, in Hedley Bull (ed.) Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) p. 79.
Henry Kissinger, ‘The Energy Crisis: Strategy for Cooperative Action’, speech delivered in Chicago, 14 November 1974. Quoted in Roy A. Werner, ‘Oil and U.S. Security Policies’, Orbis, vol. 21 (Autumn 1977) no. 3, p. 651.
See Thomas Schelling, Thinking Through the Energy Problem (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1979).
Ray Dafter, ‘World Oil Production and Security of Supplies’, International Security, vol. 4 (Winter 1979/80) no. 3, p. 156.
Werner, p. 65; and Robert J. Lieber, The Oil Decade: Conflict and Cooperation in the West (New York: Praeger, 1983) p. 2.
Deese and Nye, p. 15. On the question of intervention to safeguard economic security, see Luttwak, ‘Intervention and Access to Natural Resources’, in Hedley Bull (ed.) Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
Robert W. Tucker, ‘Oil: The Issue of American Intervention’, Commentary, vol. 59 (January 1975) p. 25.
See Edward J. Laurance, ‘An Assessment of the Arms-for-Oil Strategy’ in Donald J. Goldstein (ed.) Energy and National Security: Proceedings of a Special Conference (Washington: National Defense University, 1981) pp. 59–91.
Melvin Conant, ‘Resources and Conflict: Oil—The Likely Contingencies’ in ‘Third World Conflict’ Adelphi Paper No. 167 (London: IISS, 1981) p. 45.
Shahram Chubin, ‘U.S. Security Interests in the Persian Gulf in the 1980’s’, Daedalus (Autumn 1980) p. 36.
Walter J. Levy, ‘Oil and Decline of the West’, Foreign Affairs (Summer 1980) p. 1008.
Shahram Chubin, ‘Reflections on the Gulf War’, Survival (July/August 1986) pp. 317–18; and Edward Luttwak, On the Meaning of Victory (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986) pp. 139–40.
Jeffrey Record, The Rapid Deployment Force and U.S. Military Intervention in the Persian Gulf (Cambridge: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1981) p. 9.
Douglas R. Bohi and William B. Quandt, Energy Security in the 1980’s: Economic and Political Perspectives (Washington: Brookings, 1984) p. 42.
Paul Nitze and Leonard Sullivan, Securing the Seas: Soviet Naval Challenge and Western Alliance Options (Boulder: Westview, 1979) p. 156.
Sir John Hackett, ‘Protecting Oil Supplies: The Military Requirements’ in ‘Third World Conflict and International Security’ (Part I), Adelphi Paper No. 166. (London: IISS, 1981) p. 41.
Robert W. Tucker, ‘The Purpose of American Power’, Foreign Affairs (Winter 1980/81) p. 253.
Claudia Wright, ‘Implications of the Iran-Iraq War’, Foreign Affairs (Winter 1980/81) p. 303.
Charles K. Ebinger, et al., The Critical Link: Energy and National Security in the 1980’s (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1982) p. 170.
Speech by Cyrus Vance at Harvard University, as reported in the New York Times, 6 June 1980, p. A12. Quoted in Robert Tucker, The Purposes of American Power (New York: Praeger, 1981) p. 76.
See Michael T. Klare, Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome: U.S. Interventionism in the 1980’s (Washington: IPS, 1982).
John M. Collins, ‘Petroleum Imports from the Persian Gulf: Use of U.S. Armed Force to Ensure Supplies’ (Washington: Congressional Research Service, 1979, up-dated 1982) p. 16.
Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Energy Issues and Alliance Relationships: The U.S., Western Europe and Japan (Cambridge: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1980) p. 34.
Hans W. Maull, Raw Materials, Energy and Security (London: IISS, 1984) p. 389.
Geoffrey Kemp, ‘Military Force and Middle East Oil’, in David A. Deese and Joseph S. Nye (eds) Energy and Security (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1981) p. 382.
Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Half Wars and Half Policies in the Persian Gulf’, in W. Scott Thompson (ed.) National Security in the 1980’s: From Weakness to Strength (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1980) p. 164.
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© 1989 Ian O. Lesser
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Lesser, I.O. (1989). Oil and Strategic Planning Since 1973. In: Resources and Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10259-4_6
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